Report: 3 U.Va. board members resign at Spanberger’s request

The New York Times reported Friday evening that three University of Virginia board members have resigned at the request of Abigail Spanberger, who will be sworn in Saturday as Virginia’s Democratic governor.

According to the Times, which cited two people briefed on the matter, U.Va. Rector Rachel Sheridan, Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson and major university donor Paul Manning, a member of the university’s board, sent letters of resignation Friday. They are reportedly among at least five people Spanberger asked to step down.

Earlier Friday, the board had 12 confirmed members, all of whom were appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican.

U.Va. and Spanberger’s transition team did not respond immediately to requests for comment Friday evening, and neither did Sheridan or Manning. Faculty at the flagship university, as well as Virginia’s elected Democrats and others, have called for Sheridan and Wilkinson to step down from the board for months, since former university President Jim Ryan resigned in June 2025 under pressure from the U.S. Department of Justice.

Spanberger said previously that she would be ready on “day one” to appoint five U.Va. board members, filling empty seats on the board after state Senate Democrats rejected Youngkin’s 22 appointees for seats on George Mason University, Virginia Military Institute and U.Va.’s boards.

However, she did not confirm publicly any plans to remove board members from any university, although governors have the ability to do so, typically for malfeasance or other unusual circumstances.

Manning’s reported inclusion among those asked to resign comes as more of a surprise, given that he and his wife donated $100 million to the university in 2023 to launch the $350 million Manning Institute of Biotechnology at U.Va. Manning has said that he made the donation in part due to his friendship with Ryan.

But critics said that the board did not do enough to protect the university or Ryan from attacks by the Trump administration, which has taken strong measures to rid universities of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and placed financial pressure on schools by threatening to withhold federal research funding and other federal money. Months after resigning, Ryan wrote a lengthy document about his final months in office during the DOJ’s investigation into U.Va., and said that Sheridan, Manning and Wilkinson met with DOJ officials, while he was not permitted to meet with them.

Ryan alleged that Youngkin, the three board members and attorneys hired by the board had possibly been behind the pressure to resign, instead of the DOJ. “At the very least, we had board members who were apparently more complicit than other universities,” Ryan wrote.

After the release of Ryan’s document, Manning wrote a letter to U.Va.’s Faculty Senate defending his actions in university negotiations with the DOJ.

“Based on the information available to me at the time, I ultimately became convinced that federal funding was at risk and would result in an immediate loss of financial support to the university,” he wrote. “It was, in my mind, a difficult choice between two unfortunate outcomes: real damage to the university, its people, and its academic and research mission, or the premature departure of a leader who had contributed to many successes at the university.”

Friction among factions

A Washington Post story earlier this month cited texts between board members and top U.Va. officials between June 2023 and mid-December 2025, showing friction between Youngkin appointees and board members appointed by Democratic former Gov. Ralph Northam, particularly during the DOJ’s investigation last spring that led to Ryan’s resignation.

Following her election in November 2025, Spanberger called on Sheridan and Wilkinson to pause the presidential search process for Ryan’s replacement until she could fill the board’s seats, but they forged ahead and named former Darden School of Business Dean Scott Beardsley as U.Va.’s 10th president at the end of 2025. He took office Jan. 1.

In response, the U.Va. Faculty Senate passed a resolution this week calling for Spanberger “to exercise her statutory authority, review the actions of current board members, remove those whose conduct has fallen short of the responsibilities of visitors, and appoint qualified individuals to fill all vacancies on the board.”

A “newly reconstituted” board then is asked to review the presidential search process and “determine the best path forward,” the Faculty Senate resolution stated.

In a December 2025 interview with Virginia Business, Spanberger acknowledged, “At times it seems daily, or certainly weekly, that an important constituency [at U.Va.] has voiced their complete lack of confidence [in their board and] in some cases [are] calling on them to step down. As governor-elect, I take note of the varied voices, very strong voices, who have clear reasons that they have articulated in resolutions that have passed, letters that have been written about the distrust they have. But I certainly would think it’s premature for me to make any announcements.”