RICHMOND — Paul Mahoney, interim president at the University of Virginia, defended the school’s entrance into an agreement with the Department of Justice under the Trump administration, saying the deal was preferable to a loss of federal funding and potentially lengthy litigation process.
“Our options were to come to an agreement, or wait for the DOJ to impose sanctions on us and then litigate,” he said Monday before state senators on the Finance and Appropriations Education subcommittee. “By this time, several other universities subject to investigations had already suffered dramatic losses of federal research funds.
“Waiting for an enforcement action and then litigating would have been potentially devastating to the university’s mission and its financial well-being.”
The agreement was signed in late October and resolves five federal investigations the DOJ had opened this year into the university surrounding admissions, hiring and diversity, equity and inclusion practices it categorized as racial discrimination. The investigations also alleged UVA created a hostile environment toward Jewish students.
At Monday’s meeting, Mahoney stressed that UVA was not financially on the hook — unlike schools such as Columbia University and Northwestern University, which entered into similar arrangements and were obligated to pay sums of $221 million and $75 million, respectively.
By contrast, Harvard University initially was successful in blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze $2 billion in federal research grants. But Mahoney said UVA’s case was dissimilar, citing a First Amendment argument and procedural errors by the federal government in the Harvard case that were unlikely to happen again.
Virginia Military Institute Superintendent Lt. Gen. David Furness also spoke Monday. University of Mary Washington President Troy Paino spoke on funding requests on behalf of the Council of University Presidents. The hearing came as Democratic lawmakers have sparred with Gov. Glenn Youngkin, rejecting his appointees to the governing boards at UVA, VMI and George Mason University. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger has promised to take quick action to fill the vacancies.
Mahoney, a law professor, was appointed interim president after UVA President Jim Ryan stepped down following significant pressure from the Trump administration. A presidential search at UVA is underway, though Spanberger has asked the board to it pause its search until new members can be confirmed, while Youngkin has advised the board to continue.
Senators asked Mahoney if UVA had committed any legal violations prior to the DOJ investigations. UVA did not admit to wrongdoing, Mahoney said, but the university was “aware of allegations that certain areas within the university were not yet in full compliance” with Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard — the Supreme Court case that overturned race-based admissions. He said the university’s internal investigation was ongoing.
“After the Department of Justice had already opened its investigations, if you were to look at materials written and on the web at our medical school, a number of them referred to student scholarships and programs that selected candidates on the basis of protected characteristics, such as race or sex,” he said. “Whether that simply was someone didn’t update the website, or whether that actually reflected the actual decision-making process is something we’re still looking into carefully.”
The agreement stipulates that UVA is bound to report quarterly for three years to the DOJ that it’s complying with department guidance issued in July. That doesn’t mean the school has to comply with all legal guidance, which critics say is not legally binding and merely an interpretation by the Trump administration of the Supreme Court affirmative action ruling.
“I find it disappointing that institutions have been willing to capitulate to the Department of Justice,” Sen. Mamie Locke, D-Hampton, said at Monday’s meeting.
“The issue is not whether the guidance is binding, but whether it is worth risking a lawsuit that would be costly, risky and unnecessary — unnecessary because the DOJ guidance is consistent with our internal guidance,” Mahoney said.
The school overhauled its admittance process after the affirmative action ruling, and the school board voted in March to shutter UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion office before the DOJ opened its investigations into the school.
Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi, who sits on the Senate Education Subcommittee, asked about role of the faculty senate, which expressed its concerns about the ambiguity of the agreement and the lack of transparency around the negotiations in a series of resolutions.
Mahoney said he had shared everything he could with the faculty senate and that publicly disclosing the details of the negotiations would have jeopardized attorney-client privilege.
Notably absent from Monday’s meeting were UVA’s rector and vice rector. Mahoney said they received the invitation too late and were unable to attend. Locke said they were invited in writing Nov. 17. She said they would appear before the start of the legislative session in January.
Kate Seltzer, 757-713-7881, kate.seltzer@virginiamedia.com
