Tag: lawmakers

Iowa Lawmakers Seek to End Student Vote on Board of Regents
The University of Iowa is one of three public institutions overseen by the board.
A voting student position on the Iowa Board of Regents would be eliminated under a new bill advanced by the Hawkeye State’s House higher education subcommittee, The Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

If passed and signed into law, the bill would replace the student regent with a ninth one appointed by the governor. In addition, seven new nonvoting member seats would be established: three for students, two for state senators and two for state representatives.

The proposed legislation also details several new policies and programs the board would be required to establish and would give members of the state’s General Assembly the ability to override board and university expenditures through a joint resolution.

The policies outlined align with the key higher education priorities for Republicans in the statehouse who hold a majority. They include:
- Establishing a post-tenure review process
- Developing approval standards for new academic programs
- Barring faculty senates from “exercising any governance authority over the institution”
- Conducting biennial reviews of all general education requirements and low-enrollment academic programs
- Creating an ombudsman office that will “investigate complaints of violations of state or federal law or board policy”
Iowa’s Board of Regents serves as a centralized governing body overseeing all three of the state’s four-year institutions—the University of Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Northern Iowa. Public community colleges are overseen by locally elected boards.
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January 23, 2026
Week in review: Federal lawmakers reject drastic cuts to scientific research
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Most clicked story of the week:

Senate lawmakers have rejected the Trump administration’s proposal to vastly reduce federal funding for scientific research. Instead the Senate advanced proposals last week that would provide $188.3 billion for scientific research — 21.3% more than the Trump administration proposed.

The Senate passed those bipartisan measures Thursday in a 82-15 vote, sending them to President Donald Trump’s desk. The House passed them in a 397-28 vote earlier in the month.

Number of the week: 5.9%

The decline in graduate international students enrolled in U.S. colleges in fall 2025 compared to the year before, according to final figures from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. However, enrollment ticked up 1% overall, thanks to a 1.2% increase in undergraduate students.

The latest on mergers, closures and financial distress:
- The California College of the Arts, a 120-year-old institution, announced that it will close at the end of the 2026-27 academic year and hand over its campus to Nashville-based Vanderbilt University. Despite a major fundraising push, CCA President David Howse said the arts college’s “tuition-driven business model is not sustainable.”
- Oregon’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission recently passed a report that in part advises all of Oregon’s public colleges to collaborate and craft plans for “targeted institutional integration.”. Those plans could range from two colleges sharing programs to fully merging, according to the report.
- Hampshire College, a private nonprofit in Massachusetts that narrowly avoided closing five years ago, is once again in potential financial trouble. According to its latest audit, the institution could shutter if it can’t refinance its debt.
‘A year of catastrophe’ for higher ed:

PEN America, a free expression group, found that 21 bills across 15 states were enacted in 2025 that censor higher education. “For higher education in America, 2025 was a year of catastrophe,” researchers wrote in a report summarizing the findings.

The researchers found the laws were a “result of a relentless, years-old campaign to exert ideological control over college and university campuses.” Although the conservative-led push began before President Donald Trump’s second term, researchers noted the campaign was “greatly exacerbated” by his administration.

Now, over 50% of college students are studying in states with at least one law on the books that censors higher education. “This is a staggering figure that should give us all pause,” they wrote.
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January 19, 2026
University of Arkansas rescinds dean offer after lawmakers object to legal advocacy in trans athletes Supreme Court case

Last week, Emily Suski, a law professor and associate dean at the University of South Carolina, was named the next dean of the University of Arkansas School of Law. But on Wednesday, her offer was rescinded after state legislators reportedly objected to her signing a “friend of the court” brief that made legal arguments in support of trans athletes.

The following statement can be attributed to FIRE Legal Director Will Creeley:

The University of Arkansas’ shameful capitulation to political pressure betrays its commitment to Professor Suski and threatens the rights of all who teach, study, and work there. The message to every dean, professor, and researcher is unmistakable: Your job hinges on whether politicians approve of your views.

Political interference in academic decisionmaking must be rejected. When universities make hiring decisions based on politics, left or right, academic freedom gets weaker and campuses grow quieter.

