by Scott Douglas Gerber

I received my Ph.D. and J.D. from the University of Virginia. I loved my time at UVA but I’m concerned the university has become an institution of indoctrination rather than education.

On April 29, UVA’s Board of Visitors resolved to strengthen efforts to ensure that the university is an inclusive and welcoming community where everyone can freely express their ideas. In March the board had pledged to dismantle UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion apparatus.

History matters at Thomas Jefferson’s university, and UVA’s recent history is disturbing: In 2020 UVA’s board endorsed radical DEI goals articulated by UVA’s Racial Equity Task Force. Among the goals were “doubling the number of underrepresented faculty at UVA by 2030,” “developing a plan and a time horizon for having a student population that better reflects the racial and socioeconomic demographics of the commonwealth of Virginia and, as much as feasible, of the nation,” “encouraging related organizations to develop a scholarship program for the descendants of enslaved laborers who worked to build and maintain the university,” and “developing a series of educational programs around racial equity and anti-racism, including leadership development programs focused on equity, including racial equity.”

President Jim Ryan and then-Provost Liz Magill — lawyers both — endorsed them. Ryan described the DEI task force’s report as “a call for us to be the very best version of ourselves and to live our stated commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion to become a better university.” Magill said that “embracing and pursuing these goals — but more importantly, achieving them — will improve the quality of the experience and the value of the
education provided at this university.”

Ryan continues as UVA’s president, and he is now charged by the board with dismantling the DEI practices he championed. Magill was hired in 2022 as president of the University of Pennsylvania; she was forced to resign in 2023 after she refused to acknowledge that calls for the genocide of Jewish people violate campus rules on harassment.

Why do college administrators and board members keep their jobs after endorsing discrimination? Frankly, it is absurd for the same people who insisted on radical DEI policies to be responsible for eliminating them. After all, Ryan also said in 2020 that the DEI task force’s report was “based on the belief that becoming a more diverse, equitable place is both the right and the smart thing to do, and a task that requires continued effort.”

More recently, Ryan was the only public university president to join hundreds of private ones in condemning, in an April 22 letter, what they contend is the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” that higher education is facing under the Trump administration.

The April 22 letter was penned a mere seven days before UVA officially pledged for the second time in a month to dismantle its DEI regime. The letter fails to mention that if it weren’t for President Donald Trump’s threats to deny federal funds to colleges that embrace DEI, UVA wouldn’t be claiming to have reversed course. I say “claiming” intentionally because, as the Trump administration’s Feb. 14 “Dear Colleague” letter made clear, universities frequently claim to abandon DEI practices but don’t actually do so.

UVA should actually do so. After all, Jefferson considered two of his three greatest accomplishments to have been founding the University of Virginia and authoring the Declaration of Independence. In the declaration, the essence of equality is that every person is treated as an individual rather than as a member of a racial, gender, ethnic or religious group.

As Martin Luther King, Jr., put it in the most famous speech about the declaration ever delivered, people should “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Next year marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. UVA should start honoring it today.

Scott Douglas Gerber of Hampton is a constitutional law professor and the author of “To Secure These Rights: The Declaration of Independence.” This column, originally published in the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, is republished here with Mr. Gerber’s permission.