WASHINGTON – The University of Virginia has decided to follow White House guidelines that prohibit discrimination in both admissions and hiring processes. This move adds the university to a growing list of institutions reaching agreements with the Trump administration, which is attempting to address ongoing scrutiny from the U.S. Justice Department.

The Justice Department made this announcement after initiating a review of the admissions and financial aid practices at the Charlottesville campus back in April. Officials had accused the university’s president of not terminating diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that President Donald Trump has deemed illegal.

This rising pressure led James Ryan to step down from his role as university president in June. Ryan expressed that the potential consequences for others at the university were too significant if he chose to “fight the federal government to retain his position.”

As part of the agreement, the university has committed to adhering to federal guidelines that ban racial discrimination in admissions and hiring. Additionally, the university has agreed to submit relevant data every quarter until 2028. The president is required to personally verify the university’s compliance with these guidelines each quarter.

The university has yet to issue a comment in response to this development.

Virginia’s settlement follows other agreements signed by Columbia and Brown universities to end federal investigations and restore access to federal funding. Columbia paid $200 million to the government, and Brown paid $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations.

Some of the Justice Department’s letters squarely took aim at Ryan, accusing him of engaging in “attempts to defy and evade federal anti-discrimination laws and the directives of your board.” Much of the federal scrutiny centered on complaints that Ryan was too slow to implement a March 7 resolution by the university’s governing board demanding the eradication of DEI on campus.

As a public university, the University of Virginia was an outlier in the Trump administration’s effort to reform higher education according to the president’s vision. Previously, the administration had devoted most of its scrutiny to elite private colleges, including Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, accused of tolerating antisemitism.

Since then, the White House has expanded its campaign to other public campuses, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and George Mason University.

The Charlottesville campus became a flashpoint this year after conservative critics accused it of simply renaming its DEI initiatives rather than ending them. The Justice Department expanded the scope of its review several times and announced a separate investigation into alleged antisemitism in May.

Among the most prominent critics was America First Legal, a conservative group created by Trump aide Stephen Miller. In a May letter to federal officials, the group said Virginia had only moved to “rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms.”

Similar accusations have embroiled George Mason University, where the governing board came to the defense of the president even as the Education Department cited allegations that he promoted diversity initiatives above credentials in hiring. On Aug. 1, the board unanimously voted to give President Gregory Washington a pay increase of 1.5%. The same day, the board approved a resolution forbidding DEI in favor of a “merit-based approach” in campus policies.

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