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January 15, 2026
State Lawmakers Enacted 21 Censorship Bills in 2025

Fourteen of last year’s 21 enacted bills contain gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship.

Last year was a record-setting one for education censorship; more than half of U.S college and university students now study in a state with at least one law or policy restricting what can be taught or how college campuses can operate, according to a new report from PEN America, a nonprofit that advocates for campus free speech and press freedom.

Last year, lawmakers in 32 states introduced a combined 93 bills that censor higher education. Of those, 21 bills were enacted across 15 states: Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Ohio, Texas, Utah, West Virginia and Wyoming.

“Censorship is, sadly, now an intractable reality on college and university campuses, with serious negative impacts for teaching, research, and student life,” Amy Reid, program director of Freedom to Learn at PEN America, said in a news release. “With threats of formal sanctions and political reprisals coming from both state and federal governments, campus leaders and faculty feel they have no choice but to comply, and are increasingly acting preemptively out of fear. Politicians are expanding a sweeping web of political and ideological control over higher education in American campuses, reshaping what can be taught, researched, and debated to fit their own agenda. That’s dangerous for free thought in a democracy.”

The report highlighted Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, a sweeping higher education bill that mandated institutional neutrality on “any controversial belief or policy,” established a post-tenure review policy, banned DEI initiatives and required institutions to demonstrate “intellectual diversity.” It also called out Indiana’s House Bill 1001, Ohio’s House Bill 96 and Texas’s Senate Bill 37, which all curb or eliminate faculty senates’ decision-making power.

Fourteen of last year’s 21 enacted bills contain gag orders, which PEN defines as direct censorship. Seven of those laws apply to higher education (the others apply only to K–12 education). In addition to the enacted laws, PEN documented five gag-order policies set by state or university system boards, including Texas Tech’s rules that effectively ban teaching on transgender topics and Texas A&M’s weaponized ban on teaching race or gender “ideology.”

Most of the proposed bills introduced last year contained some kind of indirect censorship, the PEN report states. It divides such bills into six categories: curricular control; tenure restrictions; institutional neutrality mandates; accreditation restrictions; diversity, equity and inclusion bans; and governance restrictions.

“Our research shows that legislators are more frequently adopting indirect means to achieve their end goal of censoring higher education, effectively expanding their web of control over the sector in numerous directions,” the report states. “Indirect censorship measures exploded in popularity, with state legislators introducing more than twice as many of them as they did educational gag orders (78 vs 33).”

In total, state lawmakers passed 20 out of 78 bills that contained indirect censorship—some of which also included gag orders. The 26 percent rate of passage is “remarkably strong,” the report states. Among the new laws are Indiana’s aforementioned HB 1001; Idaho’s Senate Bill 1198, which prohibits faculty from making “critical theory” courses a requirement for majors or minors; and Kansas’s Senate Bill 78, which allows institutions to sue their accreditor if punished for following state law—useful primarily because several of Kansas’s state laws violate accreditors’ academic freedom standards.

The PEN report also covers federal pressure to censor colleges and universities. In 2025, the Departments of Justice and Education launched more than 90 investigations into alleged Title VI violations. The Trump administration targeted $3.7 billion in research funding and Trump signed 19 executive orders related to education, including an order to end DEI initiatives at colleges and universities. Also last year, the administration suggested 38 universities should be suspended from federal research partnerships because of their hiring practices.

“The administration frequently justifies its actions in the name of protecting free expression, but the record shows its aim is to censor speech and exert control over the circulation of ideas,” Jonathan Friedman, the Sy Syms managing director of U.S. free expression programs at PEN, said in the news release. “The ‘viewpoint diversity’ they are pushing is not a value-neutral proposition about true debate or diversity of thought, or even free speech. It’s just a coded phrase being used to censor certain progressive ideas, while promoting conservative ones. The apparent aim is to turn colleges and universities into mouthpieces for the government. That’s not what our higher education institutions are supposed to be.”

