UVA president: ‘the university itself should not be the critic’

The University of Virginia’s (UVA) president has defended his decision to remain resolutely “apolitical”, arguing institutional neutrality is crucial for ensuring both viewpoint diversity and academic freedom on campus.

“In a world that’s political, I’m not political. I’m an apolitical person,” explained Scott Beardsley, who took over the public research university in January six months after it was targeted by Donald Trump’s crackdown on universities’ diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies.

That led to the forced resignation of former president Jim Ryan in June amid threats that federal funders would withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants and student aid from Virginia’s flagship public university unless Ryan quit.

The episode – the first time in US history that federal authorities explicitly tied funding to the resignation of a university president – was condemned by civil liberties groups and faculty unions as an “unprecedented government intrusion” in a state university’s operations.

Founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 and long regarded as a bastion of free speech, the past year pushed Virginia into the centre of national debates over whether university leaders can still stand up to political pressure or ever speak freely about issues of national concern, using their platform as representatives of the academic community.

Speaking to Times Higher Education on a recent visit to London, Beardsley dismissed concerns that the voice of faculty and students at the Charlottesville university had been sidelined amid political pressure from Washington over the past 12 months.

“I don’t think anybody’s voices have been silenced – that you hear people speak up is indicative of the fact that there is the freedom to speak up, and they do,” said Beardsley, a former McKinsey partner, whose main initial focus has been to develop a new university-wide strategy.

“My focus has been to do what I always do – listen to people, ask a lot of questions and get a lot of stakeholder input. I go to the front lines, listen to what people have to say, run a collaborative process to develop the strategy,” continued Beardsley.

“We’re starting a lengthy strategic planning process involving lots of people. Everybody that wants to weigh in can weigh in, all the different stakeholder groups,” he said.

With US universities under continued attack over the past year and a half, many academics have been disappointed by the failure of institutional leaders to push back on several fronts, not least attempts to control campus policies on admission and hiring, fee levels and student protests. For some, Trump’s second term has marked the end of the university president as a public figure ready to stand up for the values of academic freedom and institutional independence.

Beardsley sees the matter differently. “I think university leaders are public figures just by virtue of leading a large employer and representing a lot of people. In Virginia, where UVA has 60,000 faculty, staff, and students, the role of president is a public figure. But whether or not you make statements that are political in nature is a different question,” he said.

“People are often asking me about AI, or about a new drug discovery, or what’s happening in this research area, biotech or sports – there is still a lot of interaction and conversation,” he explained.

His predecessor’s decision to sign up to institutional neutrality in September 2024, with management no longer providing opinions on social or political questions, was the right call, said Beardsley.

“Not every university believes in institutional neutrality, but some do,” said Beardsley, who said that position asserted a “university should be a place where academic freedom thrives, and where critics can say whatever they have to say about academic research, but the university itself should not be the critic and take a point of view on everybody’s research or on every issue”.

“That’s the way we operate and I think that’s appropriate,” he continued, stating his background in business informed the wisdom of remaining “apolitical” in most situations.

“I learned that it’s not helpful if I’m working in Singapore, China, Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Belgium, the UK, and I arrive in the country and start making political statements. I didn’t find that that was very helpful, professionally or otherwise,” he said.

That said, Beardsley said he was keen to continue UVA’s tradition of free speech and welcoming speakers from across the political spectrum.

“Thomas Jefferson himself wanted the university to be a place where freedom of speech lived, and so we try and uphold that. Sometimes we have debates among people that are from different political spectrums, and they come and debate each other,” he said.

“We don’t have the Oxford Union, but we do have different points of view [on campus],” he continued, noting “sometimes one day it won’t necessarily be a debate and you’ll have a Republican come or you’ll have a Democrat that will come, and they’ll say whatever they have to say.”

“They may say something very partisan, which is what you would expect, but my hope is that universities should encourage and I certainly encourage that at UVA,” he said, stating that: “Viewpoint diversity matters because that’s how you learn.”

At the age of 63, Beardsley has just completed a master’s on artificial intelligence and ethics at the University of Oxford, where he became the oldest player to play in the annual Varsity tennis match against the University of Cambridge in 2024.

Marshalling opposing arguments was key to succeeding in that course, with the Socratic method also used prominently at UVA’s Darden business school, which he led for a decade from 2015 until taking the university presidency this year.

“The very structure of the essay was write your argument on a controversial question, then write the argument against your argument, and then rebut that argument. That was the structure of every paper and that is what critical thinking is about, isn’t it? It’s about critiquing and finding alternative interpretations of what the same thing could mean to different people,” he said.

“At UVA we’re trying to do that, which is why it’s important to have as part of learning to hear different points of view,” he said.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com