The drama unfolded largely under the radar and had an intramural angle. The investigation was led by two Justice Department officials: Harmeet Dhillon, the boss of the DoJ’s civil-enforcement division, who overlapped with Mr Ryan as a student at UVA’s law school; and Gregory Brown, another alumnus who sued UVA in 2023 and 2024 on behalf of students alleging mistreatment. Mr Trump stayed away; UVA was spared the Truth Social treatment.
The DoJ’s investigators worked with a UVA board that had been inching right in recent years. Mr Youngkin, elected in 2021, appointed 13 of its 17 members. UVA is hardly known as a bastion of radicalism but it was affected by the same charged years as everyone else. In 2020, after George Floyd’s murder, Mr Ryan promised to double down on diversity. Student tour guides emphasised Jefferson the slaveholder rather than Jefferson the founding father. Conservative faculty and students felt outnumbered and unwelcome. A group of alumni, calling themselves the Jefferson Council, criticised these developments.