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January 15, 2026
UVA Board Members Blast Lawmakers, Faculty in Texts

University of Virginia board members blasted state lawmakers as “extremist” and faculty members as “out of control” in a batch of text messages published by the Washington Post.

Richmond-based author Jeff Thomas sued the university to force the release of communications between board members and university officials from June 2023 through last month; then he released the 947 pages of messages to the newspaper.

In recent months, the Board of Visitors—stocked with GOP donors and other political figures—has defied state lawmakers, including Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger, over calls to pause a presidential search. That search concluded with an internal hire last month, though multiple critics have flagged process concerns and state lawmakers have also voiced displeasure.

The text messages show that board members reacted sharply last year when a Democrat-controlled board rejected multiple university board picks by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. The governor lost a subsequent legal fight to seat the picks and several boards remain hobbled.

In August text messages to Jim Donovan, one of the rejected picks, UVA Board Rector Rachel Sheridan, called the General Assembly’s refusal to approve Youngkin’s nominees “Very disappointing. Completely unprecedented and destructive.” Sheridan added: “I hope this backfires politically and reveals them to be the extremists they are.”

Sheridan did not apologize or backtrack after the texts were released. In a statement to the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed, she wrote: “I respect the General Assembly’s authority on these matters but share the frustration of those four individuals that were summarily rejected without the benefit of consideration of their merit and the value these individuals have given and could have continued to give to the university community.”

Her remarks highlight tensions between the board and the General Assembly, which have spiked since President Jim Ryan resigned under pressure in June and the university signed an agreement with the Department of Justice in October to close multiple investigations into alleged civil rights violations.

In other text messages, Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson expressed frustration with the UVA Faculty Senate, which has demanded answers about whether Ryan was pushed out by the board and the DOJ agreement.

When Board of Visitors Secretary Scott Ballenger texted Wilkinson in October that the Faculty Senate was debating a resolution to demand a meeting with Sheirdan and then-Interim President Paul Mahoney, Wilkinson responded “That is insane.” When he told her the Faculty Senate was weighing a resolution of no-confidence in Mahoney, she wrote: “So embarrassing. For them.” Wilkinson added in response to another text from Ballenger: “This is out of control.”

The published text messages also expose the board’s dramatic behavior behind the scenes. In a text to Sheridan, former Rector Robert Hardie, a Democratic appointee who has since rotated off the board, made vague references to an “unhinged” board member threatening the university administration.

Hardie called board members Stephen P. Long and “BE” (presumably Bert Ellis) “assholes.” (Ellis was removed by Youngkin in late March for his combative style on the board.) Hardie referred to board members BE, Long, Douglas Wetmore and Paul Harris as “four horses asses.” Hardie also complained about a member that he did not name trying to stir controversy and a “food fight.”

The full batch of text messages can be read here.

The release of the texts—spurred by legal action—comes as UVA has been slow to release information in response to public records requests, prompting criticism from a local lawmaker and others. Citing “a significant backlog,” UVA has not yet fulfilled a public records request regarding communications with federal officials sent by Inside Higher Ed in October.

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January 9, 2026
Lawmakers say advanced nursing should count as a ‘professional degree’
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Dive Brief:
- A bipartisan group of lawmakers is advocating for the U.S. Department of Education to classify graduate nursing degrees as “professional degrees” in response to potential regulatory language that would place a lower limit on how much advanced nursing students could borrow.
- Under a proposed framework, advanced nursing programs would be classified as “graduate degrees” rather than “professional degrees,” which would cap student loans for new nursing borrowers at $100,000 total, rather than the higher limit of $200,000 that will be in place for professional programs.
- In a letter sent to Education Under Secretary Nicholas Kent on Friday, lawmakers said the framework could exacerbate an existing worker shortage in the industry. “At a time when our nation is facing a health care shortage, especially in primary care, now is not the time to cut off the student pipeline to these programs,” the letter said.
Dive Insight:

This summer, Republicans passed a massive spending package that will cap graduate student loans to $100,000 for most programs but $200,000 for professional degrees. The Education Department recently brought higher education stakeholders for a process known as negotiated rulemaking to determine which programs would qualify as professional degrees, and they reached consensus on regulatory language that would exclude nursing.

