The University of Virginia’s Republican-controlled board voted Friday to appoint a new president weeks before a Democratic governor assumes power, a move that comes six months after the campus was rocked when its previous president resigned under pressure from the Trump administration.
The board appointed Scott C. Beardsley, the longtime dean of the university’s Darden School of Business, at a time when the leadership of Virginia’s flagship public university has become a political issue.
The governor-elect, Abigail Spanberger, has been critical of the university’s Board of Visitors, saying it appeared to capitulate to the Trump administration’s demands to oust its previous president, James E. Ryan. She had demanded the selection be delayed until after her inauguration on Jan. 17.
Criticism of the selection process had also come from faculty members, alumni and students, who called it opaque and rushed.
But top board members said they turned to Dr. Beardsley because the university needed a leader capable of addressing issues as dynamic and diverse as federal research funding, academic freedom and athletics. They said that the search committee included a range of people with varying perspectives, that the process was driven by simply selecting the best leader and that the Justice Department had not told them whom to pick.
Now, the university is hoping that Dr. Beardsley’s apolitical background and business credentials will make him palatable to both Republicans and Democrats in the state while also not drawing the ire of the Trump Justice Department. A former top executive of the consulting giant McKinsey, Dr. Beardsley, 62, has received high marks for his stewardship of the well-regarded Darden School, and some insiders viewed him as a consensus selection.
In a short interview before the vote, Dr. Beardsley emphasized that he was a “fact-based person” and a leader focused on solving problems, not someone interested in being pulled into divisive political fights or doing the bidding of any political party.
He pointed to his background both in academia, under a range of leaders, and in business, working in a range of countries, as evidence that he could work with different people to govern a complex institution like the University of Virginia, which has more than 40,000 students and a health system.
“I focus on commonality,” he said.
Dr. Beardsley succeeds Mr. Ryan, a legal scholar who was popular among faculty and students but who resigned this summer after the Trump administration’s Justice Department pressured him to step aside or face funding cuts and a thicket of investigations. Trump officials and a conservative alumni group, the Jefferson Council, had criticized Mr. Ryan’s support for campus diversity initiatives.
In a statement Friday, the Jefferson Council praised Dr. Beardsley’s “deep experience within U.Va.” and said he would guide “a renewed emphasis on creating a real level playing field for the free and civil exchange of ideas.”
Dr. Beardsley said he planned to ask Mr. Ryan, who is expected to return to the University of Virginia to teach next year, for advice on how to lead the university. He described Mr. Ryan as an “incredible” teacher and said he looked forward to seeing him back on campus.
When asked about the Trump administration’s wide-ranging efforts over the past year to remake higher education, Dr. Beardsley said, “It is not my job to critique the federal government.” He added that higher education was facing complicated issues like affordability and that his “main focus is looking to the future.”
But a number of university professors and alumni expressed skepticism about both the fast-tracked process that led to Dr. Beardsley’s selection as well as his credentials for the job.
Even before learning Dr. Beardsley’s name, Walter F. Heinecke, a previous president of the campus chapter of the American Association of University Professors, predicted that he would receive an icy reception.
“I think the faculty senate has made clear that anybody who’s appointed before Spanberger takes office is not going to get a warm welcome,” said Dr. Heinecke, an associate professor of educational research, who noted that searches to replace university presidents normally take a year or more.
Ann Brown, co-chair of the progressive alumni organization Wahoos4UVA, agreed that any president chosen by the current Board of Visitors would face challenges. “That person would just be walking into a terribly difficult moment to lead U.Va.,” she said.
William H. Goodwin Jr., a major donor to the university and a former head of the board, praised the choice. “He understands that higher education is more complicated than it’s ever been, and as someone who spent more than two dozen years in the business world, he learned how to make tough calls and bring people together,” Mr. Goodwin said.
As word of Dr. Beardsley’s selection spread, some faculty members, including Matthew Hedstrom, a religious historian, were dubious.
“It seems like somebody with that kind of consulting background and without deep roots in the classroom or in research is exactly the wrong profile of somebody to lead us into the headwinds that we’re facing,” he said.
The university’s 17-member Board of Visitors has been operating with five vacancies because Democratic lawmakers rejected picks by the outgoing governor, Glenn Youngkin, a Republican. Ms. Spanberger is expected to fill those seats shortly after she takes office on Jan. 17.
There is a question about whether the board that voted to approve Dr. Beardsley is legally constituted. Under Virginia law, the board must have 12 members who are Virginia residents and 12 alumni of the university. Ms. Brown has argued that the board, with its vacancies, does not have enough people to act.
Creigh Deeds, a Virginia state senator and a Democrat, said he believed that Ms. Spanberger would fire some existing board members to make way for her own appointments, and that a new board could move quickly to replace Dr. Beardsley.
“My concern is that, right now, the Board of Visitors has shown a willingness to allow the federal government to dictate policy. That’s not acceptable,” he said in an interview this week. “The governor-elect has made her feelings clear that the process should stop.”
In a letter to the board last month, Ms. Spanberger said public confidence in the board had been severely undermined by its response to the Trump administration’s intervention at the university.
Since Mr. Ryan stepped down, his role had been filled by Paul G. Mahoney, a former dean of the university’s law school. Mr. Mahoney was considered a front-runner to succeed Mr. Ryan, and it was not clear whether he took his name out of the running for the job or, if he did not, why the board chose Dr. Beardsley instead.
The terms of Dr. Beardsley’s contract were also not immediately clear.
Dr. Beardsley joined the Darden School of Business in 2015 after 25 years with McKinsey. He was based in Brussels for much of the time, but advised clients across the globe, including in Qatar, Singapore and Costa Rica. He holds degrees from Tufts, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a doctorate of education in 2015. Dr. Beardsley, who has been praised for his fund-raising skills, established a new part-time M.B.A. campus in Rosslyn, Va., outside Washington.
Rich Griset contributed reporting from Charlottesville, Va.
Stephanie Saul reports on colleges and universities, with a recent focus on the dramatic changes in college admissions and the debate around diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education.
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