There is no preordained balance between liberal and conservative ideologies, or among a spectrum of ideologies, at universities in the United States. What to teach or research are instead consequences of thousands upon thousands of decisions over time by diverse, credentialed faculties. Those faculties are themselves the product of thousands of hiring and tenure decisions over decades.
The free flow of ideas in teaching and research, leading to what gains acceptance over time, is the essence of academic freedom. Based on long experience we know it must be jealously protected for universities to succeed in benefitting society.
This essay examines a fundamental corporate governance responsibility of university boards of trustees. It is to preserve and – when necessary – defend academic freedom.
Recent events at the University of Virginia illustrate interplay between the conduct and decisions of a university’s board of trustees (at each of Virginia’s public universities called the “Board of Visitors” and, in shorthand, the “BOV”) and the preservation or diminishment of academic freedom. Recent history at UVA has specific context, but its lessons are widely applicable to public and private colleges and universities across the country. And these are lessons of peril.
The conduct of certain members of UVA’s BOV over past months merits particular attention. To what extent if any did members of the BOV perceive an obligation to protect the UVA faculty’s academic freedom from governmental interference? This question requires analyzing BOV members’ attempts at ideological and partisan viewpoint discrimination, which is forbidden under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to government actors at the state and federal levels. How did the conduct of some BOV members affect – and likely distort – the BOV’s capacity to champion academic freedom as a prominent fiduciary responsibility?
Corporate Governance Standards for University Boards of Trustees
At most universities, the trustees’ processes and preoccupations seem remote. Intricacies of university budgets and government-imposed compliance obligations are opaque. So it has typically been at UVA, although, for example, BOV decisions about tuition increases, new construction, and selection of presidents garner attention.
The Trump presidency’s cultural wars came to Charlottesville in 2025 and had an immediate and public impact on UVA’s BOV. That narrative is documented extensively elsewhere, even as additional facts continue coming to light. In summary: for its own unique ideological purposes, the Trump administration is waging a war on universities’ academic freedom. Its purpose is to impose ideological constraints on university faculties’ freedom to articulate, and teach, narratives that differ from the Trump administration’s re-writing – whitewashing – of history and of current events.
The Trump administration is carrying out this campaign through control of federal executive agencies and the federal funding they disburse according to federal statute, i.e., Congress’s funding mandates.
In a short span in 2025, the Department of Justice sent seven letters to UVA alleging institutional misconduct. DOJ lawyers focused on whether UVA was continuing to pursue race-based Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs. Government race-based benefit programs are no longer permissible due to a change in doctrine announced by the Supreme Court in its 2023 decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. So the Trump DOJ was and is campaigning to root out any and all race-based benefit programs in higher education. Appropriate enforcement of the Students for Fair Admissions doctrine is by tautology legitimate. However, the Trump Administration’s enforcement campaign has an added performative, retributive, and unconstitutional anti-free expression thrust to it.
The attack on academic freedom and free speech at universities is exemplified by the infamous “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education” that the administration, via the Department of Education, released to nine select universities, UVA included, on October 1, 2025. Most rejected it outright. As MIT president Sally Kornbluth said, “The [Compact] also includes principles with which we disagree, including those that would restrict freedom of expression and our independence as an institution.” The Compact is undeniable evidence of the administration’s assault on university free speech and academic freedom. (It is also an unabashed attempt to violate federal law [text in notes below] forbidding any federal “direction, supervision, or control” over “any educational institution.”)
UVA’s popular, empathetic, and effective president, Jim Ryan, became a symbolic target of the Trump DOJ’s campaign. This was so even though Ryan was following the BOV’s explicit direction to end all race-based benefit programs at UVA in compliance with Students for Fair Admissions; he was compiling voluminous, detailed documentation of progress for that purpose. It turns out that Ryan was instructed not to share that documentation with the DOJ. This decision was made, according to some reporting that I do not attempt to verify here, ostensibly on advice of counsel (and possibly also on instruction from some BOV members) to wait until a more complete report could be assembled.
