Warner says DOJ letter to University of Virginia president was ‘explicit’

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said in a Sunday interview that University of Virginia President James Ryan, who submitted his resignation on Friday, was given an “explicit” deadline to step aside, in a letter last week from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

In an interview on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” Warner condemned the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Ryan, who resigned on Friday to avoid funding cuts to the university.

Trump’s DOJ had been investigating allegations that the school was not in compliance with President Trump’s January executive order barring diversity, equity and inclusion practices at institutions that receive federal funding.

“This is the most outrageous action, I think, this crowd has taken on education. We have great public universities in Virginia. We have a very strong governance system, where we have an independent board of visitors appointed by the governor,” Warner said. “Jim Ryan had done a very good job; just completed a major capital campaign.”

“For him to be threatened, and, literally, there was indication that they received the letter that if he didn’t resign on a day last week, by five o’clock, all these cuts would take place,” Warner added.

“It was that explicit?” moderator Margaret Brennan asked.

“It was that explicit,” Warner said.

The New York Times reported Thursday night that the Justice Department demanded Ryan resign as a condition of a settlement in its civil rights investigation into diversity practices at the university.

Ryan posted a letter publicly on Friday confirming his resignation, saying he was “inclined to fight for what I believe in” but could not “make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job.”

“To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld,” Ryan said in the letter.