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This time, though, Ryan stunned me. “With a very heavy heart,” he announced, “I have submitted my resignation as president of the University of Virginia.” The reason for his decision was the Trump administration’s demand that he step down for allegedly failing to purge diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at the university.
As a UVa alum, my take on this event might well be biased. As an historian, though, I am convinced the substance and symbolism of Ryan’s resignation is far greater, and more tragic, than what has transpired in any other battle President Trump has waged against our institutions of higher education, including Harvard. A glance at the past tells us why.
The University of Virginia’s current Board of Visitors has surrendered the arms of knowledge to a government that prefers ignorance.
This year marks the bicentennial of the birth of Thomas Jefferson’s “academical village,” the name that Jefferson gave to his creation. While the University of Virginia was founded in 1819, it opened for business in 1825 upon the completion of the campus designed by Jefferson — the verdant lawn lined by colonnaded walkways running past classrooms and living quarters. Anchoring this architectural masterpiece is the Rotunda, which originally housed the library — thus establishing the authority of knowledge — and whose white dome, towering above the other buildings, broadcast the radically democratic ideal that the many can become one.
Jefferson’s vision for his academical village differed wildly from other private and state universities. UVa had neither a professor of divinity, ties to a church, nor compulsory Sunday services — the rule at other universities. Crucially, professors were free to choose the texts and subjects of their lectures. This village, in short, was guarded by the highest and sturdiest of walls between state and church, guaranteeing, in Jefferson’s words, its pursuit of truth, regardless of where it led, and toleration of any error “so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
On the eve of the academical village’s opening 200 years ago, Jefferson wrote to a friend about his fears as well as hopes. One paragraph needs to be quoted in full:
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights ... yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operation, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, and more especially to give them knowledge of those facts that they may be able to know ambition under all its shapes, and prompt to exert their natural powers to defeat its purposes.”
Not only has Jason S. Miyares, Virginia’s attorney general, been a stalwart opponent of DEI, but the members of the Board of Visitors have all been appointed by an equally outspoken opponent of DEI, Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. Most of the board members are chief executives or legal counsels of prominent real-estate and investment firms, which of course are not unlike the members of boards at other prestigious universities that require deep pockets and powerful connections.
But unlike other universities, the history of UVa’s governing board offers a lesson in how “the free exercise of natural rights” can slowly dissolve into ignominy, if not outright tyranny. The original Board of Visitors included three American presidents: Jefferson and his fellow Virginians James Monroe and James Madison. Both in and out of office, these three founding fathers of our republic reminded us of the crucial role played by an educated citizenry. James Madison, who was especially close to Jefferson, famously warned that “a popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
The University of Virginia’s current Board of Visitors has surrendered the arms of knowledge to a government that prefers ignorance.
Shortly before his death, Jefferson was burdened by pessimism over the future of our country. He feared that the sacrifice made by his generation was “to be thrown away by the unwise and unworthy passions of their sons.” He wrote: “My only consolation is to be that I live not to weep over it.” But we are alive to weep over the board’s betrayal of Jefferson’s vision. Jefferson believed independence was worth a revolution, but the governing body of his academical village instead believes that a university president’s resignation is worth the lack of independence.
