The University of Virginia (UVA) entered an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to end race-based admissions and hiring, as well as other illegal diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in order to resolve a civil rights investigation into the school.
UVA was subject to five inquiries having to do with different aspects of a racial discrimination regime it, like many other institutions of higher education, had promulgated for years.
One aspect of the investigation was the school’s attempt to hide its DEI programming by simply rebranding and maintaining the destructive ideology and practice in secret.
The agreement comes after disgraced, DEI-obsessed former university President Jim Ryan resigned over the summer, as The Federalist reported. His resignation was also part of the path forward to end the Justice Department’s probe.
“This notable agreement with the University of Virginia will protect students and faculty from unlawful discrimination, ensuring that equal opportunity and fairness are restored,” Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, a UVA alumna, said in a press release, adding, “other American universities should be on alert that the Justice Department will ensure that our federal civil rights laws are enforced for every American, without exception.”
UVA joins mostly Ivy League schools, such as University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Columbia University, and Brown University, in entering some form of agreement with the Trump administration after rampant discrimination and destructive policies essentially destroyed their academic rigor and reputations as formidable institutions.
UVA is the first public institution to enter such an agreement.
Unlike other similar agreements, UVA is not required to make any payments to the federal government, and it also does not require UVA to be subjected to independent monitoring. UVA will update the Justice Department every quarter to prove it is in compliance.
In a statement to the university, interim President Paul Mahoney said the agreement, “preserves the academic freedom of our faculty, students, and staff.”
“We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it,” Mahoney added, invoking Jefferson, the university’s founder.
While citing Jefferson should not be notable, given his status as both the university’s founder and a Founding Father of the United States of America, mentions of his name had become extraordinarily controversial under the leadership of Ryan — someone who broke tradition and rarely mentioned him.
The school is intertwined with nearby Monticello, Jefferson’s Charlottesville, Virginia, home, both of which are tasked with maintaining Jefferson’s legacy. Ryan and much of UVA and Monticello staff for years saw it as their mission do destroy Jefferson’s legacy on the altar of Black Lives Matter and other far-left militant forces.
While this agreement ends the civil rights investigations into the school, it is separate from a compact offered by the Trump administration to multiple universities including UVA, Brown, Columbia, UPenn, Dartmouth College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Vanderbilt University, the University of Southern California (USC), and the University of Texas at Austin (UT).
That compact offers favorable federal grant funding consideration to universities who sign on and agree to certain priorities of the Trump administration, including, to maintain a “vibrant marketplace of ideas on campus” and abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.”
UVA declined to sign that separate agreement.
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