Youngkin peppers university boards with GOP power players

With Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appointees slated to hold majorities on the state’s university boards beginning July 1, the governor announced dozens of last-minute university board appointments Friday afternoon, shortly before the members’ four-year terms take effect Monday. Although many of the new appointees are the usual mix of Virginia business leaders and former state legislators, Youngkin also tapped some conservative political movers and shakers with national profiles — people who will likely shape the political direction of those university boards.

Among these newcomers are former Army Secretary Ryan D. McCarthy, who came under scrutiny for his role in readying National Guard troops to respond to the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021; Marc Short, a former chief of staff for then-Vice President Mike Pence whose 2018 appointment to the Miller Center at the University of Virginia caused controversy and resignations; one former clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas; and a former law clerk for Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Named by the governor to four-year terms that can be renewed, members of state university and college boards of visitors have the power under state law to hire and fire school presidents and set institutions’ annual tuition and fees. The state legislature can block confirmation of board appointees, but do so rarely. University of Virginia Board of Visitors member Bert Ellis, an Atlanta businessman who has been outspoken about his conservative political beliefs, narrowly survived an attempt to keep him off the board in 2023.

Youngkin’s office released the board appointments Friday afternoon just a couple hours before the governor appeared at a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump in Chesapeake.

In addition to being bosses over the state universities’ presidents, board of visitors members also can wield significant power over other aspects of universities, especially when its members are politically aligned. U.Va.’s board of visitors this spring found itself at the center of political disputes over pro-Palestine protests on campus, and Virginia Military Institute’s board has been caught up in controversies dividing VMI alumni and current students over the military school’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

At George Mason University, two board members were given leadership roles in a group overseeing curriculum — a power highlighted in the Virginia Mercury’s March report about Youngkin’s request that Mason and Virginia Commonwealth University provide syllabi for courses about diversity, equity, inclusion and race to Virginia Education Secretary Aimee Rogstad Guidera for review. Faculty members at both universities expressed concern about academic freedom being curtailed by the Youngkin administration, with some viewing it as a continuation of the governor’s declaration that educational content regarding race was “inherently divisive” in an executive order covering K-12 public schools. Ultimately, VCU’s board of visitors and George Mason’s administration eliminated requirements for students to take classes focusing on DEI, race or racism this fall. A Youngkin spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the governor had received complaints from parents and students that the courses represented “a thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left’s groupthink on Virginia’s students.”

Here’s a look at some of the new members of Virginia universities’ boards of visitors:

George Mason University

• Kenneth L. Marcus, a former U.S. assistant secretary of education for civil rights under President Trump and former staff director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President George W. Bush. Marcus, who lives in Falls Church and founded the Brandeis Center, was characterized by a former Brandeis Center board member in a New York Times story in March as “the single most effective and respected force when it comes to both litigation and the utilization of the civil rights statutes” to oppose antisemitism — a hot-button issue on many campuses, including here in Virginia.
• Nina S. Rees, a senior fellow of the George W. Bush Institute, is the former CEO and president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, the largest charter school advocacy organization in the country.
• Marc Short, a Virginia Beach native, served as Vice President Pence’s chief of staff from March 2019 until the end of Pence’s term in January 2021, and previously served as Trump’s White House director of legislative affairs. A graduate of Washington & Lee University and U.Va., Short worked for Oliver North’s unsuccessful 1994 Senate campaign in Virginia and was a political consultant for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio’s and Pence’s 2016 presidential campaigns.

University of Virginia

• Porter Wilkinson, a counselor and chief of staff to the Smithsonian Institute Board of Regents, is a former law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts and Associate Justice Kavanaugh, when he was serving as a U.S. Court of Appeals judge. Notably, Wilkinson was reportedly the only person Kavanaugh shared his U.S. Senate testimony with before his emotional Supreme Court hearings in 2018, when he was questioned about his alleged behavior regarding Christine Blasey Ford when both were students at Georgetown Prep in the 1980s. Ford accused Kavanaugh of pinning her to a bed and trying to rip off her clothes during a party. Kavanaugh, in response, vehemently claimed innocence and denied assaulting Ford.

Virginia Tech 

• Ryan D. McCarthy, former secretary of the Army under President Trump, is a VMI alum who was an Army Ranger during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Before being named by Trump as under secretary of the Army in 2017, McCarthy worked as special assistant to Robert Gates, the U.S. secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama. In May, The New York Times reported that a miscommunication between then Defense Sec. Christopher Miller and McCarthy led to different understandings of how quickly McCarthy would deploy the National Guard on Jan. 6, 2021.

Virginia Military Institute 

• Kate Comerford Todd, a partner at Torridon Law, was a deputy counsel to President Trump and advised him on judicial selections, as well as previously serving as associate counsel to President George W. Bush. A Harvard Law graduate, Todd was also a law clerk for Supreme Court Associate Justice Thomas. She was appointed by Youngkin to VMI’s board in October 2023, filling the vacancy left by the late retired Lt. Gen. Charles Dominy.