The University of Virginia tops the 2025 free speech ranking on college campuses, a first for the school founded by Thomas Jefferson.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression surveyed over 250 colleges and universities in its rankings. The foundation survey, administered by College Pulse, surveyed nearly 60,000 undergraduates enrolled full-time in four-year degree programs.
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College enrollment declined nationwide by 15 percent from 2010-21 and still hasn’t returned to pre-pandemic levels, though the 2023-24 school year was the first since 2020 that schools saw an average increase in enrollment.
Virginia colleges also experienced these trends but over a slightly shorter period. As of fall 2023, enrollment in the state’s four-year universities was actually higher than it was at its peak in 2012 but much lower for its community colleges.
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Another university diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator is facing allegations of plagiarism – but neither she nor her employer, the University of California at Los Angeles, has responded publicly to the report.
Natalie Perry, the leader of the Cultural North Star program at the UCLA School of Medicine, and UCLA did not answer multiple requests for comment from The College Fix since a recent investigation alleged she plagiarized large portions of her doctoral dissertation.
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The Anti-Defamation League gives the University of Virginia an “F” in its Campus Antisemitism Report Card as the pro-Palestinian protesters mark another day of demonstrations on campus.
As anti-Zionism demonstrations continue to creep up on college campuses across the nation, the ADL has been active in keeping score of antisemitic incidents prior to the latest campus uprisings, with the goal to serve students and their families information on the “current state of antisemitism on campus” and how those institutions respond.
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A University of Virginia professor on Monday canceled her class to support a walkout on campus timed to coincide with voting on a student referendum calling on the school to divest from companies with ties to Israel.
“I’m writing to let you know that I am canceling class today in solidarity with the ‘Yes on Divest Walkout’ that the UVA Apartheid Divest Coalition organized. I realize this issue is polarizing right now, so I want to take a moment to let you know why I made this choice,” Christa Robbins, an associate professor of art history at UVA, wrote in a Monday email to students, reported the Daily Caller, which obtained a copy of the memo.
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The University of Virginia employs one full-time administrator for every three undergraduates at the school, according to an analysis conducted by The College Fix.
This is roughly a 9.3 percent increase from the 2013-14 school year, according to the analysis, which used data provided by UVA to the federal Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System.
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Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) revealed on Monday he will seek $90 million in his December 20 budget to fund new research at three Virginia universities that have all suffered from antisemitic protests and demonstrations on their campuses, accusations of antisemitic posts from faculty, or claims of failing to accurately reflect Israel’s position in its defensive war against Hamas at university events.
Youngkin announced in a press release Monday that he is seeking “a total of $90 million in one-time funds to the University of Virginia’s Manning Institute for Biotechnology, Virginia Tech’s Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, and the Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medicines for All Institute” that will require them to work with the Virginia Innovation Partnership Authority to increase “commercialization and startup support” for the institutions.
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The University of Virginia (UVA) did little to promote Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday, even as he gathered officials from every public college in the commonwealth at for his “Higher Education Summit on Free Speech and Intellectual Diversity” at the school’s Newcomb Hall to discuss the importance of differing opinions in higher education.
Youngkin told attendees that, “when it comes to freedom of expression, we have to create an environment that protects the ability to challenge conventional thinking,” according to UVA Today. The governor added, “Challenging beliefs and fostering an environment for these debates is exactly why we all exist.”
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The University of Virginia (UVA) Medical School hosted an educational session on April 13, 2022, about starting a “gender-affirming” health program and offered a continuing education credit to healthcare professionals who participated, according to a video recording obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The session, “Starting a Gender Affirming Surgery Program,” was presented by the UVA School of Medicine Center for Health Humanities and Ethics and featured a lecture from “gender-affirming” surgeon, Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langner. In the lecture, Bluebond-Langner described principles that led to the rapid growth of the transgender surgery program at NYU Langone Health and articulated the need for more gender health programs, saying that “more centers are needed to meet the demand.”
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The University of Virginia (UVA) announced a new essay question for the 2023 to 2024 admissions cycle that circumvents the Supreme Court’s ruling that universities can no longer consider race in college admissions.
