They were basically willing to grant U.Va. blanket immunity — all of the inquiries and investigations would be suspended, no financial penalties would be imposed and agencies would be told not to cut off our research funding.
Mr. Ryan explains the deal offered to him if he resigned.
Share
More from James E. Ryan
The call for my resignation, right until the end, seemed so outlandish as not to be entirely believable.
Forcing university presidents to resign, moreover, has not been part of the playbook of the Trump administration; as far as I know, I am the only university president in the country who has been forced to resign as part of a supposed deal…
If I did not resign that day, I was told that the D.O.J. would extract/block hundreds of millions of dollars from U.Va. before they would even negotiate.
But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job.
Other voices in this conversation
