\n<\/p>\n
Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger has called on the University of Virginia to pause its presidential search until she takes office in January and appoints new members to the Board of Visitors.<\/p>\n
In a Wednesday letter to board leaders, Spanberger wrote that she was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d about recent developments at the state flagship, citing \u201cthe departure of President Jim Ryan as a result of federal overreach.\u201d Ryan stepped down amid federal investigations into diversity, equity and inclusion practices at UVA. The board later reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to pause those investigations.<\/p>\n
Spanberger argued that the government\u2019s interference \u201cwent unchallenged by the Board\u201d and has \u201cseverely undermined\u201d public confidence in its ability to \u201cgovern productively, transparently, and in the best interests of the University.\u201d <\/p>\n
Spanberger also pointed to recent votes of no confidence in the board by both the UVA Faculty Senate and the Student Council. Given those concerns and the hobbled state of the board, which is missing multiple members after state Democrats blocked Republican governor Glenn Youngkin\u2019s appointments, Spanberger called for a pause until her own picks are confirmed by the General Assembly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe benefits of selecting a new president with a full, duly-constituted Board are clear,\u201d the governor-elect wrote in her letter to board leaders. They include making the search process and decision credible and \u201cremoving any concern that the Board\u2019s actions are illegitimate due to a lack of authority,\u201d she wrote. <\/p>\n
So far, UVA has been noncommittal in its public response.<\/p>\n
\u201cUniversity leaders and the Board of Visitors are reviewing the letter and are ready to engage with the Governor-elect and to work alongside her and her team to advance the best interests of UVA and the Commonwealth,\u201d spokesperson Brian Coy wrote to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> by email.<\/p>\n Spanberger is the latest state Democrat to clash with the UVA Board of Visitors, which is stocked with GOP donors and political figures. While politics have long been at play on Virginia\u2019s boards, Youngkin\u2019s appointments have represented a dramatic rightward shift, prompting pushback as Democrats have blocked recent nominations.<\/p>\n (A legal battle over the state of those appointments is currently playing out; the Virginia Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case last month but has yet to issue a decision.)<\/p>\n Democrats have turned up the temperature on UVA in recent months, demanding answers about the agreement with DOJ and Ryan\u2019s resignation and accused the board of giving in to \u201cextortionate tactics.\u201d Now, following an election that saw Democrats take the governor\u2019s office and broaden their majority in the General Assembly, Spanberger will likely have political capital to reshape higher education at the state level as she sees fit\u2014barring intervention from the federal government.<\/p>\n Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia, is a UVA alumna.<\/p>\n The governor-elect\u2019s call to pause UVA\u2019s presidential search prompted immediate pushback from the Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group that has won influence with Youngkin, who appointed the group\u2019s co-founder Bert Ellis to the board before removing him for his combative behavior.<\/p>\n The organization argued in a statement that in 2022 a Democratic-appointed board \u201cquietly extended\u201d Ryan\u2019s contract through 2028\u2014even though it did not expire until 2025\u2014without \u201cGovernor Youngkin having an opportunity to appoint one Board member.\u201d They wrote that \u201cthe Board\u2019s action was clearly intended to ensure Ryan\u2019s tenure\u201d beyond Youngkin\u2019s term. (Governors in Virginia may not serve consecutive terms.)<\/p>\n The group also defended the search committee and process.<\/p>\n \u201cIn contrast, the current UVA presidential search committee, the most extensive and diverse in University history, was lawfully formed by the Board and has been operating since July 2025, working diligently through meetings and interviews. To suddenly ask the BOV to wait to choose a president is a bold act of political legerdemain representing a total historical double-standard,\u201d the Jefferson Council wrote.<\/p>\n However, faculty members have a different view of the search committee.<\/p>\n In an Aug. 10 letter, the UVA chapter of the American Association of University Professors accused the board of shortchanging faculty by limiting their seats on the presidential search committee. The group wrote that the committee \u201cis dominated by current and former members of the [Board of Visitors] and administrators,\u201d with faculty members composing less than a quarter of the committee. Additionally, they noted that none of those members \u201cwere selected by the faculty.\u201d<\/p>\n Spanberger\u2019s insistence that UVA pause its presidential search bears similarities to ways other governors have sought to influence leadership decisions before they took office, such as Jeff Landry in Louisiana. Shortly after his election in late 2023, the Republican governor called on the University of Louisiana system to hold off on hiring Rick Gallot, a former Democratic state lawmaker, as its next president.<\/p>\n Landry said he wanted to make sure their visions for the system aligned. Ultimately, despite the pause, Gallot was hired as system president after meeting with Landry before he took office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Virginia governor-elect Abigail Spanberger has called on the University of Virginia to pause its presidential search until she takes office in January and appoints new members to the Board of Visitors. In a Wednesday letter to board leaders, Spanberger wrote that she was \u201cdeeply concerned\u201d about recent developments at the state flagship, citing \u201cthe departure<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":33444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[680,3783,1059,2018,19151,3576],"class_list":{"0":"post-33443","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-calls","9":"tag-pause","10":"tag-president","11":"tag-search","12":"tag-spanberger","13":"tag-uva"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/33444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}