Applicants are now required, in 300 words, to answer: “What about your background, perspective, or experience will serve as a source of strength for you and those around you at UVA?”
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The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened federal investigations into four universities this week in response to complaints filed by medical watchdog Do No Harm (DNH), according to the organization.
The OCR will investigate Wake Forest University (WFU), the University of Virginia (UVA), the University of Rochester (UR) and Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) for alleged civil rights violations, Do No Harm reported. Senior Fellow Mark Perry filed a joint complaint against WFU and UVA, alleging the institutions used school resources to partner with an organization whose activities violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, while Program Manager Laura Morgan violated complaints against UR and TJU for allegedly participating in programs that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
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Former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., will take up a post as a professor at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
“I am delighted to be joining the UVA Center for Politics as a Professor of Practice,” Cheney stated in university press release. “Preserving our constitutional republic is the most important work of our time, and our nation’s young people will play a crucial role in this effort. I look forward to working with students and colleagues at the Center to advance the important work they and others at the University of Virginia are doing to improve the health of democracy here and around the world.”
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After three football players were killed in a shooting at the University of Virginia and six people were killed in a shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake, gun groups are cautioning against efforts to impose stricter gun control measures.
On November 13, three UVA football players were killed after a man allegedly opened fire in a bus after returning to the university from a class trip. A little more than a week later, six people were killed in a Walmart in Chesapeake after a man allegedly opened fire because of grievances against some Walmart employees.
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Delegate Sally Hudson (D-Charlottesville) announced her campaign for Senate District 11 on Monday, pitting her against Senator Creigh Deeds (D-Bath). That sets up a dynamic of a progressive challenger against a more moderate Democrat incumbent that is likely to typify the 2023 Virginia State Senate Democratic primaries, according to CNalysis Executive Director Chaz Nuttycombe.
“The Dems aren’t as united as they were back in the Trump era or even in 2021. So I think the left sees the opportunities they can make this year, especially with redistricting, because if not now, when,” Nuttycombe told The Virginia Star.
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University of Virginia’s student government voted on Tuesday in favor of divesting the university’s holdings and endowment from institutions linked to Chinese Communist Party’s abuses of the Muslim Uyghur people.
The Athenai Institute, a nonpartisan student group that advocates for CCP divestment, celebrated the news.
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RICHMOND, Virginia – Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow said the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) needs more time to prepare updated drafts for review of new Historical and Social Sciences Standards and accompanying curriculum frameworks. That’s another delay in approval and implementation of the standards after Balow first asked for more time in August.
“Since the September Board meeting, new board members have raised important concerns and questions about the draft standards. Additionally, we sought reviews by individuals and entities, whose voices had not yet been heard. Meanwhile, VDOE staff has worked diligently, to correct errors, remove repetition, reorder guidance, and edit language so that parents, educators, and students can understand and use the standards document,” Balow said in a Monday memo to the board.
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George Mason University’s (GMU) Board of Visitors voted Thursday to refund a three percent tuition increase charged to undergraduates for the 2022-2023 academic year. GMU was the last holdout among Virginia’s public colleges and universities resisting Governor Glenn Youngkin’s call for a tuition freeze.
“Today, George Mason University joined the 14 other public college and university boards, which serve more than a quarter-million undergraduate college students in Virginia, by pledging to keep tuition flat for in-state students,” Youngkin said in a Thursday press release.
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At the University of Virginia, the student-run newspaper issued a public call to remove the name of the university’s founder, Thomas Jefferson, from campus.
According to Fox News, the op-ed in The Cavalier Daily claimed that Thomas Jefferson “glorifies racists, slaveholders and eugenicists,” while offering no evidence to support this assertion.
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All but one public university in Virginia are taking steps to address students’ tuition burden after a call to action from the governor.
Earlier this year, Glenn Youngkin requested that the commonwealth’s public universities reverse their planned tuition increases, citing inflation.
The University of Virginia (UVA) is the only public university not to announce a plan to reverse its tuition increase. NBC29 reports that UVA students will see a 4.7% tuition and fee increase, raising rates for first-year in-state students to $14,878 and $50,348 for out-of-state students.
