Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a
On Friday, the Trump administration, aided by a board appointed entirely by Republican Governor Glenn Younkin, forced University of Virginia President James Ryan to resign. The Justice Department had threatened to block all federal funds to the second-oldest public university in the country if Ryan remained in office.
Ryan and the board had eliminated all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in March, even though the specious executive order commanding such changes was already under challenge by the courts. The university chose to comply rather than fight.
But, in a turn that Franz Kafka would appreciate (and perhaps inspired), the Trump administration declared that capitulation insufficient. In a clumsily worded letter to the university sent in April, the Department of Justice claimed that it had “received complaints that [Ryan’s] office and the University may have failed to implement these directives and further that you have refused to produce the report on the matter.”
What were the nature of these complaints? From whom at the university did they come? On what were they based? What, precisely, did the university fail to do? What, specifically, could the university do to avoid sanctions?
To this day, no one at the university has a clear idea what the university could or should have done. The New York Times reported Thursday that the only specific move the Justice Department demanded in recent weeks was Ryan’s resignation.
Laying the attack on the University of Virginia on DEI was brilliant and maddening. What, exactly, is DEI? Those of us who work in universities have a good idea. It is the collection of efforts and programs that allow students who have served in the military, do not come from homes that have had college students before, graduated from high schools deep in the coal fields of Appalachia, arrived on student visas from Nigeria, have endured sexual violence or harassment, or occupy segments of society that are constantly under attack from the majority to succeed and graduate. They are not zero-sum programs. They do not deny anyone else an opportunity to attend a university or thrive at one.
DEI programs recognize that society and the world are complex, diverse places. Success and health for all demand specific ways to address specific challenges. A single mother who did two tours in Afghanistan needs expert, specialized academic and career advising. She needs a social group that would understand her experiences. She deserves access to mental health and family resources that a 19-year-old graduate of Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia might not.
How do the Department of Justice, or the Department of Education, or Stephen Miller, or Donald Trump define DEI? They don’t. This allows them to ignore the true, subtle, essential nature of the actual efforts and lets a specter of anti-white, anti-male discrimination take over the public mind. DEI is whatever bigots fear it could be. DEI is never something solid about which informed citizens of a republic might deliberate or debate.
The specter of DEI is an updated, broader version of the demon of “critical race theory” that drove the dismantling of the once-great Florida public university system. Right-wing activists and Governor Ron DeSantis never defined or explained critical race theory for the public. They never showed actual examples of it in a public school or even undergraduate classroom. Those of us who have read it, cited it, and even taught about it to graduate students of history and culture were
Jefferson and James Madison understood that such demagoguery could quickly undermine a democratic republic. That’s why they put so much effort into both educating the polis (at least white, male members of the polis) and cultivating a rich, American public sphere through free and open deliberation and research.
I doubt Jefferson ever imagined the university he dreamed up and built in the last years of his life would be the site of a demagogic assault committed to crushing scientific inquiry. As a Machiavellian politician (who probably had read The Prince in Latin), however, Jefferson might have been impressed by the audacity of the power moves the Trump officials have executed in their cultural revolution.
Trump’s academic executioners had Ryan and the board in a bind. Ryan could have stood and fought and challenged the board to fire him. He is a brilliant lawyer and would have had the UVA-trained legal community behind him. He would also have a network of alumni and students who are passionately committed to the values of open inquiry, academic freedom, and diversity of perspective and experience. Those are formidable allies. Ryan—or, rather, the university community—could have prevailed.
But fighting would risk losing millions in federal research funding or—worse—student financial aid. The university could have been a more focused target of the State Department’s efforts to expel foreign students or even faculty working on H-1B visas. The next two or three academic years would have been painful.
But after this capitulation, there is no guarantee that the next years will be safe and good. Trump could still cancel all the research grants. He still could demand further actions, including the firing or demotion of offending faculty who get a bit too loud in their criticisms or study climate change. Ryan’s resignation leaves the university with no president and no provost (the previous provost left in the spring to become president of Middlebury College), so the right-wing board has the opportunity to install interim leadership that could stifle the ability of faculty to teach their expertise as we see fit and degrade the quality of education and research. That’s just the potential short-term harm.
The long-term harm is much broader and more concerning. By forcing out a university president who has spent his term allaying concerns of conservatives, respecting and amplifying the complaints right-wing critics voice about the lack of partisan diversity within the academy, ordering violent police attacks on peaceful student protesters, and dismantling programs that enhance diversity and equity, the Trump administration has made it clear that no capitulation will be sufficient.
Only the complete destruction of the greatest knowledge-production system in the history of the world will stop them from decapitating and dismantling American universities. Climate research must end. History research and teaching must be propagandistic. Political science must be apolitical. Literature must fade away. Biology must consider unscientific nonsense. Cancer research must cease. Brilliant students from around the world should find other countries in which to train and to enrich with their creativity and commitment. Black people need not apply.
Meanwhile, this attack will spread fear across the academy and American society at large. Students, faculty, and university leaders will cower, believing that no institutional power will protect us if the right comes after us. The right will be emboldened to amplify the current culture of harassment and violent threats that faculty already face.
Jefferson dreamed of forging a grand, vibrant Athens on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, in its third century, the United States seems a lot more like Sparta.
