by James A. Bacon
Thomas A. DePasquale, an eight-year veteran of the University of Virginia Board of Visitors, is very unhappy with board colleague Bert Ellis. A dogged defender of President Jim Ryan, he took it upon himself in April to write a missive to other board members criticizing Ellis, who has made no secret of his desire to change the way UVA does business. But before sending the letter, he shared various drafts with others, including Rector Robert Hardie, past rector Frank “Rusty” Conner, and Susan G. Harris, Secretary of the Board of Visitors.
Harris, who has served in the staff position since 2009, responded. She fixed spelling, corrected grammar, and tamed syntax in DePasquale’s jumbled prose. Among the sentiments expressed in the revised draft were the following:
It is after great reflection, working directly with you, participating in meetings of the Board of Visitors, and attending Jefferson Council meeting on April 9th that I have come to this conclusion: that as a Member of the Board of Visitors you have failed and will continue to fail. In this effort you have crossed lines that cannot be excused. …
You have made clear you [sic] lack of skills and basic ethics to serve as a Visitor. You of course owe me no response, but if you have chosen not to resign, I will ask for a special board meeting.
That is not the version that DePasquale ultimately blasted out on April 19 to the full Board of Visitors. The final draft concluded even more explicitly, “Bert, with no pleasure or bad will, I strongly believe that you should resign from Board of Visitors.”
Notified of DePasquale’s letter shortly after its dissemination April 19, The Jefferson Council (TJC) decided not to respond even though TJC leadership objected to his assault on Ellis’ character and his depiction of our annual meeting. As DePasquale’s term on the board would be expiring in June, we thought it prudent to let the letter pass without comment and let any controversy die.
But revelations of Rector Hardie’s foreknowledge of the letter and Harris’ editing of it, which we learned about through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), elevates DePasquale’s communication to a higher level of concern. The FOIA documents don’t reveal what counsel, if any, Hardie offered his board colleague. What seems indisputable, however, is that rather than decline to assist DePasquale in his rambling broadside against a fellow board member, Harris tried to make it more intelligible.
The University of Virginia describes the job of board secretary this way:
The Secretary is the liaison between the Board of Visitors and the President. The Secretary also serves on the President’s Staff. … The Secretary attends all meetings of the Board of Visitors and its committees, recording the minutes of all proceedings.
A key part of Harris’ job is to work with Hardie and President Jim Ryan in setting the agendas — topics, presenters, information, time set aside for discussion — that frame the Board’s deliberations.
Bacon’s Rebellion asked Harris to explain her involvement, and she said that it is a routine part of her job to provide editorial help to board members.
“I edit correspondence from Board members—to members and to others–regularly, and I consider that part of my role. I don’t take a position on the content, merely help them put it together,” she wrote. “In this instance, no-one asked me to edit Tom’s letter—not even Tom. He sent it to me and said he planned to send to Bert. I thought it would be helpful to him to correct some typos and point out parts of the message that I thought were incomprehensible.”
DePasquale’s rant. DePasquale, a graduate of the McIntire School of Commerce and a serial entrepreneur living in Northern Virginia, was appointed by former Governor Terry McAuliffe in 2016 and reappointed by former Governor Ralph Northam in 2020. He serves as chair of the Audit, Compliance and Risk Committee, which oversees auditing and risk mitigation. One of the most voluble board members, he weighs in on many topics. He can always be counted on to lavish praise upon President Jim Ryan and his senior executives for their accomplishments. When other board members raise questions about budgets and policy, he reliably leaps to the administration’s defense.
DePasquale’s tenure expires June 30. As he and four other board members appointed by Democrats rotate off, they will be replaced by individuals nominated by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin. Power will shift from a 9-to-8 majority of Northam appointees to a 13-to-4 majority of Youngkin appointees. However, Hardie will stay on as Rector.
Ellis, who resigned from The Jefferson Council after serving as its founding president, has expressed concern about UVA’s bloated administrative costs, high tuition, intellectual conformity, and hostility toward Jewish students. Although his comments during board sessions have been muted, he has made it clear in private exchanges that he expects the new board to bring about big changes come July 1.
Unaware of DePasquale’s deep personal animus toward Ellis and The Jefferson Council (TJC), TJC leadership invited him (and other board members) to attend our 3rd Annual Meeting April 9. He accepted. We knew of his disagreements with our policy positions but we reserved a place for him at the head table where Council President Tom Neale and other dignitaries were seated. In my opening remarks, I thanked him for attending. “Not everyone will agree with what we have to say here today — and that’s OK,” I said. “We appreciate their willingness to listen. We all share the goal of civil dialogue.”
I didn’t realize it when I spoke those words, but DePasquale was running late. He didn’t arrive until midway through my speech. He entered the room and looked for a seat. Neale motioned for him to come to the head table. Scowling, DePasquale moved to another table where he found an empty seat. He furiously took notes throughout the event. Then he left without having interacted with Neale, Ellis, or any other TJC officer.
