Thomas Jefferson’s vision for a
noble and educated republic has been dealt a firm blow. The enemies of free and
open inquiry, of science, and of informed, democratic citizenship have chopped
off the head of the very university Jefferson founded to make his vision
real.
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 already
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. These are the collections 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 in 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 a
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
drowned out as we tried to educate a busy and frightened public.
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 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 H1B 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.
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