It mattered not that UVA had strong defenses to the DOJ’s allegations, particularly as a result of the Ryan administration’s work in identifying and ending race-based DEI programs at UVA. Ryan’s concern that not submitting an interim compliance report might be construed as evidence of UVA’s slow compliance – foot dragging - also turned out not to matter.
Rather than reporting on DEI compliance to the DOJ and the public, the BOV mounted no defense based on UVA’s progress. Ryan was, for whatever reason, neither allowed to submit his administration’s interim report documenting progress nor allowed by the BOV more publicly to defend his stewardship of UVA.
As disclosures related to Ryan’s forced resignation continue to emerge, it apparently did not register with, or matter to, the BOV’s members or leadership that the DOJ’s campaign, aimed at Ryan, was also more broadly an attack on UVA’s institutional academic freedom. Ryan’s resignation was to be one of the administration’s ideological, public relations trophies in its assault on academic freedom in higher education. Still, why, how, and by whom UVA, in negotiations with the Trump Administration, was persuaded to pay a price no other university paid – the resignation of a successful, admired president – are questions that remain to this day.
Partisan politics appears to have dominated this chain of events. Both Miyares and Virginia’s then-governor, Glenn Youngkin, are Republicans. The supposition is that they were complicit in the Trump Administration’s campaign to impose ideological restraints on UVA as an example of the harm the federal government could inflict on a prominent research university. The aim of that campaign was and apparently remains to alter what the Trump Administration perceives in universities as a liberal ideological balance hostile to Trump’s political goals. It is an attempt to impose the administration’s viewpoint discrimination, an undisguised attack on academic freedom.
We have no reports, and therefore know nothing, of conversations, if any, among members of the BOV about whether to support Ryan as UVA’s president during these fraught days or deny him support. We know nothing of conversations, if any, among politically sympathetic BOV members with Governor Youngkin or Attorney General Miyares about placing Ryan in an untenable dilemma.
We do however know that the BOV’s deafening silence spoke volumes.
It bears emphasizing that the BOV did nothing to protect Ryan. It did not ask Virginia’s then-attorney general, Jason Miyares, to defend Ryan. It did not ask Miyares to instruct UVA’s university counsel (under current law an assistant attorney general subject to Miyares’s direction and control) to mount a defense. It did not seek leave from Miyares to engage outside counsel for Ryan’s defense. In colloquial terms, it did not have Ryan’s back. The fact is that members of the BOV left Ryan defenseless. Ryan had no practical choice but to resign, explaining that he did so for UVA’s benefit under circumstances of high pressure, impenetrable ambiguity, no institutional defense, and the unavailability of UVA’s legal counsel to offer any legal assistance.
There is a parallel narrative that complements Governor Youngkin’s and Attorney General Miyares’s involvement in the events at UVA. It has been reported elsewhere in great detail, including in conflicting accounts in letters from former BOV member and, later, Rector (Chair of the Board), Rachel Sheridan and former President Ryan. It turns out that DOJ lawyers pursuing allegations against UVA invited select members of the BOV to a meeting at the Department in Washington, D.C. The meeting was, according to some reports, a negotiation between those BOV members and the DOJ lawyers. The negotiation reportedly centered on charges that UVA was not in compliance with requirements that race-based DEI programs needed to be terminated, and on the question (or demand, depending on the account) of whether then-President Ryan needed to resign.
President Ryan, in a November 14, 2025 letter to UVA’s faculty senators, states (at pages 4-5):
I offered to join that meeting but was told I was not invited. I offered at a later time to go meet with the DOJ lawyers but was told by Rachel and Porter [Wilkinson] that that would be supremely unpleasant and would likely lead to a bad outcome. All of which means that I never once spoke directly with the DOJ lawyers; everything was communicated through Rachel, Porter, and later another board member, Paul Manning.
BOV members who met in Washington at the DOJ were Rachel Sheridan, Porter Wilkinson, and Paul Manning. Both Rachel Sheridan and Porter Wilkinson are members of the bar. They were at the time, respectively, the Chair and Vice Chair of the BOV’s Audit, Compliance, and Risk Committee. Both were to become the Rector and Vice Rector (Virginia’s terminology for Chair and Vice Chair), respectively, of the BOV. But when the DOJ lawyers’ invitation to negotiate with regard to UVA was extended to them, they had not yet assumed those offices. What were the BOV’s rules – and explicit constraints – that applied to them regarding negotiating with the DOJ at that moment?
