How a Univ. of Virginia gun incident drew DOJ’s ire

Before University of Virginia President James Ryan resigned, the Justice Department pressured him over U.Va's handling of an alleged antisemitic hate crime.

University of Virginia President James Ryan resigned last month amid a Justice Department investigation into allegations the school failed to wipe out its diversity programs. But a letter the agency sent U.Va., released last week as part of a public records request, reveals another reason the Justice Department targeted the university.

In it, the department zeroed in on allegations that a fourth-year Jewish student had endured antisemitic bullying and that U.Va. had mishandled the case.

“The facts surrounding this specific controversy and of the UVa’s alleged deliberate indifference and retaliatory treatment of the victim in response are, in a word, disturbing,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon wrote May 2.

What the letter doesn’t say was just what happened among the students involved — or that it led to a young man’s arrest on gun and hate crime charges.

The details of the incident, covered by local news outlets at the time, have largely gone unnoticed since Ryan announced his resignation on June 27. But additional records obtained by NBC News show how the dispute at an off-campus house escalated into a criminal case that attracted federal attention. They also shed light on how Jewish advocacy groups have pushed the Justice Department to get involved in campus conflicts — and how successful they’ve been in making that happen.