The letter, signed by over 100 lawmakers and led by Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., and Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and Reps. Jen Kiggans, R-Va., and Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., argues the proposed changes would undermine the “largest health care workforce in the United States.”

Under the changes, students would receive higher borrowing limits — $50,000 annually — for pursuing degrees like Doctors of Pharmacy, Dentistry, Medicine and Clinical Psychology that are deemed professional.

Students pursuing other advanced nursing degrees like Masters of Science in Nursing, Doctors of Nursing Practice and Doctors of Philosophy in Nursing would be subject to lower aid borrowing limits of $20,500 annually or $100,000 in total.

The Education Department argued the reforms — which also include eliminating other federal aid programs and sunsetting some student loan repayment plans — place “commonsense limits and guardrails” on student loan borrowing and simplify repayments.

However, lawmakers say the lower aid caps will force new students to take out additional student loans and make it more difficult for nurses to join the healthcare workforce, which is already suffering from shortages exacerbated by burnout during the coronavirus pandemic.

For example, the loan caps wouldn’t meet most Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetist programs, which can cost over $200,000.

“CRNA programs have shown to be a critical return on investment, with default rates near zero percent, and a workforce that overwhelmingly provides anesthesia to rural and underserved communities where higher cost physicians do not practice,” the letter says.

Jeopardizing advanced nursing degrees could also impact primary care, according to the letter. Over half of Medicare beneficiaries received primary care from a nurse practitioner or physician associate, according to research cited by the lawmakers. In rural communities, over 60% of Medicare patients receive those services from a nurse practitioner or physician associate.

“Nurses and nurse faculty make up the backbone of our health system,” the lawmakers said. “As such, post-baccalaureate nursing degrees should be treated equally to other accredited post-baccalaureate health profession degrees.”

Editor’s note: Natalie Schwartz contributed to this article.
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December 18, 2025
‘Let them sue’: Iowa lawmakers scoffed at First Amendment in wake of Charlie Kirk shooting, records show

The months since Charlie Kirk’s murder on Utah Valley University’s campus in September have seen a deluge of firings and suspensions of teachers, faculty, and staff across the country for celebrating the assassination, or just for being insufficiently mournful. As the dust settles and court cases proceed, more details are emerging about the political pressures universities faced to punish protected political expression.

In Iowa, lawmakers were so incensed by one Iowa State University staff member’s speech about the shooting that they outright dismissed the possibility of a lawsuit. Public records obtained by FIRE through a Freedom of Information Act request show state lawmakers exchanging messages inviting the possibility of First Amendment lawsuits for the sake of punishing speech they found offensive. “It’s worth the risk of lawsuits,” one lawmaker texted.

In other words, censorship is worth lawsuits. Iowa taxpayers: that’s your free speech rights — and your money — they’re putting at risk.

On Sept. 23, less than two weeks after the shooting, Iowa State University fired Caitlyn Spencer, a financial aid advisor at the university. Spencer had posted that she believed Kirk “got what was coming” to him and wrote that she was “happy he’s rotting in hell now.” The prominent X account Libs of TikTok picked up Spencer’s post, prompting social media outrage.

That outrage did not stay confined to the internet. Behind the scenes, Iowa lawmakers urged university officials to take action. The records obtained by FIRE show text messages from state lawmakers to Board of Regents State Relations Officer Jillian Carlson. State Rep. Carter Nordman sent Carlson a screenshot of Spencer’s post, asking, “Will she be put on leave today?” Rep. Taylor Collins added that Spencer “better be” put on leave.

After Carlson responded that the university was investigating all complaints they were receiving about social media activity, Collins responded, “There’s no way this is allowed under the Univeristy [sic] code of conduct.” He added: “It is worth the risk of lawsuits.”

Nordman then expressed frustration at a potential lawsuit, writing, “I am so sick of us scurrying around a law suit. Let them sue.” He added that he and two other individuals were “just fine with [Carlson] telling [ISU] President Wintersteen that’s coming from the House Higher Ed & Budget Chairman’s [sic].”