Answers to that question are found in UVA’s Board of Visitors Manual in addition to generally applicable legal notions of corporate authority. We turn to the Board Manual.
Section 3.1 of the Manual vests in the Executive Committee [composed of the Rector, Vice Rector, and no more than five other BOV members] –
“the powers and authority of the full Board and [the Executive Committee] shall take such action on all matters that may be referred to it as in its judgment is required. All such actions taken by the Executive Committee in the interim between meetings of the Board shall require a two-thirds vote of the whole number of committee members . . . . “
It is inescapable that the serving Rector and Vice Rector, as members of the Executive Committee, must be informed of significant matters coming before the Board. It would be futile to assert that meeting, much less negotiating with, lawyers at the DOJ in the circumstances at play were not matters requiring referral to the Executive Committee.
Section 3.2 on Standing Committees specifies that –
“No standing committee has power or authority to commit the Board to any policy or action unless specifically granted such power or authority by the Board.”
Thus, at the time of the DOJ negotiation, Ms. Sheridan’s and Ms. Wilkinson’s service on the Board and as Chair and Vice Chair of the Audit, Compliance, and Risk Committee conferred no authority for their making any commitment whatever in negotiations at the DOJ regarding UVA.
Section 4.1 specifies that the Rector is “especially charged” with, among other duties –
“maintenance of the independence of the Board from outside influences harmful to the interests of the students and faculty of the University.”
Section 4.12 specifies –
“Without diminishing the right of individual Visitors to publicly express their personal views, the Rector, unless otherwise determined by the Board or the Rector, shall act as spokesperson for the Board of Visitors.”
Thus, at the time of the DOJ negotiations (which took place before they became Rector and Vice Rector), Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson were not authorized to speak for the BOV; yet they did so in negotiating with the DOJ’s lawyers.
Section 4.22 specifies that the President –
“[is] the principal administrative officer of the University and
chief executive officer of the Academic Division . . . .”
And Section 5.3, titled “Communications to the Board,” states –
“All communications of an official nature directed to the Board of Visitors shall be channeled through the office of the President. All communications of an official nature from the Board of Visitors shall be similarly channeled, or copies thereof shall be furnished to the President.”
Whatever variation there may be in letters written by former president Ryan and by Ms. Wilkinson, or in press reports about Ms. Sheridan’s and Ms. Wilkinson’s (and Mr. Manning’s) negotiations at the Department of Justice, there can be no dispute that Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson at the time lacked authority to negotiate on behalf of the BOV or UVA itself, and knew or should have realized as a matter of professional responsibility that was the fact.
As members of the bar, they also knew or should have known that Robert Hardie, then UVA’s Rector, and Jim Ryan, then UVA’s President, were the people with authority to meet and negotiate with DOJ lawyers on behalf of UVA. What then should Ms. Wilkinson and Ms. Porter have done in response to the DOJ invitation? What was proper procedure?
One option was to accept the invitation, but only on condition that Rector Hardie and President Ryan also attend, even if their participation might result in a tense and unpleasant meeting. Another option was to decline the invitation on grounds that they lacked authority to negotiate on UVA’s or the BOV’s behalf. A third option would have been to convene an emergency meeting of the BOV, in person or by phone, in order to receive a grant of authority to negotiate with the DOJ on behalf of UVA.
It might also have been within the realm of general legal principles of corporate governance for Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson to agree to meet with the DOJ lawyers, but only on an informal basis, and not in a negotiation. It may be that, today, both Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson might assert that they expected an informal meeting, and not a negotiation, as the basis for accepting the invitation to meet in Washington.
