‘Someone is not telling the truth’: Former UVA president Jim Ryan alleges ‘forced’ resignation amid pressure from DOJ, university heads

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (WRIC) -- Former University of Virginia (UVA) president Jim Ryan sent a letter to faculty senators on Friday detailing the events that led to his resignation earlier this summer. He alleges that the circumstances with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and university heads led to his controversial, "forced" resignation.

In the letter sent on Friday, Nov. 14, Ryan said that Board of Visitors members Rachel Sheridan and Porter Wilkinson took a leading role in negotiating his resignation. He alleges this was done without the knowledge of the Board of Visitors rector at the time, Robert Hardie, or many other board members. Sheridan and Wilkinson were appointed to the roles of rector and vice rector in a June board meeting.

Ryan resigned in June amid pressure from President Donald Trump’s administration regarding the university’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.” In a statement issued following this announcement, Ryan wrote that he would not put UVA in jeopardy to save his own job.

Professors have since condemned the board’s decision to dissolve UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) efforts after Trump ordered an end to those DEI efforts in January, which he has labeled unlawful discrimination.

According to Ryan, the board insisted they remain silent about the changes.

"So began the narrative that we were recalcitrant and resistant to any changes, which was not true but would continue up and through my forced resignation," Ryan wrote.

Ryan claimed trouble began at a March board meeting. The university received a drafted resolution from Gov. Glenn Youngkin's office that criticized DEI. He wrote that the original resolution was "quite sweeping and filled with inflammatory rhetoric criticizing DEI, much of it lifted from President Trump’s executive order."

In his letter, Ryan said that Youngkin appeared on Fox News to say that "DEI is dead" at UVA.

Ryan detailed how UVA received seven letters from the DOJ regarding compliance with the board's resolution. According to him, a board member told him to take the extensions and wait for a more thorough response. At the time of his resignation, Ryan said the university had yet to respond to the DOJ's inquiries regarding the school's DEI practices.

A day prior to the New York Times article that leaked his resignation, the publication reported that the DOJ had called on Ryan to resign.

Ryan recalled the day the New York Times article, which details how DOJ lawyers were pressuring him to resign, leaked. He claimed that Sheridan told him that UVA had a written agreement --one she allegedly called "an amazing deal" -- with the Trump administration that they would have stopped inquiring or investigating UVA had Ryan resigned.

"I was told that the DOJ lawyers were very upset with the leaked story in the Times and that the only offer on the table was that I needed to resign by 5 p.m. that day [Thursday, June 26] or the DOJ would basically rain hell on UVA," he wrote.

Per his letter, Ryan was told that if he didn't resign, the DOJ would punish the university, and the board would fire him the following day. He explained that a close colleague of his told him, “If you don’t have any Board support, it’s over. You can’t fight this on your own.”

According to Ryan, he began writing this letter over the summer, shortly after his resignation, to keep a "record of the events while they were fresh in my mind."

Ryan called the circumstances surrounding his ousting "surreal and bewildering." He addressed those who may question why he did not go public at the time, saying that he was worried that UVA would "lose funding and get attacked by the Trump administration." He prefaced that by saying some may see it as "so outlandish as not to be entirely believable."

"What is not clear to me, however, is whether the threat was real, or whether the idea came from the Board members who spoke with the DOJ lawyers, our own lawyers, the Governor, or some combination of that group," Ryan wrote. "Harmeet Dhillon emphatically and publicly stated, twice, that neither she nor her DOJ colleagues demanded my resignation or offered some sort of quid pro quo. This is not consistent with what I was told by Rachel and Paul, but I was never in the room when these conversations took place."

He said due to those contradictory statements, "someone is not telling the truth."

"I was never going to give up the core values of UVA or my own principles simply to satisfy the prevailing political winds or the political ambitions of some. In the end, that may have been the real problem, though I will probably never know," Ryan wrote. "What I do know is that I was accused more than once by some Board members and the Governor’s office of being stubborn."

In August, Paul Mahoney became the university’s interim president and resolved DOJ investigations in October when UVA agreed to abide by White House guidance preventing discrimination in admissions and hiring.

On Thursday, Nov. 14, Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger (D) requested that the university wait until she assumes office to pick its 10th president in a letter to the Board of Visitors dated earlier that day. Youngkin then accused Spanberger of what he claimed was an instance of unprecedented overreach on her part.

Ryan's letter can be read in its entirety below: