The president of the University of Virginia announced his resignation Friday in the face of pressure from the Trump administration, which had opened an investigation into the practices of the establishment to promote diversity.
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This marks a new level in the attacks by Donald Trump against US higher education since his return to power.
In a statement, James Ryan, who has run the University of Virginia since 2018, said preferred to resign than “fighting the federal government”.
The Ministry of Justice, responsible for the investigation against its establishment, specifically demanded its departure according to the New York Times.
“If this did not concern me so personally, I might have chosen another way,” said Ryan, stressing that there are “very important principles at stake” in this case.
But trying to maintain himself at his post seemed to him “selfish and egocentric vis-à-vis hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, researchers who would lose their funding and hundreds of students who could lose their financial aid or see their refused visa,” he added.
In a statement, Democratic Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine denounced “an error that harms Virginia in the future”.
“It is scandalous that the officials of the Ministry of Justice of Trump demanded that the University … destined President Ryan,” they said.
Since his return to the White House in January, Donald Trump has been carrying out the charge against the universities he accuses of propagating a “woke” ideology, a term used in a pejorative manner by the conservatives to denounce what they perceive as an excess of militancy in favor in particular of minorities.
The Ministry of Justice has opened multiple surveys concerning admission or recruitment practices of establishments from all over the country.
The Trump administration is particularly aimed at prestigious establishments like Harvard, where it is trying to prohibit the admission of foreign students, and Columbia, to whom it threatens to withdraw its accreditation, which could deprive it of any federal funding.
