(LifeSiteNews) – The Trump administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday that it reached a settlement with the University of Virginia (UVA) to comply with the government’s directives against “diversity, equity, & inclusion” (DEI) in publicly funded education.
Per the agreement, UVA agreed to “not engage in unlawful racial discrimination in its university programming, admissions, hiring, or other activities,” and provide regular data updates to confirm its compliance through 2028, according to a DOJ press release. In return, the government suspended its investigations into the university and restored its eligibility for grants and other financial awards.
“This notable agreement with the University of Virginia will protect students and faculty from unlawful discrimination, ensuring that equal opportunity and fairness are restored,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said. “We appreciate the progress that the university has made in combatting antisemitism and racial bias, and other American universities should be on alert that the Justice Department will ensure that our federal civil rights laws are enforced for every American, without exception.”
In his own announcement, interim UVA president Paul Mahoney said the agreement “represents the best available path forward” in that the university will “follow civil rights laws” and “continue our thorough review of our practices and policies to ensure that we are complying with all federal laws,” while “preserv(ing) the academic freedom of our faculty, students, and staff,” not having to make any monetary payments, and not subjecting itself to external monitoring.
“We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it,” Mahoney added. “Through this process, we will do everything we can to assure our community, our partners in state and federal government, and the public that we are worthy of the trust they place in us and the resources they provide us to advance our education, research, and patient care mission.”
American institutions of higher education have long been recognized as heavily dominated by left-wing bias and historical revisionism, conditioning students to reject religion, traditional morality, and free markets, and to view America as a uniquely malignant force in the world, a society systemically rigged against the poor and minority groups. Since September, the extent of the bias has been illustrated by the alarming number of professors who have publicly mocked or celebrated the murder of Turning Point USA leader Charlie Kirk.
The toll of such an activist bent often extends well beyond politics. Last year, insiders from the University of California-Los Angeles’ (UCLA’s) prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine warned that the school’s diversity fixation had led to a crisis in which more than half of students in various cohorts admitted since 2020 fail standardized tests for basic medical knowledge of subjects ranging from emergency medicine and family medicine to internal medicine and pediatrics.
In response, the Trump administration has issued executive orders to deny federal funds to educational entities that indoctrinate students through Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) programs, discriminate under the guise of promoting diversity, or allow males into female-specific athletic programs.
In a February 14 letter, U.S. Department of Education (DOE) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor notified school administrators that, per the US Supreme Court’s 2023 Harvard decision striking down racial preferences in college admissions, “If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law. Federal law thus prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
“DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not,” the letter continued. “Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school.”
