Paul Mahoney was not surprised by the public outcry over a deal he made with the justice department to no longer consider race or gender in admissions, but he told UVA’s faculty senate that it was the least damaging of the options he considered.'
“I completely understand the frustration that the government’s vast powers and its willingness to use them to the full extent of causes," he told the professors. "I also understand the instinct to simply declare that we will decide for ourselves what a federal civil rights law requires of us.”
But Mahoney argued UVA might spend several years arguing against the justice department while losing half a billion dollars in federal support for research.
“We would get our day in court or plausibly our year or two years, but during that period we would be without the federal funding.”
He said it was easy enough for critics to question his decision.
“You would not be the one who would have to go to post-docs and say, ‘You’re fired,’ to go to PhD students and say, you’re no longer getting stipends.’ To go to faculty members and say your lab is being closed and your position eliminated; to go to patients in clinical trials that might be their best hope at leading a healthy life and saying, ‘That trial has been terminated,'" Mahoney explained.
He then read from the agreement with the Department of Justice.
“Both parties affirm the importance of and their support for academic freedom. The United States does not aim to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula, and no provision of this agreement shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech.”
Mahoney said he would not walk away from the deal now that Democrats – who have been critical of the agreement, will occupy the governor’s mansion and have a majority in the General Assembly.
