Like the Bolsheviks of yore, UVA militants have turned upon Ryan and Baucom with a vengeance. TJC contributing editor Jim Bacon weighs in.

The 2017 Unite the Right tragedy forced the University to think through issues it had not confronted in its recent history. The reforms created processes and protocols that were applied in 2024, TJC contributing editor Jim Back writes.

From professors to Lawn residents, members of the University of Virginia community continue to criticize senior UVA leadership for shutting down the UVA Encampment for Gaza "liberated zone."

The University of Virginia called in the Virginia State Police to disperse "UVA Encampment for Gaza" protesters, said President Jim Ryan, University Police Chief Tim Longo, and other University leaders in a virtual town hall.

“It is good to know that the University of Virginia set boundaries and enforced them, unlike other universities and states.“

Pro-Palestinian protestors erected tents last night at their "liberation zone for Gaza" near the University of Virginia chapel in defiance of orders to take them down. The administration's immediate response: engage in dialogue.

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the Grounds of the University of Virginia showed signs of losing enthusiasm, even as organizers demanded that the administration divest investments from Israel and cut off all ties with Israeli universities.

While the Grounds remained orderly, there were some darker undercurrents.

Virginia Governer Youngkin: "We’re not going to have encampments and tents put up and yes, we will protect the ability to peacefully express yourself, but we’re not going to have the kind of hate speech and intimidation we’re seeing across the country in Virginia."

Alumnus to TJC after UVA tour: “No history lesson of the Grounds, its architecture, or its purpose. No homage to TJ and his vision for the advancement of an enlightened society. No fabled stories about the secret societies, or traditions at the sporting events or around Grounds. Nothing.”

Virginia Tech arrested two dozen or more students Sunday night while dispersing an "encampment" similar to other anti-Israeli protests spreading around the country, according to media reports. University of Virginia President Jim Ryan likely will face a similar test.

Perhaps Ryan could draw spine-stiffening inspiration from the University's founder Thomas Jefferson, who dealt with student riots in 1825.

The ideological filtering process is at work at UVA. The more each department becomes ideologically homogenous, inclined to groupthink, and disparaging of anyone with different views, the less likely it is to hire anyone who thinks differently. A vicious cycle sets in.

A core principle of academic research is for scholars to make their data open to inspection by others for the purpose of peer review. The UVA administration doesn't live up to its own principles.

Is this case an outlier or a symptom of a larger corruption in which academic standards were suspended for demographically favored groups?

Dr. Tiffany King, a tenured professor in the University of Virginia's Department of Women, Sexuality, and Gender, spoke in a virtual symposium "At the Edge of Each Other's Battles: Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Black, and Indigenous Futures.”

Whatever UVA leadership might have said to people in private, their words and actions have been ineffectual in altering the reality that pro-Palestinian students feel comfortable wearing their badges of loyalty while most Jews have stopped wearing theirs.

Sometimes we hear from alumni who believe UVA has gone so far down the rabbit hole of wokeness that it's a lost cause. UVA is not a lost cause. If it were, we wouldn't be wasting our time with it.

By manipulating the Board agenda, the Jim Ryan administration has managed to avoid any meaningful accountability at the University of Virginia.

The Racial Equity Task Force, a 2020 document that transformed governance at the University of Virginia, listed 12 top priorities for addressing the legacy of historical racism. One was to address "serious challenges to racial equity in staff hiring, wages, retention, promotion, and procurement" but the report cited no actual evidence of disparities in pay.