The Justice Department announced Wednesday that the University of Virginia has agreed to abide by Trump administration guidance ensuring the university doesn’t engage in racial discrimination in admissions and hiring.
The move by the university is an attempt to bring to an end months of scrutiny by the Justice Department. Under the agreement, the university will provide the department with relevant information and data quarterly through 2028.
The Justice Department began reviewing the admissions and financial aid processes at the Charlottesville campus in April. Officials accused its president of failing to end diversity, equity and inclusion practices President Trump has deemed unlawful.
The mounting pressure prompted university president James Ryan to announce his resignation in June, saying the stakes were too high for others on campus if he opted to “fight the federal government in order to save my job.”
The president of the university will have to personally certify that the university is in compliance each quarter. Interim UVA president Paul Mahoney said in a message to the community, “After months of discussions with DOJ, I believe strongly that this agreement represents the best available path forward.”
The university confirmed the agreement regarding the government’s five remaining federal investigations in a statement and said that it did not include a monetary penalty or external monitoring and “it affirms UVA’s academic freedom.”
The university said that under the agreement, the government will suspend its current investigations, while university leaders will confirm its compliance with the Justice Department through 2028. At that point the government will conclude its investigations.
Mahoney said in his statement that the university’s leaders would continue “our thorough review of our practices and policies to ensure that we are complying with all federal laws.”
The university said Mahoney and other leaders have worked for months with the Justice Department to address its concerns about the university’s compliance with federal civil rights laws and its response to antisemitism allegations on campus.
According to Mahoney, the Justice Department closed two investigations into UVA in September after it provided information about its policies and actions.
Columbia and Brown universities have also signed agreements to end federal investigations and restore access to federal funding. Columbia paid $200 million to the government, and Brown paid $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations.
The Justice Department had accused Ryan, the former UVA president, of engaging in “attempts to defy and evade federal anti-discrimination laws and the directives of your board.” The department focused on complaints that Ryan was too slow to implement a March 7 resolution by the university’s governing board demanding the eradication of DEI on campus.
As a public university, the University of Virginia was an outlier in the Trump administration’s effort to reform higher education according to the president’s vision. Previously, the administration had devoted most of its scrutiny to elite private colleges, including Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, accused of tolerating antisemitism.
Since then, the White House has expanded its campaign to other public campuses, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and George Mason University.
The Charlottesville campus became a flashpoint this year after conservative critics accused it of simply renaming its DEI initiatives rather than ending them. The Justice Department expanded the scope of its review several times and announced a separate investigation into alleged antisemitism in May.
Earlier in October, UVA declined to sign an agreement pledging to uphold the Trump administration’s higher education priorities, or risk losing out on preferred access to federal funding.
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