(CNN) — University of Virginia president James Ryan communicated to the school’s Board of Visitors that he plans to resign, a member of the board told CNN. The move comes as the university is under pressure by the US Department of Justice to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
It was not immediately clear when the resignation would take effect, the source said.
Ryan’s expected departure comes as the Trump administration has taken aggressive aim at federal funding for higher education institutions – a battle over campus oversight, academic freedom and political ideology that stems in part from concerns over antisemitism on campuses and a belief inside the White House that it’s a winning political issue for the president.
The New York Times was first to report Ryan was planning to resign after reporting Thursday evening that the university president was facing significant pressure from the Department of Justice, as well as conservative groups.
The Justice Department had been reviewing the university’s compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bans any institution receiving federal funds from discriminating based on race, color and national origin, according to America First Legal, a Trump-aligned group started by the president’s deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
The DOJ told CNN Friday it welcomes “leadership changes in higher education that signal institutional commitment to our nation’s venerable federal civil rights laws.”
“The United States Department of Justice has a zero-tolerance policy toward illegal discrimination in publicly-funded universities. We have made this clear in many ways to the nation’s most prominent institutions of higher education, including the University of Virginia,” Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the US Department of Justice, said in a statement.
CNN has reached out to the White House, America First Legal and the University of Virginia for comment.
America First Legal, had said that the university’s DEI programs were “rebranded,” and alleged that they were in violation of federal law.
“The University is operating programs based on race, sex, ethnicity, national origin, and other impermissible, immutable characteristics under the pretext of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (‘DEI’) in open defiance of federal civil rights law, controlling Supreme Court precedent, and Executive Orders issued by President Donald Trump,” Megan Redshaw, America First Legal’s counsel, wrote in a May 21 letter to the Department of Justice.
Redshaw continued, “UVA has failed to dismantle its discriminatory DEI programs as required—choosing instead to rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms.”
US Sen. Mark Warner and Sen. Tim Kaine, both Democrats representing Virginia, criticized the Justice Department for pressuring Ryan to step down and said the state’s prosperity depends on “the strength and integrity of our higher education system.”
“It is outrageous that officials in the Trump Department of Justice demanded the Commonwealth’s globally recognized university remove President Ryan—a strong leader who has served UVA honorably and moved the university forward—over ridiculous ‘culture war’ traps,” the senators said in a joint statement Friday.
The senators added that any decisions about university leadership belong only to its Board of Visitors, in keeping with Virginia’s system of higher education governance.
“This is a mistake that hurts Virginia’s future,” the senators said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.