As reports have surfaced, however, there is little doubt that the meeting at the DOJ was conducted as a negotiation. There is a conflict in reports about whether the DOJ’s lawyers demanded President Ryan’s resignation as an element of resolving the Department’s allegations against UVA. Mr. Ryan, in his November 14, 2025 letter to faculty senators, states (at page 10):
If the DOJ was sincerely threatening UVA if I did not resign, I think it’s important to recognize that that presented a difficult choice. 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. [DOJ attorney] 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.
Given the contradictory statements, someone is obviously not telling the truth, and it’s not clear to me what incentive Harmeet would have to be dishonest about this. It’s not as if the Trump administration has been shy about calling for resignations. Forcing university presidents to resign, moreover, has not been part of the playbook of the Trump administration; as far as I know, I am the only university president in the country who has been forced to resign as part of a supposed deal with the Trump administration. At the very least, we had Board members who were apparently more complicit than other universities.
It is undisputed that, at the time before the DOJ meeting, Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson did not inform then-Rector Robert Hardie of the DOJ’s lawyers’ invitation to meet. From the Cavalier Daily of November 18, 2025, here is an account of an email from now-past Rector Hardie:
The records [obtained via an FOIA request filed by state senator Creigh Deeds] also reveal tense discussions over text between Hardie and Sheridan in the time before and after Ryan’s resignation.
Hardie began the conversation in a text chain to Sheridan and Board Member Paul Manning June 24 — three days before Ryan resigned — saying he was “disappointed” in the pair for leaving him out of an alleged conversation with the Justice Department.
“Both of you will be vilified as well as the Board (I will no longer be on it so will have maximum power to oppose it). I will oppose it with all my might, which is significant,” Hardie wrote. “I am very disappointed that two of my closest friends decided to leave their friend the Rector out of such a conservation [sic]. Stand by your president. This is sickening to me. I am appalled.”
“Vilified.” “Sickening.” “Appalled.” We do no favor to shy away from, or minimize, the language that former Rector Hardie selected to condemn Ms. Sheridan, or his reason for doing so.
We know that Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson (accompanied by Mr. Manning) violated the explicit rules of the Board Manual, provisions they are presumed to have read and understood. In that context, how do we evaluate the BOV’s conduct in dealing with lawyers at the DOJ and their demands? Do we acknowledge partisan, viewpoint-based pressure from Governor Youngkin? What do press reports, conflicting or incomplete though they may be, tell us about standards of university corporate governance to which future UVA boards of visitors should adhere?
What are lessons for the future that the UVA community, the BOV in particular, and Virginia’s General Assembly should act on now?
Defining Corporate Governance Standards in the 21st Century
Faculty are hired, evaluated, and awarded tenure because of intellectual achievements judged over time by their peers. It is a subjective system, so acknowledged. Experience shows preserving it is essential to sustain academe’s capacity to teach and create knowledge for society’s benefit. In the search for knowledge and truth, a process and never a final destination, it is the core of academic freedom.
Understanding and fighting to protect the free flow of ideas as it ebbs and flows is thus essential to responsible university governance. It is a process that boards of trustees must preserve. And boards must recognize that the outcomes of that process cannot result from fiat imposed by trustees, elected officials, or other government operatives.
Government is entitled and obligated to set out curricular content in broad strokes for state universities and colleges. The Commonwealth of Virginia does that in statute. But this function must be performed without also imposing “viewpoint discrimination,” a term of art in Supreme Court precedent. It prevents government from favoring any set of views over others in what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes called “the marketplace of ideas” – an imperfect metaphor for the free flow of ideas, but one with enduring resonance.
In the U.S., academic freedom benefits from explicit protection under the Supreme Court’s First Amendment decisions. Guarding that protection is an enduring responsibility of university governing bodies. This first principle – appreciating, protecting, and promoting it – is at the forefront of higher education’s response to political pressure from the Trump administration or any future federal, state, or local administration.
At no place is this concern now more prominent than at the University of Virginia.
Previous essays in this Substack series explain Supreme Court cases that protect higher education’s processes seeking knowledge and truth. Today, those processes are buffeted by intense, sometimes violent social divisions.
