The Baucom Resignation Could Set Off a Power Struggle at UVA
Ian Baucom will step down as provost of the University of Virginia in March to become president of Middlebury College in Vermont. UVA will launch a national search for his replacement, the university announced today. His departure will likely set off a power struggle between President Jim Ryan and members of the Board of Visitors appointed by Governor Glenn Youngkin.
As the chief academic officer of UVA, the provost is arguably the most important position in the university power structure second only to President Jim Ryan. Indeed, the provost may do more to set the cultural tone and strategic direction of the university than the president, much of whose time is tied up with fundraising.
Ryan has asked Brie Gertler, deputy provost and senior vice provost for academic affairs, to serve as interim provost during the search process.
Educated at Wake Forest University and Yale, Baucom taught at Duke University for 17 years before joining UVA in 2014 as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences where he oversaw the overhaul of the curriculum. Upon the departure of UVA’s previous provost Liz Magill for presidency of the University of Pennsylvania, he was Ryan’s choice for the No. 2 position and appointed in 2022 without controversy.
Among his accomplishments, Baucom was instrumental in identifying focused priorities for university research. He was especially keen about evaluating the impact of Artificial Intelligence on society. He was also involved in planning the growth of the Emmet-Ivy Corridor, the bolstering of academic advising, and the creation of the Task Force on Religious Diversity and Belonging.
“Ian has left an indelible mark on UVA, both from his time as dean and his years as provost,” Ryan said. “Our academic environment has been enriched by his wise and steady leadership and a long list of accomplishments, from improvements to curriculum and advising to investments in research, faculty hires and school leadership. He is someone who is deeply motivated by mission, which made him a perfect fit for UVA, and now for Middlebury College.”
Baucom was a capable administrator, but it is fair to describe him as a dedicated leftist. As the son of missionaries, he spent years growing up in South Africa where he developed a revulsion for the apartheid regime. As a university professor, he adopted post-Marxist theoretical frameworks, as seen in his 2005 work, “Specters of the Atlantic: Finance Capital, Slavery, and the Philosophy of History.” His academic work was highly abstract and impenetrable to the layman. In this 2104 video, he expounded on the topic of “Postcolonial Method and Anthropocene Time.”
At UVA Baucom enthusiastically embraced the paradigm of intersectional oppression, colloquially referred to as wokeness, and he played a key role in recruiting radical leftist professors to the university. During his tenure, as with that of Magill, the ideological center of gravity among faculty members drifted steadily leftward as young “progressives” replaced older, more ideologically diverse faculty members. Although he backed Ryan in the crackdown on the pro-Hamas encampment last May, he came across in faculty-senate post-mortems as severely conflicted.
Last year Governor Glenn Youngkin coaxed the UVa Board of Visitors to adopt a resolution supporting free speech and intellectual diversity. While UVA has a better track record than most in protecting free speech, at least on paper, it has become an intellectual monoculture where professors propounding conservative, libertarian and classical liberal ideas are vanishingly rare. If Youngkin appointees are to restore intellectual balance to the faculty, hiring a provost dedicated to that goal is critical.
There are hints that Ryan may try to control the process for selecting a successor. Board members were not informed of Baucom’s interest in the Middlebury job until his resignation was announced. Yet his impending departure was no secret to the administration. The announcement was not a press release but a fully fleshed-out feature story with quotes from Ryan and Baucom that clearly had been prepared ahead of time.
The politics of selecting Baucom’s successor will focus now on who is appointed to the search committee, and who frames the criteria that UVA is looking for. Traditionally, the university president selects the search committee, but any candidate will have to be approved by the Board of Visitors.
Youngkin-appointed board members seeking sweeping changes at UVA will likely stay quiescent until the General Assembly now in session approves the nominees Youngkin put forth last June. Democrats have targeted appointees to Virginia Military Institute and George Mason University for rejection but have not made an issue of this year’s UVA appointees. Once the UVA board members are confirmed and have a solid working majority, expect them to be more assertive on budgetary matters and the hiring of key officials like Baucom.
James A. Bacon is the founder of Bacon’s Rebellion and a contributing editor with The Jefferson Council.
