Virginia university reform efforts mirror nationwide conservative attacks, experts say

Yahoo

05-05-2025

(Photo illustration by Andrew Kerley/Capital News Service)
By Andrew Kerley/Capital News Service
Joe Feagin had to swear an oath he was not a communist to land his first university teaching job in 1966.
Feagin, 86, received his bachelor's degree in Texas during McCarthyism and the viciously oppressive Jim Crow era.
The '60s were turbulent, Feagin said. Vietnam War and Civil Rights protests were frequent. Demographics were shifting as more Latinos and Asians arrived under liberalized immigration laws.
'Everything was looking up at that point,' Feagin said. 'Jim Crow laws were being crushed, Black folks were finally making it into the mainstream white universities where they had been rare or nonexistent.'
But Feagin, who spent nearly 60 years in higher education, believes progress is slipping.
President Donald Trump is publicly threatening to withhold federal funding for schools over anti-war protests and diversity initiatives that took root decades ago. A less-visible battle is being fought in over half of all states, including Virginia, to remove protections for professors, independent curriculum control and university-shared governance.
Educators warn changes are part of a conservative blueprint, and academic freedom is at stake. Conservative leaders say they will foster intellectual diversity, create more career pathways and bolster the marketplace.
Faculty have traditionally held power over university curriculums, but that eroded significantly over the years, according to leading Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth.
Holsworth, also a former Virginia Commonwealth University professor and board of visitors member, said Gov. Glenn Youngkin is exercising a much heavier hand through his board appointees.
Boards create university budgets, hire and fire presidents, appoint faculty and rubber stamp curriculums created by faculty. But, their decisions have become increasingly intrusive and politicized, according to Holsworth.
While the deterioration of independent governance and hiring of tenured faculty has been ongoing for decades, it has been exacerbated by recent politics and the rise of Trump.
Students and faculty at VCU and George Mason University spent years drafting new learning requirements to teach topics such as systemic racism, gender studies and workplace inequity. Some of the content paralleled the wake from 2020 and its summer of protests against police brutality.
The new initiatives — called 'racial literacy' at VCU and 'Just Societies' at GMU — were set to be implemented in 2024. But Youngkin's education secretary requested to view the syllabi, and soon after both universities canceled the requirements.
Christian Martinez, Youngkin's former press secretary, called the course requirements a 'thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left's groupthink on Virginia's students.'
'That's a step beyond what we've ever seen,' Holsworth said.
The blueprint for the board interference was first tested in Florida, according to Amy Reid. She taught at the New College of Florida, one of the Sunshine State's few public liberal arts schools, until Gov. Ron DeSantis made moves in 2023 to remove the gender studies program she directed.
DeSantis appointed six new members to the college's board of trustees in 2023, the majority of whom lived outside Florida and were conservative activists, according to Reid.
DeSantis' appointees voted to end the school's Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Office, according to Reid. They also removed university officials and faculty who didn't fit their vision of the school, including the president, provost, some LGBTQ+ employees and a Chinese adjunct professor seeking asylum from his home country.
Reid now works at PEN America, a free speech organization that pushes back against what it calls educational gag orders.
Officials increasingly use indirect tactics to achieve censorial goals, Reid said. Coordinated attacks have shifted from K-12 to higher education in recent years.
Over 90 bills to reform higher education at public universities, and some private ones, have been introduced across 26 states in the past three years, according to PEN America data. At least 16 have become law as of March 6.
The highest number of bills were introduced after Trump's reelection.
Almost half of the legislation focused on eliminating or preventing DEI initiatives that promoted concepts related to race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity or national origin — from curriculum to faculty training. But other legislation challenges traditional higher-ed structure by putting university governance, the decision-making power given to student and faculty bodies, on the chopping block.
Several bills seek to eliminate or weaken tenure status for faculty, which was created to safeguard academic freedom from politics. Others strip universities of independent accreditation standards, which certify the quality of education at colleges.
Some bills break tradition by giving states authority to establish programs and curriculum where American values and ideas, or Western civilization, are predominantly taught.
Even if legislation fails, governors can censor higher education through their appointed board members, Reid said.
Although there is a government push for free speech, students need an education free from their censorship, Reid said. This is precisely why academic freedom, shared governance and institutional autonomy are needed.
Conservative groups such as the Claremont Institute, Manhattan Institute and the Heritage Foundation are coordinating efforts between states, Reid said. Members push initiatives and propose candidates for university boards. The Heritage Foundation created the almost 1,000 page Project 2025 blueprint to reshape the American government.
Trump denied his involvement with Project 2025 while campaigning, but immediately began enacting parts of the plan once in office, including efforts to dismantle the Department of Education.
The Heritage Foundation's influence has increasingly grown in Virginia. Youngkin, who has deep ties to the foundation, has appointed Project 2025 authors to the boards of visitors at GMU and the University of Virginia.
Virginia universities have complied with Trump and Youngkin's efforts to cancel racial learning requirements, dissolve DEI programs and instate new campus speech policies that limit protesting. Medical centers at UVA and VCU also stopped providing gender affirming care for people under age 19, per an executive order from Trump.
Trump has threatened to cut federal funding for research and student financial aid for schools that do not comply. Virginia ranks 13th in research and development performance, according to the Virginia Mercury. UVA received $549 million in research awards in 2024, according to their report. VCU received $200.1 million, according to spokesman Brian McNeill.
The Heritage Foundation aims to wind down federal involvement in higher education, which it says has a monopoly on accreditation standards and student loans, according to its policy analyst Madison Marino Doan. The foundation wants more privatization on those fronts.
Additionally, it believes university administrations are bloated bureaucracies that must be held accountable for increasing tuition and pushing DEI, Marino Doan said. Reform efforts are a result of Americans' dissatisfaction with costs and the diminishing value of career paths in the humanities.
'Institutions have increasingly prioritized what we would say is ideological activism and oftentimes bureaucratic bloat over academic excellence and student outcomes,' Marino Doan said.
The plan is to remove federal funds and accreditation standards and transfer power to individual states. Those moves would make way for more specific standards per industry, and emphasize alternative postsecondary education options such as trade schools and apprenticeships.
'I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,' Trump said while campaigning.
Trump directed the secretary of education to deny accreditation to agencies that use DEI-based standards, in an executive order released April 22. Universities must be accredited by nationally-recognized agencies to be eligible for federal aid.
Higher-ed groups warn the accreditation order could give Trump more power and threaten academic freedom, according to the publication Inside Higher Ed.
Feagin, who recently retired from Texas A&M University, believes America has been 'zigzagging' toward progress since the '40s, up until President Barack Obama was elected. Conservative demographics lashed back at Obama's victory by forming populist factions like the Tea Party, utilizing political redistricting and eventually electing Trump.
Feagin said that with attacks on higher education and the destruction of federal programs with 'no apparent purpose,' America is back to where it was in the early '60s and moving 'rapidly backwards.'
Gutting research is economic suicide in the face of China's faster development, Feagin said. Cutting diversity will only make universities unpleasant. Efforts to stop the diversification of America will only be temporary victories.
'You can slow it down. You can make it miserable,' Feagin said. 'That's what Trump is doing.'
Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University's Robertson School of Media and Culture. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.
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