What is different about these culture clashes from those pre-21st Century? The rise and pervasiveness of internet communications is prominent. The internet enables ideological adherents to find each other, form communities, and exchange and develop ideologies. Cultural groups organize in ways that did not exist before people had access to immediate and affordable, society-wide means of verbal, visual, and written interchange. The internet’s processes do not discriminate among sensible, nonsensical, accepted, radical, kind, or hateful messaging.
UVA’s 10th president begins his tenure when significant segments of the University community remain dismayed at, and distrustful of, how the Board of Visitors conducted its responsibilities these past months. Did the BOV put the highest priority on protecting academic freedom at UVA? Or did it allow partisan ideology exerted through political pressure to compromise the Board’s devotion to principles of academic freedom?
If the consensus is that the BOV failed to protect academic freedom, what remedies are possible?
In resignation letters prompted by incoming Governor Spanberger’s requests, but addressed to outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin, Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Porter listed the BOV’s accomplishments during their tenure.
Neither letter mentions Ms. Sheridan’s and Ms. Porter’s visit (along with BOV member Paul Manning) to negotiate with DOJ lawyers on behalf of UVA, even though they lacked authority to do so. Neither can cite BOV efforts to defend academic freedom at UVA from the Trump Administration’s ideological onslaught, particularly the demand (which the DOJ lawyers continue to assert they did not make) that then-President Ryan resign in order for the administration’s attack to abate. There is no attempt to deny speculation that partisan members of the BOV were in concert with Governor Youngkin, Attorney General Miyares, and members of the Trump Administration to force ideological changes on how UVA operates and on what is taught there.
Will Virginia’s General Assembly hold hearings to sort through these questions and ask Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Porter why they conducted their BOV tenure as the facts might suggest? Are hearings necessary to help chart corrections?
Hearings or no, the narrative of the BOV’s lack of defiance to the Trump Administration’s assault spotlights the need for explicit policies so no future BOV will fail to protect UVA’s academic freedom from political threats. How to proceed? Before considering policies a new BOV might adopt, and the possibility of state legislation on additional standards for university governance, we should consider the context of Governor Spanberger’s seeking and obtaining resignations from BOV members including Ms. Sheridan and Ms. Wilkinson.
Under the Virginia Code, the Governor has power to remove board members for reasons including “malfeasance, misfeasance, incompetence, or gross neglect of duty . . . .” and fill resulting vacancies. Moreover, “[t]he Governor is the sole judge of the sufficiency of the cause for removal.”
Governor Spanberger did not need to prepare “a written public statement” under this statute explaining her decision that certain members of the BOV should resign, because she did not need to remove them; they simply resigned at her request. Nevertheless, the history of Ms. Sheridan’s, Ms. Wilkinson’s, and Mr. Manning’s interactions with lawyers at the DOJ offers a possible, and some would say likely, justification under the statute for the Governor’s demanding and receiving their resignations.
The possible justification is this: President Ryan’s resignation was an integral element of UVA’s reaction to the Trump Administration’s approach to UVA – a symbol of the University’s acceding to political, ideological, viewpoint-based pressure on how it should operate and teach. The BOV took no steps at all to defend him, his record of compliance with the Students for Fair Admissions decision, or his conscientious stewardship of the University.
Governor Spanberger sought and received resignations of other BOV members besides Ms. Sheridan, Ms. Wilkinson, and Mr. Manning, even though there is no public record of those other members’ interacting directly with the DOJ’s lawyers. The narrative of events leading to President Ryan’s resignation is, however, that the BOV as a voting body did not act decisively or at all to protect academic freedom at UVA from the Trump Administration’s attack.
Quite the opposite. The BOV left President Ryan defenseless. Thus it would be fair for Governor Spanberger to conclude that BOV members left academic freedom and free speech at UVA open to continued political attack from the federal government. That conclusion would be ample justification under the statute for Governor Spanberger to require resignations of BOV members whom she deemed complicit in that failure.
Why was it not apparent to members of UVA’s governing board that academic freedom was under attack, and that their responsibilities as trustees demanded helping President Ryan to defend his tenure? In other words, why did not members of the BOV conceive their role as mounting a defense of President Ryan, especially considering his diligent efforts to abide by the BOV’s own resolution to eliminate race-based benefits from UVA’s DEI programs?