The very next day, around 11:00 a.m., DePasquale emailed Harris. The subject line: “Jefferson Council Event. I have not sent needs work but you will get the ruff”
The contents of the email were a mishmash of notes and thoughts from the Annual Meeting.
Among his more coherent cogitations, DePasquale expressed resentment that Ellis had been awarded the White Rose recognition (he misnamed it the white carnation) from the White Rose Society, a group of Jewish Atlantans who praised Ellis’ public stand at a Board of Visitors meeting in defense of Jewish students at UVA. The award, wrote DePasquale “tarnishes the memory of brave children that did fighting that Naziss.” He also mocked Ellis by comparing him to his (DePasquale’s) father who landed at D-Day and fought in the Battle of the Bulge.
He proceeded to take issue with remarks made by TJC President Neale, Open the Books CEO Adam Andrzejewski, University of North Carolina Board of Trustees Chair John Preyer; and even student speakers.
He singled out a third-year student (not by name) who addressed the Annual Meeting about her research into the Jefferson-Hemings controversy, and in the process misrepresented her words by saying, “Thomas Jefferson DNA she proven he did not father those children and added value Hennings was a slut.” (While disputing Jefferson’s paternity, the student never suggested that Hemings was morally deficient, much less a “slut.”) “What a great lesson,” DePasquale wrote. “Nothing proves your not a racist than being a raciwit.”
DePasquale concluded his garbled notes by addressing Bert again: “If I were you and I am not just resign it more pleasant.”
Acknowledging receipt of DePasquale’s email, Harris responded: “Yes I get it. So sad.”
From unstructured rant to letter. By April 13, DePasquale’s spelling- and punctuation-challenged rant had coalesced into a document resembling a letter format. Conveying the draft document in an email to both Harris and Robert D. Hardie, he wrote in the subject line: “I want to get this out.”
“Mr. Ellis It is after great reflection, working directly with you, participating in meeting off the Board Visitor’s, and attending a Jefferson Council meeting on April 9th that l have drafted this request,” he wrote. “Mr. Ellis I watch’s I have reached our and watch more than agenda is guide. And it has failed you as a Member of Board of Visitors. You can believe and advocate as you wish, but as BOV member, you have responsibilities to find fact first, try to resolve concerns within the board, and step carefully when then represent the Commonwealth and rage University and above all else do risk the safety of others by your action.”
DePasquale told Ellis it was “simply not appropriate” to include students in his “self appointed mission.” Referring to the five student speakers at the Jefferson Council event, he said, “you did give they used them for your agenda and you had to know keys parts were simply not true.”
[For the record. Ellis had no input into planning the Annual Meeting program or inviting the student speakers.]
Specifically, DePasquale objected to the remarks of a student who spoke forcefully about untrue Honor Code accusations against him, and he repeated his criticism of the third-year student who spoke about Jefferson and Hemings. He excoriated the denial of Jefferson’s paternity of Hemings’ children as “an extreme example, of racism.”
In the draft letter, DePasquale repeated criticisms of Preyer, chair of the UNC Board of Trustees, and echoed criticisms of speakers that he had tagged in his original brain dump. He also cited an email communication dating to earlier in the month, in which Ellis had told him that there would be huge changes coming to UVA governance and operations on July 1, 2024 when the Youngkin majority took charge.
“If you have not resigned by end of week I will ask for a special board meeting,” DePasquale wrote. “It would be my hope that is the message that is taken to the Governors office.”
Although Hardie was copied on the correspondence, documents recovered from our FOIA request contain no response. Our request did not cover text messages, however, and the substance of unrecorded phone conversations is not recoverable through FOIA, so it is impossible to know if DePasquale and Hardie communicated by other means.
Harris steps in. Early Monday morning, two days later, Harris responded to DePasquale. In the text box, she wrote, “Cleaned up a little–sentences in yellow make no sense to me.”
Harris did more than clean up language, syntax and typos, a significant job in itself. She imposed a modicum of organization to DePasquale’s rambling thoughts and cast his words in more forceful language:
Mr. Ellis, you arrived with an agenda. … You have put your agenda as your only focus, and your efforts to find facts have been used to try to waste huge amounts of time and resources.
As A BOV member, you have responsibilities to find fact first, try to resolve concerns within the board, and step carefully when you act in public, not disparage just for your agenda.
Some of DePasquale’s language was indecipherable, though. Harris highlighted those phrases in yellow. Most appeared toward the end of the letter, where it appears that her efforts to make his prose intelligible ran out of steam. A comparison of drafts suggests that she did minimal editing to the last quarter or so of the letter.
More edits. On April 18, DePasquale emailed another draft to Frank “Rusty” Conner III.
Conner, a partner with the Covington & Burling law firm in Washington, D.C., currently chairs the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority Board. He served as Rector of the UVA Board beginning 2017, where he overlapped with DePasquale’s first term as a board member.
The email subject line stated, “Much shorter much clearer,” indicating that previous communications had taken place. However, The Jefferson Council’s FOIA request yielded no other communications between Conner and DePasquale.
