LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The president of the University of Virginia has resigned under political pressure from the administration. James Ryan stepped aside on Friday amid a Justice Department investigation over UVA's response to President Trump's order to end diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Ryan wrote that if he stayed to fight, employees would lose their jobs, researchers would lose funding and students would lose financial aid or lose their visas. The New York Times reported the Justice Department was demanding Ryan leave to help end the investigation. So what precedent does this set?
To understand that, we're joined by Brendan Cantwell. He's a professor of higher education who researches and teaches about the intersection of politics and higher education at Michigan State University. Good morning, and thank you for being on the program.
BRENDAN CANTWELL: Good morning. Thanks for having me.
FADEL: Brendan, what does it mean to you that a public university president is resigning under pressure like this?
CANTWELL: This is an unprecedented development. It means that the administration has decided that it has the right to interfere with the administration of universities around the country - that it can circumvent the standard governance procedures that states have established to hold their universities accountable, and to make sure that they're complying with the law and serving the state, in order to achieve its political goals.
FADEL: Now, Ryan said he wanted to stay and fight but couldn't make, quote, "a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job." I mean, did Ryan capitulate, or is he actually going to spare colleagues and help the university by stepping aside?
CANTWELL: Well, that's hard to know. I think what it suggests is that he did not have strong support inside the Board of Visitors. So the Board of Visitors is the governing board at the University of Virginia. And a majority of the board members have been appointed by the governor, Glenn Youngkin, who is an ally of President Trump. I think that what Ryan did was step aside in order to hopefully take some heat off the university, to avoid steps where the federal government would withhold research grants, would withhold the opportunity to - for the university to issue visas for international students and could take other actions against the university.
It's not clear that the administration has the authority to do that, and it's not clear that those steps would ultimately prevail in court, for example. But they would certainly be extremely disruptive for the university while that conflict was unfolding. And it really seems like the - you know, the Board of Visitors decided, you know what? We - we're not going to support the president. We're going to encourage him to step aside. And we don't want to fight this, because we're allied with the president.
FADEL: So what does this mean for other public higher education institutions? I mean, what do you think leadership will take away from what's happened at UVA? And is what happened in Virginia with this board very unique, or is it something that may happen in other states?
CANTWELL: Good question. I think it tells other university leaders that they are on notice - that if the Department of Justice decides that they want to investigate, that they want to demand the ouster of a president, that the department and the administration can put a great deal of pressure on that leader to step aside, can put pressure on the university board. And so there's a climate of fear in higher education right now.
I don't think it's any surprise that the University of Virginia was the first campus selected to face this pressure to have its president removed by the Trump administration. The University of Virginia is an important university in U.S. higher education. It's a very prominent public research university. And it's also the site of the 2017 Unite the Right rally, which was a defining moment in President Trump's first term. The University of Virginia also has a board that is stacked in a way that has strong support for the president of the United States. And so by applying pressure to UVA, the administration can establish a precedent that it has the authority and the capability of removing a university president that it doesn't like, and could move on to potentially more difficult cases where the administration will encounter more pushback - such as the University of California, for example.
FADEL: That's Brendan Cantwell, a professor of higher education at Michigan State University. Thank you, Brendan.
CANTWELL: Thank you very much. Bye-bye. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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