As 4,655 soon-to-be graduates sat on the University of Virginia Lawn Saturday thinking of their futures, they were asked to consider the past.
UVa English professor Michael Suarez delivered an impassioned keynote address Saturday hearkening to the university’s founding 206 years ago and its place in the future of an American republic on the precipice of its 250th birthday next year.
“UVa was founded on the aspiration that its mission of scholarship and teaching could powerfully support and sustain our American experiment,” said Suarez, who is also director of the UVa Rare Book School and a Jesuit priest. “Freedom is the great purpose of the liberal education.”
He echoed an oft-quoted excerpt from an 1820 letter from university founder Thomas Jefferson to English historian William Roscoe. Describing his still-under-construction Academical Village in Charlottesville, Jefferson wrote, “For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.”
The words were later chiseled over a doorway in the university’s New Cabell Hall.
“Our ability to pursue the truth and communicate it freely is a national asset,” said Suarez. “The American university must compromise neither its moral provision nor its vision.”
Suarez’s words come at a time when many in American academia feel as though they have been asked to compromise their values.
On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled, “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” directing colleges across the country to eliminate their diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, practices and programs or risk federal funding.
The lion’s share, including UVa, have said they are complying. But others have not.
Harvard University has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, saying the White House was attempting to exert “unprecedented and improper control over the University,” including its governance, hiring and admissions.
In response, the White House has frozen more than $2 billion in federal funding earmarked for Harvard.
UVa says it is working to comply with the Trump directive, but the U.S. Department of Justice says that work isn’t being done swiftly enough. The DOJ told the university in a letter last month that it has until the end of May to provide evidence that DEI has been eradicated from Grounds.
Compliance does not guaranteed a univeristy’s financial security, however. The Trump administration has already pulled more than $60 million in researching funding and terminated nearly 40 grants at UVa.
While UVa is working to comply with the executive order that Harvard is fighting, the leaders of both universities have signed a statement circulated by the American Association of Colleges and Universities calling the federal government’s actions an “unprecedented government overreach” and “political interference.”
“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight,” the statement reads. “However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses.”
Suarez highlighted the pressure university administrators are under today, while also poking a little fun at UVa President Jim Ryan.
Ryan, he said, must not have been paying attention when former MLB Commissioner and Yale University President Bart Giamatti said that “being a college president is no way for an adult to make a living.”
Yale, which Suarez referred to as “a school in Connecticut,” was Ryan’s alma mater and he attended while Giamatti was president.
Ryan, who has served as UVa president since 2018, has come under fire in recent years, not only for his handling of Trump’s DEI directive but also an on-Grounds shooting in 2022, which left three students dead; a series of pro-Palestine protests in May of 2024, which ended in state troopers arresting student demonstrators; an uptick in reported antisemitic attacks at the university, which has prompted a lawsuit and criminal investigation; and allegations of criminal and unethical behavior within the university health system, which led to the resignation of UVa Health CEO Dr. Craig Kent in March.
On Thursday, the Jefferson Council, a conservative alumni group with close ties to university and state officials, launched a website, resetuva.com, calling on UVa’s governing Board of Visitors to replace Ryan as president.
“The damage to UVA’s values and traditions is not theoretical — it is palpable and measurable, and is the result of leadership that has failed the entire University community,” Jefferson Council President Joel Gardner said in a statement announcing the launch of the campaign.
Suarez’s message to students Saturday was one of community, not contention.
He urged students to remember all those who helped them along their way to Final Exercises: “the high school teacher who made a subject come alive for the first time; the mentor who believed in you; the mom or dad who sacrificed more than you might even know.”
“Please never fail to remember how you came to this day,” he exhorted. “No one walks the Lawn alone.”
Keeping the atmosphere light, Suarez added, “I think it was Voltaire who said that no student was ever sufficiently grateful to his teachers. If you happened to be in my class, now is the time for you to know that I wear a 16/34 shirt and I drink single malt whiskey.”
ClarificationThis story has been corrected to say 4,655 students received baccalaureate degrees during Saturday’s Final Exercises ceremony.
Source: www.dailyprogress.com