As chair-elect of the faculty senate, Jeri Seidman thought the university had done well in navigating Trump administration demands.
“We had lots of protests this year that were all peaceful, and there was lots of viewpoint diversity in our protests,” she explains.
And the faculty had urged UVA President Jim Ryan to join others in signing a letter that pushed back against political intrusion in university affairs.
“We were very proud that President Ryan had endorsed that letter," Seidman recalls.
But on Tuesday someone leaked a letter from the Department of Justice to Ryan, the school’s rector and lawyer claiming it had received complaints that the school had failed to dismantle DEI. By May 2nd, it demanded that the school do so and share video from one of the board’s closed session.
On Tuesday the board passed a resolution admitting “additional work remains to be done” and resolving to ditch a 2020 resolution entitled Board of Visitors Support for Racial Equity Initiatives that proposed numerical goals for students and faculty.
