University Of Virginia Reaches Deal To Pause Federal Investigations

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA — The U.S. Department of Justice on Wednesday said it reached a deal with the University of Virginia to pause several investigations into the school. In return, the college must abide by White House guidance forbidding discrimination in admissions and hiring.

The agreement was announced by the Justice Department, which 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 that President Donald Trump has called unlawful.

The mounting pressure prompted James Ryan to announce his resignation as university president 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.”

As part of the agreement, UVA agreed to be bound by Department of Justice guidance that ensures the school does not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring or other activities, according to a statement from the federal agency.

The school also agreed to provide information and data to the Department of Justice on a quarterly basis through 2028. The president of UVA will be required to personally certify each quarter that the college complies with the agreement.

As a result, Justice Department officials said UVA will also be eligible for future federal grants and awards.

"If UVA completes its planned reforms prohibiting DEI at the university, the Department will close its investigations against UVA," the agency said.

Virginia’s settlement follows other agreements signed by Columbia and Brown universities 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.

Some of the Justice Department's letters were squarely aimed at Ryan, accusing him of engaging in “attempts to defy and evade federal anti-discrimination laws and the directives of your board.” Much of the federal scrutiny centered 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.

Among the most prominent critics was America First Legal, a conservative group created by Trump aide Stephen Miller. In a May letter to federal officials, the group said Virginia had only moved to “rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms.”

Similar accusations have embroiled George Mason University, where the governing board came to the defense of the president even as the Education Department cited allegations that he promoted diversity initiatives above credentials in hiring.

On Aug. 1, the board unanimously voted to give President Gregory Washington a pay increase of 1.5 percent. The same day, the board approved a resolution forbidding DEI in favor of a “merit-based approach” in campus policies.

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The Associated Press contributed reporting.