A Message from a University President: Jim Ryan’s Questions

Guest article by Michael Roth

Hello readers of the MeidasTouch Substack. My name is Michael Roth, and I am the President of Wesleyan University. I wanted to share with you some thoughts on the Trump regime forcing the President of the University of Virginia, Jim Ryan, to resign from his position.

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(Photo by Dan Addison, UVA University Communications)

I read about the forced resignation of the president of the University of Virginia with sadness and alarm. I hardly know Jim Ryan, but I have followed his good words and deeds since 2016 when as a Harvard dean he gave a Commencement talk about five questions to ask oneself in pursuing a meaningful life: Wait, what? I wonder... Couldn't we at least? How can I help? What really matters? The first was about taking a moment, seeking clarification before jumping to conclusions or judging. The second underscored the importance of using imagination in an active way to develop better reasons for positions taken and alternatives that might be pursued. These days we are living with powerful officials in Washington who prize speed and “flooding the zone” over deliberation and the consideration of alternatives. Even basic notions of due process are being erased as government officials hurriedly destroy programs that feed the hungry and heal the sick, fire scores of thousands of workers who have served their country well, and uproot countless families who have lived and worked in this country for decades.

Imagination is clearly in short supply when the government fails to consider such issues as how many will die without the food and medicine they’ve come to rely on; or what will happen to services for veterans and hospital patients without the staff to administer them; or who will plant and harvest our crops if the country’s agricultural workers have been frightened off? Our government, engrossed in the spectacle of intense action, can’t seem to think beyond it.

Ryan’s third question pointed to the effort to find common ground among people who disagree in good faith. Asking “Couldn’t we at least agree that we all think discrimination is bad?” might have allowed more discussion between those who share the White House’s concerns about the lack of opportunities for white people and those who have supported the remedies of affirmative action for historical patterns of prejudice. Beginning with “Couldn’t we at least” means searching for a way to work together, to work through differences rather than remaining at loggerheads.

If people are having a conversation in good faith, the effort to find some common ground leads naturally to Ryan’s fourth question: “How can I help?” Once we find some values or purposes we agree upon, asking what one could do to build on that commonality reinforces cooperation, bolsters the good faith. Of course, if a discussion is undertaken in bad faith, cooperation will always fail. If the party with more power is consumed only with the exercise of it, then discussion is pointless.

It pained me to think that Jim Ryan felt he had to resign when he asked himself his fifth question, “What really matters?” In his resignation letter, he underscored his love of UVA and also his duty — in the face of government threats to withdraw funding — not to let keeping his job as president result in others losing theirs, to say nothing of the threats to students and researchers. Ryan decided what really mattered was protecting university workers and students, not his own presidency.

If his governing board had asked itself the question, “What really matters,” it would have refused to accept Ryan’s resignation. Its members would have realized that what really mattered in this instance was the integrity of a great university. They would have acknowledged the threat to their budget, but they would also have recognized that the Department of Justice’s harassment was blatant overreach, undisguised interference in the internal affairs of a cherished institution. The board, had it asked itself the questions Jim Ryan explored for us almost a decade ago, would have entreated him to stay on as it worked with the government to find appropriate vehicles for the administration’s concerns — say, about reverse discrimination. If officials at the Department of Justice were interested only in having the trophy of Ryan’s forced resignation, then the trustees of the university, the guardians of its mission, should have implored him to stay as president. It should have fought the government’s demands in court.

The mission statement of the University of Virginia affirms that it is defined by the “unwavering support of a collaborative, diverse community bound together by distinctive foundational values of honor, integrity, trust, and respect.” That statement echoes themes that were crucial to its founder, Thomas Jefferson, who believed education allowed for the experience of freedom as one began to discover one’s capacities in the company of others from various walks of life who were also on paths of discovery. “Education generates habits of application, of order, and the love of virtue,” he wrote, “and controls, by the force of habit, any innate obliquities in our moral organization.” Jefferson’s hypocrisies in matters of race and gender have been the stuff of jokes and critique for centuries, but they should not obscure the fact that he rightly saw the independence of the university, like civil society more generally, as key to its ability to provide its students with an opportunity for discovery — to practice freedom without government interference. “The most effectual means of preventing the perversion of power into tyranny are to enable the people to judge of its correctness.” Jefferson, a lead author of the Declaration of Independence, knew something about fighting for freedom, and he understood that education empowers the people to detect the perversion of power and to resist tyranny. He designed those qualities of learning to be at the core of his university in Charlottesville.

Jim Ryan understood his university’s mission, and he worked with “honesty, integrity, trust and respect” to further it. The success of the DOJ’s cynical demand that he resign for doing his job is a sad indication of the level of vindictiveness coming from the White House. As we approach Independence Day, it is also a reminder that in the face of tyrannical interference, freedom must be fought for.

Michael S. Roth, the president of Wesleyan University, is the author most recently of “The Student: A Short History” and “Safe Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech, and Political Correctness on College Campuses.”