Fascinating article this morning in AIR MAIL – “launched in 2019 as a lively digital weekly for the world citizen,” with editors from “Spy, Vanity Fair, The New York Times, and other publications” – about the right-wing assault on the University of Virginia. There’s tons of interesting detail in the article (“How to Destroy a University”), but what really caught my eye was the part how UVA has become “a political battleground, not just between left and right but, allegedly, between J. D. Vance and Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, a possible presidential rival.”
Here are a few highlights from the article regarding the Youngkin vs. Vance angle, but definitely read the entire thing – it’s well worth it!
- After Youngkin was elected governor: “He began appointing conservative alumni, such as Bert Ellis, to the board. In a 2023 CNN town hall, Youngkin announced, ‘We shouldn’t embrace equity at the expense of excellence.'”
- “Two months after Trump began his second term, UVA’s board—now controlled by Youngkin’s appointees—voted unanimously on a resolution that eliminated the central Office for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Community Partnerships. Governor Youngkin triumphantly declared on Fox News: ‘D.E.I. is done at the University of Virginia.'”
- “Beginning in April, D.O.J. letters began arriving at UVA—seven in total through June—accusing the university of failing to dismantle its D.E.I. programs, failing to address anti-Semitism, and failing to comply with race-neutral admissions practices.”
- “What could have caused the D.O.J. to unleash such an unprecedented and remorseless campaign against the university? The reason, multiple sources familiar with UVA board dynamics told me, may have been motivated by internecine Republican rivalry as much as anything else.”
- “According to this theory, UVA’s alleged noncompliance with D.E.I. mandates offered a convenient way for supporters of J. D. Vance to politically damage Youngkin, whose 2021 gubernatorial victory had shown him to be a canny operator and a possible 2028 competitor for the Republican presidential nomination.”
- “One theory is that America First Legal’s memo may have served a dual purpose: targeting Jim Ryan’s supposedly ‘woke’ leadership of UVA as well as showing up Youngkin as not being ideologically pure enough to make the hard changes needed. Denouncing Republicans who are not sufficiently committed to the MAGA agenda has become a favorite diversion of Trump’s inner circle.”
- “‘They wanted to show Youngkin up,’ one source says. ‘It was really Stephen Miller wanting to cast aspersions on a likely challenger.’ By unleashing the Justice Department on UVA, Miller and his allies could box Youngkin in—and burnish their own credentials with Trump and his base. (America First Legal did not respond to air mail’s request for comment.)”
- “And there may be some truth to it. Given that Youngkin’s son currently attends UVA, the governor may have been happy to allow some programs still to operate for fear of disrupting and damaging the school. Indeed, it’s not entirely clear whether Youngkin even wanted Ryan to resign. In the end, though, Miller and the D.O.J. may have forced his hand, creating a much bigger mess than he or his board had ever expected. (Governor Youngkin did not respond to air mail’s request for comment.)”
So yes, there were multiple motivations for the Trump administration’s assault on UVA. Also, yes, Youngkin had already started to stack the UVA Board of Visitors with his (right-wing) picks long before Donald Trump was officially nominated for president again in July 2024. But still…that Youngkin vs. Vance angle is a fascinating one, especially given that: 1) Youngkin “had been the subject of frenzied vice-presidential speculation the day before at the Republican National Convention [in July 2024]” and “was a rumored dark-horse pick”; 2) Youngkin is clearly making moves to set himself up for a possible (probable?) run for president in 2028; 3) Youngkin’s worth a lot of money ($500 million? more?); 4) Vance almost certainly sees Youngkin as a serious potential rival.
How much did all of this play into the assault on UVA, the ouster of Jim Ryan as president, etc? We may never know for sure, but it definitely seems…intriguing, let’s just say. I mean, obviously Glenn Youngkin at least pretends to hate “DEI” — even though for years when he was a top executive at the Carlyle Group, he said things like:
- “…when you actually embrace a lot of the basic inputs of diversity of thought, lowering carbon footprint, thinking about how to save energy, trying to increase efficiency, you just get better outcomes”
- “…we felt that one of the big steps we needed to take was to make diversity and inclusion not a program at Carlyle but to embed it in the way we think about how to grow Carlyle. We were really fortunate, gosh a year and a half ago now to be able to bring in just a rock star Chief Diversity Inclusion Officer, a woman named Kara Helander, and she joined us and really we’ve just systematically gone through our whole firm and spent time thinking about how to do a much better job at this.“
Also see How a Diversity Champion Became an Anti-D.E.I. Warrior (“Not long before he became Virginia’s governor, Glenn Youngkin helped lead, and spoke approvingly of, efforts to improve racial and gender diversity at his private equity firm.”), which cites Youngkin as saying in 2018, “One of the clear challenges in the financial sector broadly is both race and gender diversity,” and notes that he pledged that “one of our key priorities” was to “address disparities in representation.” Youngkin also signed an SEC filing which said, “At Carlyle we believe that diverse teams and experiences bring tremendous value to our firm” and “We are committed to growing and cultivating an environment that fosters diversity in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, religion and age, as well as cultural backgrounds and ideas.” Hell, Youngkin even co-chaired “a diversity and inclusion council” and announced “a chief inclusion and diversity officer.”
In the end, what’s going on with Youngkin seems clear: he will say or do *whatever he feels he needs to do* in order to advance himself, whether financially (e.g., to make 100s of millions of $$$) or politically (e.g., to be president), and absolutely regardless of consistency, let alone doing what’s right. And so far, it’s worked for him, even if it means having no core principles, being a pathological liar, harming a lot of people and cherished institutions, including one of the greatest and most storied public universities in the entire country – the University of Virginia.
