Will Youngkin Lead on Higher Education?
Glenn Youngkin was elected Governor of Virginia largely on the promise to root ideology out of education and refocus on the basics. His leadership on education, however, has not been much the subject of national conversation or peer emulation. Virginia has not been one of the ten states to pass universal Education Savings Accounts, nor has Youngkin overseen a major legislative victory like DeSantis’s Parental Rights in Education Act or Huckabee Sanders’ LEARNS Act.
In fairness, of course, Youngkin has not had a friendly legislative majority to accomplish such a victory. But there are other ways to lead. And we should know before the Republican convention whether Youngkin intends to become a national leader on higher education.
The power of Governors over higher education is not necessarily limited by the legislature. In states such as Florida and Virginia, governors have the power to appoint Trustees or Visitors to oversee public colleges. Traditionally, governors have seen this as little more than an opportunity to dole out petty patronage: “Thanks for donating a lot to my campaign, I’ll make you a trustee at Flagship State U. and you can impress your friends with great college football tickets.”
DeSantis fundamentally changed this game when he appointed Chris Rufo, Mark Bauerlein, and others to the board of New College. While the attempt at a total institutional makeover made waves of national headlines, the most important lesson learned from this episode was simply that governors can exert influence over public universities through trustees. They can help to keep institutions aligned with taxpayer interests.
The flip side of that, of course, is that people realized that the buck for public universities ultimately stops with the governor. As illustrated in a recent investigation by Open the Books, a fiscal transparency non-profit that one of us leads, the University of Virginia is on a course to spend approximately one billion dollars on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). The investment is part of a ten-year strategic plan that involves hundreds of employees, community relations in Charlottesville, and multiple offices dedicated to DEI.
As Americans have come to realize, DEI does not simply mean “being nice and welcoming to minorities.” It is an ideological engine for anti-White, anti-Western, and anti-Semitic hatred. It is incompatible with competence, much less academic excellence. It is fundamentally antithetical to the traditional mission of a public university that taxpayers have agreed to subsidize.
One test of being an effective conservative governor is dismantling DEI. DeSantis has done it. Abbott has done it. Reynolds and Stitt are doing it. So, why is Youngkin set to oversee his flagship university dropping about a billion dollars on leftist indoctrination and administrative coercion?
He certainly doesn’t need to. Although this aspect of his governorship has garnered little attention, Youngkin has appointed a truly excellent and deeply principled set of individuals to be Visitors (Virginia’s word for trustees) at its public colleges. These Visitors have already taken some effective and useful actions – such as blocking George Mason from mandating DEI indoctrination through a DEI course requirement for graduation.
For the most part, the next wave of Youngkin Visitor appointees is set to give him an ideological majority on the boards of Virginia public universities. Visitors have vast powers. In theory, every Virginia college could see a makeover as extensive as that of New College. In practice, of course, there’s no mandate and little need for anything so drastic. But Youngkin was elected on a mandate to root out leftist ideology and restore academic excellence.
His Visitors could start by eliminating all DEI administrative positions and campus programming. They could then ensure that no public university in Virginia utilizes a “DEI Statement” for faculty hiring – ideological litmus tests that even the liberal Washington Post editorial board has turned against. No public Virginia university should have a “Bias Reporting System” – essentially a speech snitch line for students to rat on each other for saying anything politically incorrect.
Youngkin’s Visitors need not confine themselves to stopping bad things. They could also redirect their universities toward the study and transmission of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Red state legislatures have been creating line items for special centers for the study of Western Civilization in public colleges. Visitors and trustees need not wait around for such dispensation – they could create it themselves. All funding for DEI could be redirected to the study of the Constitution and great books, for example.
Maybe all this is already in store. But there’s been surprisingly little murmur about anything along these lines, and such executive initiatives rarely spring straight into full existence like Athena from the head of Zeus. So, with most boards set to flip to Youngkin’s control in about a month, we should know before his party’s leaders meet in Milwaukee whether he intends to become a national leader on higher education.