It’s bad enough that lawmakers publicly called for punishment of faculty and staff for their speech about Kirk, including Collins, who was both publicly pushing punishments and sending messages behind the scenes. But Nordman’s mention of the Iowa House Higher Education Committee invoked the power of the committee that controls the funding ISU receives, unsubtly implying that lawmakers were ready to cut budgets if administrators did not comply with their demands to punish speech. And given their talk about lawsuits, it’s clear that they had doubts about whether punishing the speech would violate the First Amendment.

FIRE has seen this sort of attitude before. For example, when FIRE was poised to file a lawsuit against Kirkwood Community College in 2020 after it moved to terminate a professor for describing himself as “Antifa,” Kirkwood president Lori Sundberg told a media outlet there was “no evidence” the professor had espoused his controversial views in the classroom. The president remarked, “at the end of the day for me, if I’m found legally wrong on this, I can live with that.”

The college eventually settled with the professor for $25,000. Similarly, in 2013, a federal jury held the former president of a public college in Georgia personally liable for violating the rights of a student who protested against the building of two parking garages on campus. There, the student and the university reached a $900,000 settlement after a lengthy court battle, as the court ruled that the president had ignored the student’s “clearly established constitutional right to notice and a hearing before being removed from VSU.”

Those fired over protected comments about Kirk’s assassination could be looking at similar payouts, courtesy of the tax- and tuition-payers of Iowa.

While Kirk’s murder has divided Americans across the board, one thing should unite them all: Iowans — and Americans more broadly — shouldn’t be on the hook for public officials’ decisions to ignore the First Amendment.

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December 17, 2025
Virginia lawmakers call for audit of UVA’s Justice Department deal
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Dive Brief:
- Two Democratic leaders in the Virginia Legislature are questioning the legality of the University of Virginia’s recent deal with the U.S. Department of Justice and calling for an independent review of its constitutionality.
- In an eight-page letter this week, state Sens. Scott Surovell and L. Louise Lucas said the agreement “directly conflicts with state law, commits the University to eliminate legislatively mandated programs, subjects the University President to personal certification requirements and potentially places UVA in violation of its statutory obligations.”
- The pair requested UVA Interim President Paul Mahoney and Rachel Sheridan, the head of UVA’s board, to formally respond by Nov. 7. UVA did not immediately respond to questions Thursday.
Dive Insight:

On Oct. 22, Mahoney signed a four-page agreement with the DOJ to eventually close five investigations into UVA. In exchange, the public university agreed to adhere to the DOJ’s sweeping July guidance against diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and provide the agency with quarterly compliance reports.

In their letter, Surovell and Lucas lambasted Mahoney and Sheridan for “a fundamental breach of the governance relationship” between the university and the state.

“This agreement was disturbingly executed with zero consultation with the General Assembly, despite the fact that the General Assembly controls the University and provides the bulk of its government funding,” they said, arguing the lack of legislative involvement could violate state statute.

When announcing the deal, UVA said Mahoney struck the deal with input from the university’s governing board, whose members were “kept apprised of the negotiations and briefed on the final terms before signature.” Since the agreement doesn’t include a financial penalty, it did not require a formal vote from the board, the university said in an FAQ.

Along with the board, Mahoney has said he struck the deal with input from the university’s leadership and internal and external legal counsel.

Surovell and Lucas questioned if Jason Miyares, Virginia’s Republican Attorney General and an ally of President Donald Trump, had counseled the university about the deal.

Miyares — who fired UVA’s longtime legal counsel upon taking office in 2022 — is up for reelection in November with Trump’s endorsement, a backing Lucas and Surovell cast as an “inherent conflict of interest.”

It is unclear, they said, if Virginia’s top lawyer is “competent and capable of providing truly independent legal advice to Virginia’s public universities in this area of the law.”

Virginia public colleges “need legal counsel who will zealously defend state sovereignty and institutional autonomy — not counsel whose political fortunes are tied to the very administration applying the pressure,” they said.

The two lawmakers, along with Democratic state Sen. Mamie Locke, previously threatened UVA’s state funding if the university agreed to the Trump administration’s separate higher education compact, which offered preferential access to grant funding in exchange for unprecedented federal oversight. UVA turned it down five days before announcing its deal with the DOJ.

