The MAGA war on science, education, thinking and kindness has claimed another scalp. Attorney General and Trump bootlicker Pam Bondi was so eager to claim a white-rights victory that the DOJ refused to allow Ryan to step down at the end of the next academic year as he had planned. In the video above, UVA alumnus and politics professor Dr. Jason Johnson explains the dark significance.
The New York Times described Ryan’s immediate ouster as the Trump administration’s “most significant victory in its pressure campaign on higher education” and “showed the unusual lengths the administration would go to pursue President Trump’s political agenda and shift the ideological tilt of academia.”
That’s a bland way of saying Trump and his flunkies are hell-bent on forcing our once-great institutions to bend the knee to the MAGA thought police.
More from The New York Times:
Mr. Ryan informed the board overseeing the school that he would resign after demands by the Trump administration that he step aside to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.
The New York Times reported on Thursday evening that the Justice Department had demanded Mr. Ryan’s resignation as a condition to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices.
In a letter sent on Thursday to the head of the board overseeing the university, Mr. Ryan said that he had planned to step down at the end of the next academic year. But “given the circumstances and today’s conversations,” he wrote, he had decided “with deep sadness” to tender his resignation now, according to one of the people familiar with the matter who was briefed on the letter’s contents.
It's not as though Ryan had harmed the university’s academics. “The University of Virginia has been considered among the top five public universities for more than two decades, according to U.S. News & World Report rankings, and has maintained that position during Mr. Ryan’s tenure,” The Times noted.
Obviously, Trump and his fascist loyalists care more about imposing their ideology over academics. “During his seven years in the job, Mr. Ryan developed a reputation as a champion of diversity. He encouraged community service and helped drive an increase in the number of first-generation students,” according to The Times. He aimed to make the university “both great and good” and described his goal as "striving for academic excellence in a manner that would benefit society.”
“But that rankled conservative alumni and some Republican board members, who accused him of imposing his own ethics and values on college students,” The Times added.
Here we are folks: Trying to benefit society, educate first-generation students and community service are MAGA sins that Trump and his goons will do everything to eradicate.
