This Is Not a Legitimate Appointment Process
On Monday August 4, 2025, the University of Virginia (UVA) Board of Visitors (BOV) appointed Paul G. Mahoney, professor and former dean of the UVA School of Law, to serve as Interim President for the University of Virginia.
Today’s appointment was not an example of shared governance but the result of a closed and exclusionary process masquerading as inclusion. It was designed to pre-screen participation, silence dissent, and provide the appearance — not the reality — of democratic input. Today the BOV patted itself on the back for welcoming community feedback, which consisted of setting up a nomination website and hosting several, small listening sessions. However, no information was provided on how feedback was considered — or even if it was, or who was in attendance in those listening sessions or why those individuals were invited. When the process operates without transparency, with haste, and listening session participation is by invitation only and held secret, it’s not community engagement — it’s gatekeeping, legitimacy laundering, and message management. Faculty, staff, students, and community members were not involved in this process as decision-makers but as props in a predetermined outcome. This is an unethical betrayal of UVA’s public mission and its longstanding norms of shared-governance.
Let us be clear: this is not a legitimate process. It is a backroom consolidation of power by a politicized Board of Visitors, installed and emboldened by Governor Youngkin’s partisan agenda. At a time when UVA needs visionary, democratic, and community-rooted leadership, the BOV has chosen secrecy and control.
We Refuse to Be Governed Without Decision-Making Authority
Our union — the UVA chapter of UCWVA — joins students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members in rejecting the idea that the University’s future can or should be decided by a handful of unaccountable political appointees. We call on all members of the UVA community to:
- Denounce this appointment as the outcome of an illegitimate process.
- Withhold cooperation from any administrative process not grounded in democratic input.
- Join the growing movement for real shared governance among faculty, students, staff, and community members in all major decisions.
The University of Virginia is a world-class public university. It collectively belongs to the people of Virginia and to those who teach here, clean here, study here, heal here, and build here — not to partisan boards. The University is also answerable to the communities who are displaced by it, pay rent to it, cheer for it, work with it, are studied by it, teach it, rely on it, and are otherwise affected by its actions. We will not be silent while this University is reshaped in the service of personal, political, and corporate agendas. We will continue to resist illegitimate power grabs and make sure that UVA is a public institution that serves the public good.
Any group you are part of, whether affiliated with UVA or not, can declare No Confidence in the BOV. Let us know you are participating with this form, and you can find sample No Confidence language here.
UVA’s crisis is not over, but a new movement is rising. We invite all workers, students, and allies to stand with us in making a democratic, just, and public future for this University.
In Solidarity,
Watch the Press Conference and Read the Transcript
On August 6 2025, Student Council, American Association of University Professors–UVA, Jewish Faculty and Staff, and UCWVA held a press conference to express their frustrations with the lack of transparency by the Board of Visitors in the selection of the Interim President. Watch below and read the transcript.
Coverage
University community leaders gather at the Rotunda to speak about interim President Mahoney, Xander Tilock, The Cavalier Daily, August 11, 2025
Frustrated by BOV, Broadcast segment, CBS 19 News, August 6, 2025
UVA student and faculty leaders speak out on interim president, Sarah Allen, CBS 19 News, August 6, 2025