Lucas and Surovell aren’t the only Virginia legislators to question the integrity of the UVA-DOJ deal. State Del. Katrina Callsen and Sen. R. Creigh Deeds, Democrats who represent UVA’s district, condemned it as subjecting the university “to unprecedented federal control.”

In an Oct. 23 letter, the pair told Mahoney and the board that their approval of the agreement calls “into grave question your ability to adequately protect the interests and resources entrusted to you by the Virginia General Assembly.”

“Your actions fail to leave the University free and unafraid to combat that which is untrue or in error,” they said. “By agreeing to these terms, UVA risks betraying the very principles you espouse in your letter: academic freedom, ideological diversity, and free expression.”

Callsen and Deeds called on UVA leadership to reverse the deal and “reject further federal interference.”

When asked on Thursday if Mahoney or the board had responded, Deed’s office referred to a story published by The Cavalier Daily, the university’s independent student newspaper.

In a letter shared with The Daily, Mahoney and Sheridan said that they “respectfully disagree” with Deeds and Callsen’s assessment, adding that the deal is the “culmination of months of engagement” with the DOJ and other federal agencies over multiple civil rights investigations.

They also said the institution’s deal with the federal government differs significantly from the “lengthy lists of specific obligations” agreed to by Columbia and Brown universities.

“Our agreement is different — if the United States believes we are not in compliance, its only remedy is to terminate the agreement,” they said.
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October 30, 2025
Virginia lawmakers threaten state funding consequences if UVA signs Trump compact
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Dive Brief:
- Three leading Virginia state senators this week urged University of Virginia’s top officials to immediately reject the Trump administration’s proposed higher education compact and threatened the institution’s state funding if they signed on.
- In an Oct. 7 letter to UVA leaders, Democratic state Sens. Scott Surovell, L. Louise Lucas and Mamie Locke called the federal government’s conditions “an unprecedented federal intrusion into institutional autonomy and academic freedom.”
- Agreeing to those terms would invite further federal interference at the university, the trio said, citing the Trump administration’s recent ouster of UVA’s president. If UVA agrees to the compact, they warned, the institution will face “significant consequences in future Virginia budget cycles.”
Dive Insight:

The Trump administration’s compact would offer UVA, along with eight other research universities, preferential access to federal research funding if they agree to its wide-ranging and unprecedented conditions.

Some of those terms are straightforward, such as a five-year tuition freeze, a standardized testing requirement for admissions and a 15% cap on international students’ share of undergraduate enrollment.

Others are less clear cut, including required public audits of the viewpoints of employees and students, institutional neutrality on most political and social events, and a commitment to changing — or ending — institutional units that purposefully “punish” or “belittle” conservative ideas.

All of the proposed conditions of the agreement “are fundamentally incompatible with the mission and values of a premier public research university,” the lawmakers told UVA Interim President Paul Mahoney and Rachel Sheridan, head of the institution’s governing board.

For instance, the state senators raised alarms about one element of the compact that would bar signatories with large endowments from charging tuition for students enrolled in “hard science programs.”

That would force students in humanities and social sciences “to subsidize” those enrolled in STEM programs, representing “a bizarre federal intrusion into institutional financial planning that devalues essential fields of study,” they wrote.

“This is not a partnership,” the lawmakers said. “It is, as other university leaders have aptly described, political extortion.”

Surovell, Lucas and Locke wield significant legislative power as the state Senate majority leader, president pro tempore and chair of the Senate Democratic Caucus, respectively. They underlined this influence in their letter, vowing “to ensure that the Commonwealth does not subsidize an institution that has ceded its independence to federal political control.”

The three senators pointed specifically to the forced departure of former UVA President Jim Ryan, who abruptly resigned in June amid federal pressure to step down over the university’s diversity efforts during his seven-year tenure.

In his announcement, Ryan said he wouldn’t fight back against the Trump administration and attempt to keep his job because staying would cost UVA research funding and student aid and hurt its international students.