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Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares (R) doubled down on his position that if public universities want to mandate COVID-19 vaccines, they must wait until the General Assembly passes a law to that effect.
“The COVID-19 vaccine is a critical tool in our fight against COVID-19, and it could save your life. The Attorney General has been vaccinated , has received the booster, and he encourages everyone to get the vaccine,” Miyares’ spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita told The Virginia Star. “He also promised to be an Attorney General that calls balls and strikes – and according to Virginia law, only the General Assembly can enact a statute that requires the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of enrollment or in-person attendance, as it has with six other vaccines.”
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Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Campus Reform obtained copies of the syllabi from Spring 2021 undergraduate sociology classes at six universities.
Universities include: the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Ohio State University–Columbus, University of Wisconsin–Madison, and University of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign.
In total, Campus Reform surveyed 201 undergraduate course syllabi across these institutions. This number included 25 100-level introduction to sociology courses, which are sometimes taken by non-majors to fulfill general education requirements. The results of the survey, divided into the categories of assignments, biased language, and common textbooks and readings, are below.
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Some Virginia universities have started kicking out students who refused to get vaccinated against COVID-19 and other institutions may start following suit.
Virginia Tech disenrolled 134 students this week who did not receive the vaccine. Before that, the University of Virginia disenrolled 288 students, and William & Mary withdrew 42 students for the same reason. All three universities require students be vaccinated against COVID-19 unless they receive a medical or religious exemption.
“Of the approximately 37,000 students enrolled at Virginia Tech, 134 students were not in compliance with the COVID-19 vaccination requirement, meaning that they did not submit vaccination documentation or receive a medical or religious exemption,” a statement on Virginia Tech’s website read. “These students have been disenrolled. The university does not know whether any of these students were not planning to return for reasons unrelated to the COVID-19 vaccine requirement.”
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Russia investigation Special Counsel Robert Mueller will help teach a class on that investigation and the role of a special investigator at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Law, UVA announced Wednesday. Deputy Special Counsel Aaron Zebley and two other senior members of the team will teach the six-session in-person class next fall, with Mueller leading at least one class.
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The University of Virginia is permitting “undocumented” students to waive their $400 enrollment deposits.
On April 27, undocUVA — a student activist group — called on the university to “do better” in extending financial aid to classmates illegally present in the United States.
“Matriculating marginalized students without providing adequate resources for them is a strategy of exclusion,” said an undocUVA statement.
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University of Virginia associate professor Ebony Hilton is calling on Joe Biden to create a secretary of equity.
Hilton is an associate professor anesthesiology at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. She was featured in one of Joe Biden’s campaign ads discussing COVID-19’s “impact on communities of color” and the “social determinants of health.”
Hilton is also the medical director of Goodstock Consulting, which is a medical consulting firm “committed to implementing policies that result in #HealthEquity.” In a tweet, Hilton states that this means “challenging all negative influencers of the social determinants of health.”
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Four University of Virginia (UVA) undergraduates have created a website called The Collegepedia that aims to make the process of finding the latest reliable, college-specific news about COVID-19 at universities throughout the Commonwealth easier.
“[Journalists] have been working tirelessly to keep communities informed about their health and safety, but there is no single media outlet or aggregator that compiles all of these stories, searchable by community, in an easy to read and straight to the point format. So, we wanted to fill that void.” UVA senior Nik Popli, one of the website’s creators, told The Virginia Star.
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The University of Virginia (UVA) announced Monday the school is extending the optional credit grading policy, originally implemented this fall, for all undergraduate and certain graduate classes during January-term and the spring 2021 semester.
Provost Liz Magill made the announcement in a letter to students, which included details on how the grading policy will work.
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University of Virginia (UVA) postdoctoral fellow and former George Mason University (GMU) professor David Walsh called for government overthrow if Democratic challenger Joe Biden loses the election.
“Here’s the thing: if the worst-case scenario happens next week, Americans don’t need to just ‘protest.’ They need to actively try to topple the government,” wrote Walsh. “Also worth nothing that the military has already made it clear that in such a scenario, they’re not going to back Trump.”
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Increases in homeschooling and working from home triggered by COVID-19 closures may have permanent impacts, according to University of Virginia (UVA) researcher Hamilton Lombard.
