President Donald Trump's Department of Justice entered rare company on Thursday after The New York Times reported that officials are pressuring a university president to resign to resolve a federal inquiry.
The federal inquiry concerns whether the University of Virginia adequately dismantled its diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, programs. The Justice Department has reportedly offered to end the probe if University President James Ryan steps down, the Times reported. DOJ's top two civil rights lawyers, Harmeet Dillon and Gregory Brown, are reportedly involved in the negotiations.
Some Republicans have labeled Ryan as "too woke," the Times reported.
Legal experts say there have been few instances where the federal government asked a university administrator to resign to resolve a federal inquiry.
“This is a tactic you would expect the government to use when it’s playing hardball in a criminal case involving a corporation accused of serious wrongdoing or pervasive criminal activity,” said Daniel Richman, a former federal prosecutor, told the Times.
Ryan has been the university's president since 2018. Before that, he worked at Harvard Graduate School of Education and was celebrated for his commitments to DEI.
He has recently been targeted by America First Legal, a Trump-linked nonprofit founded by Stephen Miller, with a lawsuit for allegedly not complying with an executive order prohibiting public universities from having DEI programs. In a news release from May, the nonprofit accused Ryan of "rebranding" the university's programs "to evade legal scrutiny."