by James A. Bacon

The lead of this Virginian-Pilot article might be a tad inaccurate, but it hits close to the mark:

Virginia Democratic legislators said Thursday that they would not confirm a permanent replacement for former University of Virginia president Jim Ryan, who was ousted last month under pressure from the Trump administration.

I don’t think they actually said that. Technically, state legislators don’t have the authority to reject a university president; only the institution’s board of visitors does. But lawmakers do have the power to reject board members nominated by the governor. What Senate Dems did yesterday was threaten to use that power to block Governor Glenn Youngkin’s latest round of nominations with the ultimate goal of packing the UVA Board with Democratic appointees who will pick a president more to the lawmakers’ liking.

House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, put it this way: The UVA board “needs to listen very clearly They probably should put a freeze on any hiring, because we will not support whatever it is that they do. This is an illegitimate board right now that has been appointed and been told that they will not be appointed permanently.”

If you were offered the presidency of UVA, would you take the offer knowing that the legislature could boot you out in a year?

I’ve been following Virginia politics for almost 50 years. This may be the most audacious power play I’ve ever seen. While the status of one board member is in legal dispute, the assertion that “the board” as a whole is “illegitimate” is startling in its boldness.

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, spelled out the Dems’ threat succinctly: “[The board] should not make any steps towards picking a permanent president at UVA. Come next July 1 of 2026 with this new governor, there’s the potential to have nine new members on a 16-member board, which means there would be an entirely different majority on that Board of Visitors deciding things. They shouldn’t make decisions that are going to have long-term impact on that school right now.”

The lawmakers filed a lawsuit to block the nomination of eight university board members appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin, including former Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli at UVA. That case is being heard in Fairfax County Circuit Court today. Presumably, the judge will rule on the disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over whether a Senate committee can nix a nomination or whether it takes a vote of the full Senate to do so.

Yesterday, Scott and Surovell signaled that it didn’t matter what the judge rules. Come the 2026 General Assembly session, the Democrat-dominated legislator will cancel Cuccinelli’s nomination and four other nominees. Abigail Spanberger, whom they expect to become the next governor, will appoint the next four board members, giving Democrat-appointees a majority by July 1, 2026. Any president chosen by the current Youngkin-dominated board would have to factor into his or her thinking the strong possibility that he or she would be fired after less than a year in the position.

Democrats are furious about the Department of Justice’s aggressive approach to enforcing Title VI Civil Rights law banning racial preferences at UVA and George Mason University. Based on a New York Times article based on two anonymous sources, it is an article of faith that DOJ targeted Ryan personally for removal.

However, when asked if DOJ demanded Ryan’s resignation to settle its investigation, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said that, though she questioned his willingness to work with the Department, she had not made his departure a condition. An alternative to the Times‘ interpretation of events is that UVA’s Board of Visitors got tired of Ryan’s foot-dragging in executing its directive to eliminate DEI, which put UVA at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds.

Needless to say, Virginia Democrats will believe the New York Times‘ anonymous sources over any official in the Trump administration. And the fact is, they really don’t care how Ryan got fired. They made it clear that they see DEI as a good thing and they’re opposed to any effort to dismantle it anywhere in the state. As former Governor L. Douglas Wilder joined them to say, “Diversity, equity and inclusion are not threats. They are tools of fairness.”

The power play may well work. While Democrats have accused Republicans of “politicizing” higher-ed, we haven’t heard a peep out of the UVA Board of Visitors in defense of its prerogatives.