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.
Justice Department officials have told University of Virginia officials that hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding are at risk because of what the department says is the school’s disregard for civil rights law over its diversity practices, according to two of the people.
The department officials have told the university that the president, James E. Ryan, has not dismantled the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs and has misrepresented the steps taken to work toward that goal, according to two of the people.
In the hopes of ensuring that the funding is not stripped from the school, members of the school’s oversight board who were appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, have been in discussions with Justice Department to learn what could be done, according to a person briefed on the matter.
As part of those discussions, the Justice Department has said that Mr. Ryan must go, according to three of the people.
A spokesman for the department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The demand to remove Mr. Ryan was made over the past month on several occasions by Gregory Brown, the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights, to university officials and representatives, according to the three people briefed on the matter.
Mr. Brown, a University of Virginia graduate who, as a private lawyer, sued the school, is taking a major role in the investigation. He told a university representative as recently as this past week that Mr. Ryan needed to go in order for the process of resolving the investigation to begin, two of the people said.
Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s top civil rights lawyer, has also been involved in negotiations with the university. She received her law degree from the University of Virginia, where she was a student in the law school at the same time as Mr. Ryan.
The people briefed on the back-and-forth between the university and the Justice Department spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing negotiations that were supposed to remain private.
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.”
Before becoming the University of Virginia’s president, Mr. Ryan served as the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was praised for his commitment to D.E.I. programs. Harvard has been one of the Trump administration’s chief targets since it began its assault on higher education.
The administration’s attempt to assert federal influence over state university leadership decisions is also illustrative of how Mr. Trump’s political appointees continue to wield the Justice Department’s investigative powers to achieve policy goals long sought by a top Trump adviser, Stephen Miller.
Legal experts said they could think of few other instances in which an administration had demanded that a school have its president removed in order to resolve a Justice Department investigation.
“This is a tactic you would expect the government to use when it’s playing hard ball in a criminal case involving a corporation accused of serious wrongdoing or pervasive criminal activity,” said Daniel C. Richman, who is a law professor at Columbia University and a former federal prosecutor.
A spokesman for the University of Virginia did not respond to a message seeking comment on Mr. Ryan’s status.
The Justice Department’s interest in the Charlottesville-based campus traces to one of Mr. Trump’s first actions in office this year — an executive order aimed at rooting out D.E.I. practices across the federal government, educational institutions and private companies.
The administration never shared a clear definition of diversity practices, which has led to a range of responses from universities, including the removal of D.E.I.-related classes from graduation requirements and the end of long-running campus forums on race.
But Mr. Ryan has been singled out by the Trump administration as his steps toward compliance have been criticized by conservative groups as insufficient. America First Legal, a nonprofit started by Mr. Miller, last month accused the University of Virginia of paying lip service to Mr. Trump’s orders by simply running the same diversity programs under a different name. The group issued a news release last month that called on the Justice Department to “hold UVA accountable.”
“Rebranding discrimination does not make it legal, and changing a label doesn’t change the substance,” Megan Redshaw, an attorney at America First Legal, said in a statement. “UVA’s use of sanitized language and recycled job titles is a deliberate attempt to sidestep the law.”
The unusual targeting of a college president comes one month after Justice Department lawyers used their power to force student editors of The Harvard Law Review, a legal journal run independently of the university, to withdraw a letter of reprimand for a student who worked there.
Following a similar strategy that Mr. Miller’s America First Legal group has tried against student-run legal journals at Northwestern and New York University, the Justice Department asserted that The Harvard Law Review was discriminating against white, male authors.
The student who had been reprimanded, Daniel Wasserman, was accused of violating the Law Review’s privacy policy by downloading copies of thousands of internal documents. The Justice Department said that Mr. Wasserman was a cooperating witness in its investigation.
Mr. Wasserman now works in the White House for Mr. Miller.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
Michael C. Bender is a Times political correspondent covering President Trump, the Make America Great Again movement and other federal and state elections.
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