In the words of former Rector Robert Hardie’s angry and disappointed edict: “Stand by your president.”
The mission statement in the BOV’s Manual does not state explicitly that protection of academic freedom is a fiduciary duty of the Board. One might say that protecting academic freedom is implicit in the mission statement as it exists now. However, based on recent experience and on expectation that the Trump Administration’s campaign against higher education is continuing, there is strong and urgent reason to add preserving academic freedom as a specific fiduciary obligation of the board.
Why? To continue attracting the best faculty and students and so preserve the quality of education at their institutions; and to vindicate Constitutional protections under the First and Fourteenth Amendments for all who attend or work at Virginia’s public universities and colleges.
Amending UVA’s BOV mission statement will require consultation with the faculty senate and approval of the University’s revised, expanded mission statement by the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia. When the newly constituted Board assembles, starting the process should be an early step.
But stating this obligation explicitly in terms of a fiduciary duty, while desirable, is only a first step, because culture defeats process every time.
What must come next? Developing a cultural consensus, now and for future boards, that UVA’s corporate governing body has a primary fiduciary duty to protect academic freedom. That will require personal commitments among the Visitors. It will require vigilance, strength, and a willingness to work cooperatively with UVA administrators, faculty, student leaders, alumni, and leaders and faculties of other institutions of higher learning throughout Virginia [RDM1] and around the country in preserving the academy free from the vicissitudes of partisan ideologies.
In the meantime, there is hope that soon Virginia’s General Assembly will make explicit the duty of boards at Virginia’s state universities to safeguard academic freedom. From a current proposed bill before Virginia’s Senate (with a parallel bill before the House of Delegates):
The governing board of each public institution of higher education shall not:
1. Adopt any campus policies or make any decisions that would (i) have the primary effect of restricting or censoring expression on the basis of viewpoint or (ii) otherwise restrict or censor expression for the purpose of ideological correction or conformity or advancing or promoting any partisan objective; or
2. Restrict or censor any professor in his exercise of his rights of free speech or academic freedom pursuant to the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States and Article I, Section 12 of the Constitution of Virginia, including by taking or threatening to take any disciplinary action against any professor, including removal from his position at the institution, for exercising such rights.
There is legal nuance as to how boards of visitors should implement this duty, whether it is adopted by UVA’s Board or, in addition, prescribed in legislation. It arises from U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Cases (some analyzed in earlier essays in this series and cited below in notes) prohibit federal or state government actors from engaging in viewpoint discrimination. Members of boards of visitors, who are political appointees, are government actors.
Supreme Court precedent offers further guidance. Boards of visitors are empowered to make institutional policy, that is, decisions at a high level of corporate governance. BOV policies, however, do not and should not involve specific questions of academic substance. Those are the realm of faculty and academic administrators – non-political (but still state) actors who are empowered and expected to undertake the endless myriad of subject matter decisions required at any institution of higher learning.
We know this separation of responsibilities comports with U.S. Supreme Court precedent because of cases cited in earlier essays in this series (and below), and because of precedent (also cited below) permitting operation of state-owned public broadcasting television (PBS) stations and networks. Those broadcasting institutions are analogous to universities. Professional editors at state-owned broadcasting facilities are empowered to exercise editorial discretion only so long as their organization’s structure separates them from policy decisions by politically appointed administrators or boards of directors – and so long as there is no political interference in those editorial decisions or viewpoint discrimination based on political preferences.
Can this functional separation be abused? Yes. For example, university administrators might decide whether to enforce or refrain from enforcing time, place, and manner rules for protestors based on whether or not they approved of different protest groups’ viewpoints. Litigation based on the First Amendment and claiming state viewpoint discrimination would in each instance be fact-specific. Was there inconsistent application of rules for protests and, hence, political abuse?
As a general matter, however, faculty decisions intrinsic to teaching are subject matter choices not considered political; that is the line of protection under Supreme Court cases.