Federal officials ousted Ryan, the state senators said, “not for any failure of leadership, but because they disagreed with the University’s approach to diversity and inclusion.” They categorized Ryan as a successful leader who was made into a political sacrifice — one that didn’t stave off further interference.

“President Ryan’s resignation was meant to spare the University from federal retaliation, yet here we are again, facing even more aggressive demands on institutional autonomy,” they told UVA leaders. “The lesson is unmistakable — appeasing this Administration only emboldens further encroachment.”

UVA faculty similarly called for institutional leaders to rebuke the compact. In a 60-2 vote, the university’s faculty senate approved a resolution on Oct. 3 whose preamble called the proposal dangerous to UVA and a likely violation of state and federal law.

The Trump administration gave the nine universities until Oct. 20 to offer feedback on the compact and until Nov. 21 to sign the agreement.
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October 10, 2025
Democratic Lawmakers Amplify Pressure on UVA

Months after Jim Ryan stepped down as University of Virginia president, state Sen. Creigh Deeds is still waiting for answers on whether political interference and external pressure played a role.

Ryan resigned in late June, citing pressure from the federal government amid Department of Justice investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives at the public university. Although the Board of Visitors voted to shutter its DEI office in March, conservative critics accused UVA of failing to dismantle such efforts. The DOJ subsequently launched seven investigations, two of which have been closed. The status of the other five remains unclear.

Deeds, a Democrat who represents Charlottesville and the surrounding area, has been seeking answers since Aug. 1 through a series of letters sent to the Board of Visitors and a far-reaching Freedom of Information Act request. But so far, university lawyers have largely refused to answer the state lawmaker’s questions, citing ongoing investigations. Faculty members have also said they can’t get straight answers from the university or face time with the board.

And complaints over an alleged lack of transparency at UVA are piling up as state lawmakers are applying additional pressure over how the university will respond to an invitation to sign on to the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that the Trump administration sent to UVA and eight other universities last week.

Trading Letters

In office since 2001, Deeds has a long relationship with the university. But for the first time in 20-plus years, the senator said, he’s being shut out by a Board of Visitors that refuses to talk to him.

“We’re just trying to get to the bottom of what role the federal government, the Justice Department, the president’s office, the governor, the [state] attorney general played in the decision that Jim Ryan made to resign,” Deeds told Inside Higher Ed in an interview.

Deeds has sent several inquiries to UVA since Ryan resigned. The first letter included 46 questions related to Ryan’s resignation, the DOJ investigations and whether the UVA Board of Visitors “operated within the bounds of its legal and ethical responsibilities.”

But so far, Deeds says, he’s been given “partial answers” and “gobbledygook.”

In a series of letters to Deeds from two law firms (Debevoise & Plimpton and McGuireWoods), the outside legal counsel offered little insights into Ryan’s resignation, arguing in an Aug. 15 response that UVA is “is currently focused on navigating an unprecedented set of challenges,” which includes the ongoing DOJ investigations.

Some information included in the responses is already in the public sphere, such as how the board voted to shutter DEI initiatives, and details on the presidential search committee, which Deeds had also asked about. UVA also included letters sent by the DOJ to the university when it closed two investigations; while the DOJ referenced “appropriate remedial action” by the university, it did not offer specifics. But the focus across several letters sent to Deeds by university lawyers was mostly on why UVA can’t respond.

“Counsel handling the discussions with the Department of Justice has indicated that providing a substantive response to the August 1 letter while negotiations are ongoing would be inconsistent with the need for confidentiality. Counsel has therefore requested that the Board refrain from doing so until a resolution with the Department of Justice is finalized,” wrote David A. O’Neil, an attorney with Debevoise & Plimpton.

UVA lawyers also repeatedly took issue with Deeds’s characterization of the events surrounding Ryan’s resignation.

In an Aug. 29 response, O’Neil wrote that the board “would like to correct a number of inaccurate premises and assumptions in your letter” but was “duty-bound to place the University’s interests above all else” and honor its “fiduciary obligation to the University.” However, UVA legal counsel did not specify what, if anything, was inaccurate.

