UVA Board Keeping Close Eye on Provost Search

The search at the University of Virginia to replace outgoing provost Ian Baucom is well underway. The outcome will reflect the shifting balance of power between President Jim Ryan and a Board of Visitors determined to bring a measure of intellectual diversity to an institution whose faculty and campus climate have been transformed under Ryan and Baucom in line with leftist “social justice” principles.

The last time the provost’s office was vacant — when Elizabeth Magill left the post to become president of the University of Pennsylvania — there was no need to hire a search committee. Ryan hand-picked Baucom, who was then serving as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, and the Board of Visitors confirmed him with a minimum of fuss.

The provost, who functions as a chief academic officer, is arguably the most important person, second only to the president, in setting the direction and tone of the University. Previous boards dominated by Democratic appointees were comfortable giving Ryan and Baucom a free hand. The new board, dominated by appointees of Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, is not.

In a series of votes in recent months, the Board has signaled its intention to provide much closer oversight than Ryan has been accustomed to. The Board’s assertion of authority has been slow but remorseless, like an anaconda tightening its coils around its prey. In off-the-record conversations, multiple Board members have told me that any candidate for the provost selection must meet board approval, and to win that approval the candidate must be committed to ending racial preferences and expanding intellectual diversity.

Baucom, who is leaving to become president of Middlebury College, has been key to implementing Ryan’s “Inclusive Excellence” agenda at UVA. By procuring Mellon Foundation funds and other means, he championed the hiring of faculty members steeped in far-left, anti-racist, anti-colonialism discourse and oversaw race-based programs to increase enrollment of minority faculty and graduate students.

The process for selecting the new provost, as is typical of executive searches, is cloaked in secrecy. The board members I talked to say they have not been kept well informed about how the search is proceeding. “They’re keeping it very close to the vest,” one told me.

Two board members — Amanda Pullion and Porter Wilkinson, both Youngkin appointees — sit on the 14-person search committee. They are greatly outnumbered in a group dominated by faculty, staff and administrators presumed to be sympathetic to President Ryan.

The chair of the committee is Mal Hutson, dean of the School of Architecture, whose university profile describes him as an “internationally recognized expert” in community development, climate resilience, environmental justice, and urban health. His most recent book is titled, “The Urban Struggle for Economic, Environmental, and Social Justice: Deepening Their Roots.”

Providing a modicum of balance, one member of the search committee is Kenneth Elzinga, a revered economics professor who has openly decried the decline of intellectual diversity and freedom of expression at UVA.

Reportedly, the committee has engaged Ron Brown, a partner with the Heidrick & Struggles executive search firm, to assist in the search. Brown’s firm profile notes that he worked in the White House prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles before or around 2000, suggesting that he has contacts with officials who served in the George H. W. Bush administration. The conjecture is that he is well positioned to find a “moderate” candidate who can thread the needle between social-justice warrior and DOGE-style advocate of rooting out UVA’s administrative state.

The Board member quoted above expressed confidence that Pullion and Wilkinson are conveying the Board’s viewpoint to the search committee. The two women will be “very blunt” in letting the search committee know if candidates don’t meet the Board’s criteria, he said. Wilkinson, he added, is as “tough as nails.”

The search committee has narrowed down the list of potential candidates to a relatively small number, although the Board members I consulted didn’t agree on how many they thought there were. Those candidates will undergo interviews and close questioning.

One possible finalist is Brie Gertler, the interim provost, who has long had a close working relationship with Ryan and Baucom. Axed from the list of candidates is one preferred by several Board members: Allan Stam, a full professor at the Batten School of Leadership. Stam had served as dean of the Batten School before Ryan replaced him with the current dean, Ian Solomon.

As I understand the process, the search committee will narrow down the list to a handful of names and present them to Ryan, who then will present his pick to the Board of Visitors for approval.

There is a strong desire to close the deal by the June board meeting so the new provost will be able to move to Charlottesville and assume his or her duties in time for the fall semester.

June is the last regularly scheduled Board meeting for the four members, including Rector Robert Hardie, who were appointed by former Governor Ralph Northam. They have consistently backed Ryan in the past and odds are they will in the provost appointment. The 13 Youngkin appointees are a mixed lot. Some are what I call institutionalists who aim to preserve institutional continuity and uphold UVA’s public-ivy reputation. Others whom I refer to as dissidents are pressing for reversal of racial preferences, the steady leftist drift in the faculty, erosion of free expression, the collapse of the Honor Code, and the tarnishing of Thomas Jefferson’s legacy.

Board perceptions of any figure nominated by Ryan inevitably will be entangled with perceptions of Ryan himself. No member of the Board of Visitors has called publicly (or even privately that I know of) for Ryan’s resignation. But former board member Bert Ellis, whom Youngkin fired in March for being too outspoken, has since called publicly for Ryan’s ouster. And the Jefferson Council alumni organization, of which Ellis was a co-founder, published a full-page ad in the Richmond Times-Dispatch today demanding a “change in leadership” at the University.

Youngkin appointees on the Board are likely to defer to any opinion he might have on a provost candidate. So far, the Governor has yet to weigh in on the issue, although it is well known that his priorities for higher education in Virginia include free expression, intellectual diversity, an end to racial preferences, and a dismantling of the Diversity, Equity & inclusion (DEI) bureaucracy.

Between updates on the dismantling of DEI, a brewing fight over last-minute budget and tuition cuts, and the election of a new rector, consideration of a new provost will have to be shoehorned into what looks to be a crowded June agenda.