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 — one of the nation’s most prominent public universities — demonstrates that President Trump’s bid to reorder the political structure of academia is more intense and far-reaching than has been previously understood.
The administration’s attempt to assert federal influence over state university leadership decisions also shows 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.
The Justice Department has contended to the university that the president, James E. Ryan, has not dismantled the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs and misrepresented the steps taken to end them. 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 No. 2 official in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, 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.
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.”
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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