Democracy Dies in Darkness
Higher Education

In texts, Youngkin appointee plots ‘battle royale for the soul of UVA’

Cellphone messages offer unfiltered view of Bert Ellis’s fight against giving slavery too much weight in University of Virginia’s story

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Updated February 23, 2023 at 2:40 p.m. EST|Published February 23, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST
Bert Ellis, shown on the University of Virginia campus in Charlottesville in July 2022, was appointed to the university's governing board last year by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). (Jason Lappa for The Washington Post)
10 min

After Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) named him last summer to the University of Virginia’s governing board, Bert Ellis had a platform to influence the school’s administration. He spotted a potential target, a vice provost named Louis P. Nelson, tasked with community engagement, public service and academic outreach programs.

Nelson, who reports to U-Va.’s chief academic officer, Provost Ian Baucom, is also a professor of architectural history and an award-winning scholar and teacher. He has researched buildings and landscapes that shaped slavery in West Africa and the Americas, including at the prestigious public university that Thomas Jefferson founded in Charlottesville.