Trump Forces the President of State-Funded UVA to Resign for Embracing Campus Policies that Rankle MAGA
On the dubious claim that the worst form of racism in America is rich white kids not getting into their first-choice schools, the Trump administration has been pressuring universities to remove all programs meant to offer more opportunities to racial minorities. Now they have taken the extraordinary step of dictating the firing of the president of the University of Virginia.
The New York Times reports:
The Trump administration has privately demanded that the University of Virginia oust its president to help resolve a Justice Department investigation into the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The extraordinary condition the Justice Department has put on the school demonstrates that President Trump’s bid to shift the ideological tilt of the higher education system, which he views as hostile to conservatives, is more far-reaching than previously understood.
The government’s extensive pressure campaign has stripped billions of dollars from elite universities, including Harvard, which has been the target of investigations from at least six different federal agencies. But this is the first time the administration has pushed a university to remove its leader. …
Mr. Ryan, hired in 2018 as the university’s ninth president, has leaned into issues like making the school more diverse, increasing the number of first-generation students, and encouraging students to do community service. But his approach, which he says will make the university “both great and good,” has rankled conservative alumni and Republican board members who accuse him of wanting to impose his values on students and claim he is “too woke.”
It worked. Ryan has since resigned. But this is about more than Trump abusing his power against a university. He is also abusing it against a state government. UVA is a state university that answers to the Virginia legislature and the governor, not to the federal government. Or it was, until very recently.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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