The letter’s language continued to evolve. Not much remained of the original draft or even of Harris’ edits. This time, DePasquale addressed the letter to other UVA board members instead of to Ellis. He dedicated much of his own letter to skewering his fellow board member for comments made in an early April email as well the two students whose speeches he had touched upon in earlier emails.
Still fixated on the student who had disputed the conventional Jefferson Hemings narrative, DePasquale denigrated her scholarship, claiming that “dozens of sources” said otherwise. (He did not cite any of them.) The third-year student’s scholarship, he added, had not undergone “peer review.”
In this latest draft a new theme emerged.
Accusing Ellis of “mouthing off” in public board sessions, DePasquale criticized an award The Jefferson Council bestowed upon Ellis at the Annual Meeting in recognition of his previous service in the face of widespread personal attacks. “Your bravery and courage at the board meeting was much talked about at the meeting. There are very few brave and courageous opportunities on the board,” DePasquale wrote. “What I don’t understand Bert with each Curtin Call you discredit the administration and every member of the board.”
He concluded the latest draft by saying: “I am sorry you that you have squandered this opportunity, and you given me no choice but to stand.”
The letter to the Board. On April 19 DePasquale emailed his letter to the members of the UVA Board of Visitors. Though still marred by typos, bad grammar and awkward syntax, the final version was less unpolished than previous drafts. Substantively, the letter made the tie between Ellis and The Jefferson Council more explicit and suggested that Ellis was pursuing a private agenda synonymous with that of the Council.
He also refrained from attacking the student speakers at the Annual Meeting.
The letter started this way:
It has become clear to me that Bert Ellis has failed and will continue to fail at being a productive and constructive member of the Board of Visitors. He has a private agenda, and he abuses his role to promote that agenda. He arrived on the board with one motivation — to disparage and replace the administration and legacy board members irrespective of the truth. Regardless of claim, he uses The Jefferson Council, which he founded to amplify his voice. Claiming he has little involvement today in the organization.
This time, DePasquale introduced a fresh rhetorical device. By way of context, Ellis had written him earlier that month: “We have had to sit back and politely watch/listen to a lot of things we did not like given we did not have the votes to make serious changes.”
“Who are the “we” you keep referring to?” DePasquale asked.
“To whom do you and other owe your duty as a member of this board?”
“You make very clear that the agenda you are promoting is that of The Jefferson Council,” he wrote. “In essence, you are admitting that you see your fiduciary duties as owing to that organization and not to the University or as recently suggested by the Attorney General, the taxpayers of Virginia.”
Other Board members do not share Ellis’ agenda or that of the Council, which “represents a small number of self-appointed alumni,” DePasquale wrote. The Council, he added, “traffics in facts that at best have been manipulated and distorted” and Ellis “know[s] to be inaccurate in order to provide a false narrative.”
One particular rhetorical flourish in the letter hinted at assisted authorship.
In your email to me you stated, ‘I assume you understand.’
I understand is that I as most board members will adamantly agree, am not here to save the University.
I understand I am not here to make unwarranted accusations or search for issues that are contrived.
I understand that I have no right to promote myself at the expense of my fellow board members
The letter continued in that vein, with prose that was imperfect yet far more polished than anything DePasquale had written in previous emails. He concluded: “Bert, with no pleasure or bad will, I strongly believe that you should resign from Board of Visitors.”
The response. The Jefferson Council’s FOIA request turned up only three responses to DePasquale’s letter: one from Ellis and two from board allies.
“I assume I will not be getting a Christmas card from you this year,” retorted Ellis.
Board member Paul Harris (no relation to Susan Harris) wrote April 22 to say he found DePasquale’s letter “remarkably unchivalrous.” In his private conversations with Ellis, he explained, “I have never heard him say an unfriendly word about you or question your motives. I have only heard him speak kindly of you in good-natured banter.”
Paul Harris concluded: “I hope you would agree that when a Board member speaks up, probes, and prods, his or her actions should not be misconstrued or, worse, discredited as indicia of an agenda-driven personality. Rather, we should accept them, in good faith, as the laudable hallmarks of a colleague with a University mission-driven focus.”
The following day, board member Doug Wetmore answered DePasquale. “I disagree with the substance, tone, and spirit of your letter to Bert and the rest of the UVA Board members. I hold Bert in the highest possible regard. He is a fine gentleman who works very hard, is generous with his time, talents, and treasure, and loves UVA dearly. I respect that you may disagree with some of his opinions (sometimes I do, too), but your remarks about him in your letter were way out of line and a real disappointment.”
Ellis wrote DePasquale again April 30. “I will not be resigning,” he said, “and I shall continue to advocate for changes and improvements that I believe need to happen at UVA.”
James A. Bacon is contributing editor of the Jefferson Councill, having stepped down from his position of executive director, which he held during the Annual Meeting referenced in the article. For this article he relied upon documents uncovered through FOIA by his Jefferson Council colleague Walter Smith.