University of Virginia President James Ryan resigned Friday, complying with demands from the Trump administration he do so after the Justice Department opened an investigation into diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at the school.
Sources told the New York Times that Ryan announced the decision in a letter to the school’s board Thursday, telling the leaders that, “given the circumstances” and “with deep sadness,” he was tendering his resignation.
According to the Charlottesville, Va., CBS affiliate, Ryan had intended to step down at the end of the next academic year.
A spokesperson for the school didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ryan addressed the development in a letter to the university community Friday afternoon.
“I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this University. But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” he wrote.
“To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.”
Ryan closed by saying the decision was “excruciatingly difficult” to make.
The shocking development follows a February memo from the Department of Education’s Office For Civil Rights that outlawed schools from considering race when making decisions around “admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
The DOJ accused UVA of violating that guidance in an April 28 letter.
In May, America First Legal, a nonprofit conservative group started by Stephen Miller, accused the school of renaming the programs instead of eliminating them entirely.
“UVA has failed to dismantle its discriminatory DEI programs as required—choosing instead to rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms,” the group wrote in a letter to the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, Harmeet K. Dhillon.
Dhillon attended law school at the University of Virginia.
Things came to a head earlier this month, when, according to the Times, the DOJ demanded Ryan’s resignation to settle the investigation. Fearing the school would lose access to federal funding, the board complied.