“Based on trends over the past few decades, the number of homeschoolers and telecommuters were both expected to continue growing rapidly even before the pandemic. If Virginia’s homeschoolers were a school division, they would be one of Virginia’s largest school divisions, and easily its fastest growing,” Lombard told UVA Today.
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University of Virginia President Jim Ryan announced that the school will contextualize a monument to its founder Thomas Jefferson. Ryan said the move is part of a broad effort to make the university both “great and good.”
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As many colleges and universities in Virginia continue on with in-person instruction for the 2020 fall semester during the coronavirus pandemic, the schools’ COVID-19 dashboards offer insights into how the pandemic is affecting those institutions.
Since the global pandemic hit the United States back in March, more and more schools have created online COVID dashboards that present a plethora of data on total tests, case counts, positivity percentage and 7-day moving averages for positive tests.
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Enrollment in Virginia’s public and private nonprofit colleges and universities for the fall semester declined by 1.3 percent or 6,658 students, according to early enrollment estimates from the State Council of Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV) released Tuesday.
The data used by SCHEV is directly provided by 64 colleges and universities located in the Commonwealth, including some of the state’s most prestigious and largest schools such as William and Mary, Virginia Tech, University of Virginia, Virginia Commonwealth University and Washington and Lee University.
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Governor Ralph Northam announced Friday that he and his wife, First Lady Pamela Northam, have tested positive for COVID-19. The Northams received testing after learning that one of the governor’s staff members tested positive.
Northam reports that he is asymptomatic; his wife is experiencing “mild symptoms.” The pair plan to isolate for ten days and then undergo another examination, according to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) guidelines.
The Charlottesville U.S. Attorney’s office dropped all charges of trade secret theft and computer intrusion against visiting Chinese scientist Haizhou Hu. The prosecution determined that some of the trade secrets were within Hu’s authorized access while at University of Virginia (UVA).
Hu has ties to the Chinese military. The researcher works for the Chinese Key Laboratory for Fluid Dynamics at China’s Beihang University, which the Chinese government and military both fund.
University of Virginia (UVA) President Jim Ryan announced new COVID-19 restrictions on Tuesday prohibiting student gathering of five or more people, mandating constant use of masks or face coverings and banning travel and visitors coming to campus for at least the next two weeks.
The restrictions apply to students, faculty and staff, living on and off campus, and went into effect on Wednesday at 9 a.m.
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Virginia Tech and the University of Virginia (UVA) announced Saturday they are postponing the first game of the season because of COVID-19 issues at Virginia Tech.
The game, otherwise known as the Commonwealth Cup, was slated to be played September 19, in Blacksburg.
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A campus workers union at the University of Virginia (UVA) has launched a mutual fund in order to provide university staff with personal protective equipment (PPE) and raise money in the form of an emergency fund for potential furloughs as in-person instruction began Tuesday.
The union, United Campus Workers of Virginia at UVA (UCWVA-UVA), announced the formation of the fund via press release.
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The University of Virginia (UVA) athletics department announced Friday that no fans will be allowed at fall sporting events until further notice, including football.
The current state guidelines for sports venues under the Forward Virginia plan put in place by the Commonwealth allow for less than 50 percent occupancy of the facility or 1,000 people.
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University of Virginia employees have formed a new union and launched a campaign Monday centered around moving the school’s current hybrid instruction model to a fully virtual fall semester.
The union, United Campus Workers of Virginia (UCW-VA), is composed of undergraduate and graduate student works as well as university of Virginia (UVA) faculty and staff.
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Uncertainty still looms over the Virginia football program with no official decision from the Atlantic Coastal Conference (ACC) about the fastly-approaching 2020 fall season.
Just like many other Division 1 football teams, Virginia is waiting for a decision on whether a modified season will be played as athletic directors, school presidents and chancellors and the league continue discussions.
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by Rob Shimshock Two University of Virginia historians resigned their posts at the school’s center for public policy and presidential scholarship on Monday after the university hired a former Trump aide. UVA scholars Melvyn P. Leffler and William I. Hitchcock quit the school’s Miller Center after the center hired…
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