When my opponent does something, it is “politicizing.” When I do it, it is “defending.” This is essentially the argument being made by Virginia’s new governor, Abigail Spanberger, and her allies in higher education.
On the day Spanberger was inaugurated, she took control of the Boards of Visitors that govern several public universities by forcing appointees of her predecessor to resign, filling those and other vacant spots with dozens of her own appointees. There were numerous vacancies because Virginia’s legislature refused to confirm many nominations by her predecessor, Glenn Youngkin.
In Virginia, the governor gets to appoint members to the board of public universities. But the timing of those appointments is staggered, so that a new governor would only have appointed a majority toward the end of his or her single four-year term. By refusing to confirm appointments, the Virginia legislature blocked Youngkin’s appointees from fully controlling those universities.
The justification many offered is that Youngkin was acting inappropriately by attempting to control the governance of higher education.
According to Bethany Letiecq, an associate professor of Research Methods, and Human Development and Family Science, at George Mason University in Northern Virginia and one of the leaders of its faculty union: “Governor Youngkin, stymied by a state legislature led by Democrats, has politicized BOVs [Board of Visitors] across the Commonwealth, including at the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute and Mason, to do his bidding.”
When Youngkin tried to appoint a majority to these boards, he was politicizing them to do his bidding. When Spanberger appoints a majority in one fell swoop, she is defending these institutions against external interference, as Letiecq said to The New York Times: “She expected Ms. Spanberger, a former member of Congress, to defend the state’s university system against the White House, as well as to rescind some of the initiatives imposed in recent years by appointees of Glenn Youngkin, the outgoing Republican governor.”
If you think that Youngkin’s appointees were politicizing higher education while Spanberger’s are defending it, let’s compare notes.
In June 2024, Youngkin nominated Kenneth L. Marcus to the Board of Visitors for George Mason University. Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center and a former assistant secretary for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Education, is one of the nation’s leading attorneys fighting antisemitism at universities. Given that George Mason is under investigation by the federal government for rampant antisemitism, including multiple threats of violence that resulted in the arrest of Mason students, Marcus seems to be a fitting choice. But organized opposition by anti-Israel groups helped block Youngkin from getting him on the board.
By contrast, Spanberger appointed former Reps. James Moran and Tom Davis to the Mason board. After retiring from Congress, Moran became a registered foreign agent for the government of Qatar; Davis works as a subcontractor to Moran lobbying for Qatar.
Qatar is known for sponsoring Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, and has made generous donations to American universities to advance the agendas of these organizations.
Why is the board appointee fighting antisemitism the one who is “politicizing” higher education, but the appointees who are literally paid lobbyists for radical Islamists the ones “defending” higher education?
As is too common in modern politics, actions are praised or condemned based on the desired result, not conformity to traditional processes. Even more disappointing is why the higher-ed establishment would want to embrace results that promote Jew-hatred, rather than combat it.