O’Neil also asked the senator not to “draw conclusions or promote unfounded speculation.”

Deeds responded in a Sept. 4 letter that he was “surprised and concerned” that the Board of Visitors “felt the need to secure outside counsel to respond to a legislative request.” He added that he was equally troubled by the failure to fully answer any questions.

Frustrated by UVA’s response, Deeds filed a FOIA request Sept. 18, seeking a trove of documents related to Ryan’s resignation and the DOJ investigations. UVA has not yet fulfilled the FOIA request but did send Deeds a $4,500 bill to process the information, which he plans to pay.

Deeds then followed up in a Sept. 29 letter, pressing the university on what it agreed to in exchange for the DOJ closing two investigations and for more details on where the other five currently stand.

To date, Deeds is still seeking answers.

UVA spokesperson Brian Coy told Inside Higher Ed by email that the university has offered “as much information as possible at the time” in its multiple responses to Deeds. However, he said, the university is constrained by “active discussions with the Department of Justice regarding several investigations, and publicly disclosing information that relates to those investigations could hamper our ability to resolve them in a way that protects the institution from legal or financial harm.” He added that UVA is processing Deeds’s FOIA request in accordance with state law.

Coy did not address several specific questions sent by Inside Higher Ed asking about potential political interference, remedial action for closed investigations or the status of the active DOJ investigations.

Mounting Pressure

Deeds isn’t the only one struggling to get answers from UVA’s Board of Visitors.

Jeri Seidman, UVA Faculty Senate chair, said the board has declined to answer faculty questions about Ryan’s resignation and DOJ investigations. She added that the board has been less responsive since the Faculty Senate voted no confidence in the Board of Visitors in July.

“We have not had interactions with the rector or the vice rector since July 11,” Seidman said, adding that the board had declined an invitation to address the Faculty Senate last month.

Seidman credited UVA interim president Paul Mahoney with being accessible, though, she noted, he and other leaders have also declined to answer faculty questions due to DOJ investigations.

“We appreciate his willingness to come and answer questions. Those questions are never gentle. But it’s disappointing that the rector has not acknowledged any [faculty] resolutions or requests for information, even if the response were simply to say that now is not the right time,” Seidman said.

Recent Faculty Senate resolutions include demands for an explanation on Ryan’s resignation, the no-confidence vote and calls for UVA leadership and the board to reject the proposed “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education.” The compact would require changes in admissions and hiring and a commitment to institutional neutrality, while simultaneously suppressing criticism of conservatives, among other demands. In exchange, the administration says signatories would receive preferential treatment from the federal government on research funding, though the document also threatens the institution’s funding if it doesn’t sign or comply.

Virginia Democrats have also opposed the compact and threatened to restrict funding to the university if it signs on. That threat comes as lawmakers are ratcheting up pressure on UVA and waging a legal battle to block Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s board appointments.

The letter, sent Tuesday by Senate majority leader Scott Surovell, expressed “grave concern” over the compact and referenced Ryan’s resignation, which, he wrote, was “forced” by the DOJ via alleged “extortionate tactics—threatening hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding and the livelihoods of employees, researchers, and students unless he stepped down.”

Surovell warned that “the General Assembly will not stand by while the University surrenders its independence through this compact” and that there would be “significant consequences in future Virginia budget cycles” for UVA should the Board of Visitors agree to the arrangement.

Surovell’s warning shot comes amid a broader dispute over who can serve on Virginia boards. While a Senate committee has blocked a recent slate of gubernatorial appointments, including at UVA, Youngkin has insisted that members can still serve until they are rejected by the full Legislature. A related legal case will be heard by the Virginia Supreme Court later this month.

Board leadership and Mahoney replied to Surovell’s letter Wednesday with a noncommittal reply shared with Inside Higher Ed that did not indicate whether the university intended to sign on to the proposed compact or not. They wrote in part that UVA’s “response will be guided by the same principles of academic freedom and free inquiry that Thomas Jefferson placed at the center of the University’s mission more than 200 years ago, and to which the University has remained faithful ever since.”

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October 10, 2025