This separation of function between politically appointed boards of visitors and non-politically appointed university administrators and faculty preserves First Amendment freedoms. It works. It is the blueprint for governing Virginia’s public colleges and universities.
Notes:
University of Virginia Board of Visitors Manual: https://bov.virginia.edu/sites/g/files/jsddwu1171/files/2023-10/2023%20revisions%20with%20newest%20members%20and%20sgh%20markup%20-%20August%2014%2C%202023.pdf
Former UVA President Jim Ryan’s November 14, 2025 letter to Faculty Senators: https://assets.vpm.org/04/f9/6656671e4fed830f612c5902b196/jim-ryan-uva-faculty-senate-letter-2025-11-14.pdf
Rector Rachel Sheridan’s November 14, 2025 letter to the UVA Faculty: www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/files/2025-11/Rachel%20Sheridan%20letter.pdf
Virginia Public Media, Former UVA President Jim Ryan disputes rector’s account of his resignation, article of November 14, 2025: https://www.vpm.org/news/2025-11-14/uva-jim-ryan-rachel-sheridan-resignation-doj-dhillon-youngkin-miyares
Cavalier Daily article of November 18, 2025, quoting Rector Robert Hardie: https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2025/11/state-sen-creigh-deeds-received-his-foia-requests-from-uva-heres-what-we-learned
Cavalier Daily article of January 17, 2026, with letters to Governor Glenn Youngkin from Rachel Sheridan and Porter Wilkinson resigning from UVA’s Board of Visitors: https://www.cavalierdaily.com/article/2026/01/board-rector-and-vice-rector-resign-as-spanberger-assumes-office
Trump Administration “Compact for Excellence in Higher Education”
Washington Examiner, Trump Administration, Compact for Excellence in Higher Education, October 1, 2025: https://tinyurl.com/247ueosc
USA Today, Oct. 2, 2025, White House pushes colleges to commit to Trump agenda to boost access to federal funds: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/10/02/trump-college-compact-universities-federal-funds/86479417007/
New York Times, Oct. 20, 2025, All but 2 Universities Decline a Trump Offer of Preferential Funding: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/universities-funding-compact.html?unlocked_article_code=1.NVA._-qN.ENJcoEgMP0xb&smid=url-share
Code of Virginia, § 2.2-108. Removal of members of certain boards, commissions, etc.: https://law.lis.virginia.gov/vacode/title2.2/chapter1/section2.2-108/:
A. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the Governor may remove from office for malfeasance, misfeasance, incompetence, misconduct, neglect of duty, absenteeism, conflict of interests . . . .
B. The Governor shall set forth in a written public statement his [sic] reasons for removing any member pursuant to this section at the time the removal occurs. The Governor is the sole judge of the sufficiency of the cause for removal as set forth in this section.
20 U.S. Code Section 1232a – Prohibition against Federal Control of Educationhttps://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/1232a
No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.
Supreme Court precedent:
Sweezy v. New Hampshire, 354 U.S. 234 (1957) (Constitutional protection of academic freedom prevented state from questioning professor about content of his university lectures.) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/354/234/
Keyishian v. Board of Regents, 385 U.S. (1967) (Academic freedom is a transcendent value and special concern of the First Amendment, so precision of regulation is essential; faculty and non-faculty employees at state university therefore could not be required to sign loyalty oaths, deemed overbroad and too vague, as a condition of employment.) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/385/589/
Arkansas Educational Television Commission v. Forbes, 523 U.S. 666 (1978) (Editorial decision by executive director and professional staff of state-owned public broadcasting network to exclude candidate with little popular support from televised political debate was consistent with First Amendment where no political pressure or viewpoint discrimination was present.) https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/523/666/
Earlier essays in the Constitutional Imperatives series:
https://richardmarks66.substack.com/p/free-speech-antisemitism-pretext
https://richardmarks66.substack.com/p/undoing-irresolvable-conflicts-of
Richard D. Marks
Richard D. Marks is a member of the District of Columbia Bar. He graduated from the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Virginia in 1966 and from Yale Law School in 1969. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the alumni group, Wahoos4UVA.
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