Jim Ryan gets the last laugh: Staying on as full professor at UVA

Wonder how this is going to play for the Trumpers, that Jim Ryan isn’t leaving the University of Virginia for good.

Suckers.

The news here is, Ryan and the UVA Board of Visitors agreed Wednesday that Ryan, the school’s president since 2018, will leave that post on July 11.

In his letter of resignation to the board last week, delivered at the point of a Justice Department bayonet, Ryan had offered to step down no later than Aug. 15, while saying his resignation could also be considered effective immediately.

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ICYMI

• Jim Ryan explains decision to step down as UVA president: ‘Real and direct harm’
• UVA leaders lay out how things will proceed with Jim Ryan’s pending departure

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The BOV has already moved to name Jennifer “J.J.” Wagner Davis, UVA’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, and a member of Ryan’s inner leadership circle, to serve as acting president, until an interim president can be named.

Lots of semantics there, because the board also has to initiate a search for a full-time replacement, which almost certainly won’t be anywhere near completion by the time we have a new governor-elect in November.

That’s significant because the odds-on favorite to be the next governor is the Democratic Party nominee, Abigail Spanberger, who has signaled her intention to fire the MAGA majority Board of Visitors in favor of a fresh slate of board members who aren’t Trumpers.

Back to Ryan, and how he’s not actually going to be leaving UVA: the agreement with the BOV has it that Ryan will be going on sabbatical on July 11, and upon his return, will be a full professor in the School of Law and the School of Education and Human Development.

That little ditty, by the way, is buried in the minutiae of Ryan’s contract with UVA, which spells out that in the event of “termination without cause,” “at his election, and pursuant to Section F.5 of this Agreement, Mr. Ryan may continue employment with the University as a tenured faculty member.”

Now, yes, technically, Ryan wasn’t fired, he resigned, but, come on, we all know how this went down.

Section F.5 of Ryan’s contract spells out that “his faculty salary shall be equal to seventy-five percent (75%) of his Annual Salary as President.”

His annual salary as president: $1.1 million.

Seventy-five percent of that: $825,000.

That’s what the UVA Board of Visitors is paying to do the Trump administration’s political bidding.