“We’re gonna pull D.E.I. out by the roots, put Roundup in the holes, and plug the holes with concrete,” Bert Ellis told me in late July. The metaphor may sound hyperbolic, but the agenda is real. Ellis—a prominent donor to the University of Virginia—is a businessman and co-founder of the Jefferson Council, an alumni group that seeks to defend “free expression, viewpoint diversity, and academic excellence.”
By the summer of 2025, Ellis and his allies had achieved what once seemed unthinkable: on June 27, Jim Ryan, UVA’s widely respected president, resigned under pressure from both a university board shaped by the Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, and by Trump’s new, MAGA-fied Department of Justice.
