Monthly Archives: April 2024

Correction

Posted on April 18, 2024 by | 1 comment

On April 4, the Jefferson Council published a blog post detailing concerns by parents of Jewish students about the hostile environment their children face at the University of Virginia. That article linked to a list of 37 incidents involving faculty and students compiled by the parents and attached to a letter to Rector Robert Hardie. One incident mentioned professor Ian Mullins by name as supporting a terrorist attack on an Israeli town. The lead compiler of the list mis-identified Mullins as the professor in question and has written a letter of apology to him. The Jefferson Council disclaims any responsibility for the error but wanted to alert blog readers who might have viewed the document on our website to know of the correction.

1 Comment

Tagged , , ,

Blockbuster: Ryan Solicited Urgent Meeting with Jones Prosecutor

Posted on April 15, 2024 by | 7 comments

by James A. Bacon

Three days before withholding a state-ordered report looking into a 2022 mass shooting at the University of Virginia that killed three students and wounded two, UVA officials set up a meeting with the prosecutor of the alleged killer, The Daily Progress reports.

In a statement issued November 17, 2023, President Jim Ryan and Rector Robert Hardie justified keeping the report’s findings secret by quoting the prosecutor, Albemarle County Commonwealth Attorney Jim Hingeley, as thanking the University for not complicating the prosecution of the accused.

“After conferring with counselors and Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley, we have decided that we need to wait until after the criminal proceedings to release further information,” said Ryan and Hardie.

Left unsaid in the statement is the fact that Ryan initiated the meeting with Hingeley, using University Police Chief Tim Longo as an intermediary. Longo, who worked closely with Charlottesville and Albemarle County law enforcement authorities on safety issues affecting the university, made a logical go-between. Continue reading →

7 Comments

Posted in Administration, Transparency

Tagged

A Tale of Two Protests: UVA vs. Berkeley

Posted on April 13, 2024 by | 15 comments

by James A. Bacon

The Jefferson Council is often critical of the free-speech environment at the University of Virginia, but we’re also cognizant that things could be a lot worse. UVA could be Harvard, which has the worst possible free-speech rating from the Foundation for Individual Rights & Expression… or Berkeley, which is almost as bad.

In his Substack publication Original Jurisdiction, legal analyst David Lat contrasts the behavior of law students at UVA and Berkeley. Describing a speech at UVA by Justice Jay Mitchell of the Alabama Supreme Court, who wrote the controversial opinion in Alabama’s invitro fertilization case, Lat writes:

Some UVA students decided to protest him. As I approached the room where he would be speaking, I saw several protesters standing outside and holding signs. I wondered if they would yell at me or other people going into the talk, à la the Stanford law students who shouted “shame, shame” at attendees of Judge Kyle Duncan’s March 2023 talk—and who screamed at Judge Duncan things like, “We hope your daughters get raped!”

Continue reading →

15 Comments

Posted in Freedom of speech and expression

Miyares, Manchin to Speak at UVA

Posted on April 12, 2024 by | 3 comments

The Jefferson Council is pleased to partner with the Center for Politics to bring these two prominent politicians to the University of Virginia.

3 Comments

Posted in Speakers, Panels and Events

Team Ryan Defends Closed Board Session

Posted on April 12, 2024 by | 8 comments

by James A. Bacon

University of Virginia officials have responded, albeit obliquely, to questions raised by the Jefferson Council about the legality of a closed session called during a Board of Visitors meeting March 1.

In a column posted in the “So Hoos Asking” feature of UVA Today, University spokesman Brian Coy walked readers through the basics of closed sessions under Virginia state law. In that piece, he cited the real-world example of the Board’s vote last month to go into closed session to discuss the safety of Jewish students on Grounds in the wake of allegations of antisemitism.

Coy’s description of the session reveals details not previously available to the public. I’m not entirely satisfied with his explanation, as I shall explain in due course, but even if I were, another issue arises: If the topic of the closed-session discussion was as narrowly focused as Coy says it was, it drives home the fact that Rector Robert Hardie and President Jim Ryan have shut down any discussion in open session of the larger questions of UVA’s hostile climate to Jews.

In the cause of promoting open and reasoned dialogue, we are duty-bound to inform our readers fully and fairly of the views of the Ryan administration. Here follows the full passage from Coy’s column. Continue reading →

8 Comments

Posted in Board of Visitors, Transparency

UVA Report Finds No Pay Inequity for Black, Hispanic Faculty

Posted on April 11, 2024 by | 6 comments

Adjusted salary differentials for tenure/tenure track faculty.

by James A. Bacon

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” by auditing where policies and procedures might be “reinforcing entrenched inequities.”

The report cited no actual evidence of disparities in pay, and the authors did not assert that they existed. In a report that lambasted UVA as “an inaccessible, rich, ‘white’ institution,” pay inequities were just assumed to occur and needed to be documented.

Well, last year the Ryan administration hired the DCI Consulting Group to evaluate pay equity for UVA faculty based on gender and race. The results, based on 2022 compensation, were made available to UVA January 5 and, sure enough, pay inequities were found — for non-tenured Asian-American faculty.

Remarkably, adjusted for their level in the academic hierarchy, seniority, and other variables affecting compensation, Black professors who are tenured or on the tenure track were f0und to earn 3% more than their peers, Hispanic professors 3.4% more, and Whites 1.6% less — although DCI did not deem the differences to be “statistically significant.” Continue reading →

6 Comments

Posted in Administration, Race, Equity and Diversity

The Daily Progress Recaps UVA Antisemitism Controversy

Posted on April 6, 2024 by | 5 comments

by James A. Bacon

The Daily Progress, Charlottesville’s daily newspaper, has published a balanced report about the controversy swirling around antisemitism at the University of Virginia. Followers of this blog will find most of the narrative familiar. What we find refreshing is reporter Emily Hemphill’s willingness to explore all sides of the issue without slanting the story — a throwback to the journalism of yore.

There are a couple of points worth noting. First, to reconstruct events, Hemphill made ample use of the video footage of the February-March Board of Visitors meeting archived by the Jefferson Council. State law requires UVA to livestream the meeting, but not to archive it. UVA has declined to provide that basic element of transparency and accountability. The Jefferson Council recently begun archiving that footage as a public service, and it is gratifying to see the media using it already.

Further, the Daily Progress pursues an angle to the ongoing antisemitism story that we have not fully reported: UVA officialdom’s thin-skinned response to a truck with LED billboards that displayed messages that Rector Robert Hardie was “unfit to lead UVa” and should “resign now.” Continue reading →

5 Comments

Posted in Freedom of speech and expression

Tagged , ,