The Justice Department yesterday reached an agreement with the University of Virginia requiring it to uphold federal civil rights laws and eliminate any racial or sex discrimination. U.Va. also agreed to ban “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices to close five investigations into U.Va.’s admissions process, according to a Justice Department press release.
The College Fix notes that “under the agreement, the department will pause its investigations while UVA submits relevant information and data every quarter through 2028. The university’s president is required to “personally certify” that UVA is complying with the terms each quarter. If the school complies, the government will close its investigations at the end of 2028.”
“This notable agreement with the University of Virginia will protect students and faculty from unlawful discrimination, ensuring that equal opportunity and fairness are restored,” declared Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. “We appreciate the progress that the university has made in combatting antisemitism and racial bias, and other American universities should be on alert that the Justice Department will ensure that our federal civil rights laws are enforced for every American.”
In a public announcement, Interim President Paul Mahoney said the agreement preserves the school’s academic freedom. Mahoney also stated the school will conduct a “thorough review of” UVA’s “practices and policies” to ensure it’s abiding by the law.
“We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it,” he added.
In June, UVA President James Ryan resigned following pressure from the Justice Department. Ryan massively increased U.Va.’s bloated bureaucracy, especially divisions devoted to DEI.
In June, the Justice Department notified UVA it had opened several investigations of race-based campus policies. The Justice and Education Department concluded race-based practices were “widespread … throughout every component and facet of the institution.”
On October 17, UVA became the fifth school to reject the Trump administration’s Compact in exchange for funding benefits, as Mahoney explained in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon. The College Fix notes that under the Compact, the Trump administration “has offered universities preferential access to federal funding if they implement a series of reforms. These include instituting a five-year tuition freeze, prohibiting the consideration of race or sex in hiring and admissions, maintaining institutional neutrality on political issues, capping foreign student enrollment at 15 percent, and adopting the traditional definitions of male and female, among other measures.”
Some elements of the Compact, such as requiring political neutrality and nondisparagement of conservative ideas, are not found in existing federal legal requirements, statutes, or regulations. For example, the compact requires colleges to abolish departments that “purposefully punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.’” But what it means to “belittle” “conservative ideas” is vague and amorphous. “Further, upon determination of any violations, all monies advanced by the U.S. government during the year of any violation shall be returned to the U.S. government,” the Compact states. So violating the Compact may risk a clawback of federal funds from a university that joins the Compact, (even if it would have received those funds even without joining the Compact through other funding mechanisms).
“The integrity of science and other academic work requires merit-based assessment of research and scholarship,” Mahoney’s letter to McMahon says. “A contractual arrangement predicating assessment on anything other than merit will undermine the integrity of vital, sometimes lifesaving, research and further erode confidence in American higher education.”
