Why do I have the feeling that former University of Virginia President James Ryan did not sign the NDA and take the money Virginia likely offered him? The feeling comes from the simple fact that he wrote a long, unfiltered, twelve page letter to faculty that did not read like something a person writes after being paid or forced to stay silent. People who sign NDAs rarely offer the public a detailed account of the pressures they faced, the conversations that shaped their last days in office, or the power brokers who worked queitly behind the scenes to force an outcome. They do not list the actors involved or describe the political tension that led to their departure. They usually fade into the background and institutional silence after their exit is announced.

The truth is that many people across multiple sectors carry a twelve page letter inside them that is screaming to come out. These individuals often know truths about what they have seen and heard that have never been spoken out loud because the cost of speaking has been set too high. They are executives who left corporations quietly after conflicts with boards, nonprofit directors who were pushed aside when donors demanded control, government leaders pressured into silence after raising concerns, and employees in every field who saw wrongdoing and were told to keep it to themselves. Their stories are buried beneath legally enforced silence that shields those in power from accountability. They carry these stories because NDAs make it seem like silence is the only responsible choice.

In fact, society should begin treating the twelve page departure letter as a new tradition. Instead of leaders being encouraged to disappear quietly or to accept money in exchange for silence, they should be encouraged to write the letter that reveals the truth about what actually occurred. Communities deserve transparency when decisions are made behind closed doors. Employees and stakeholders deserve truthful accounts of how leaders are treated by their colleagues and why certain choices are made. A well written and honest twelve page letter has the power to restore clarity in places where secrecy has become the default operating system.

NDAs Have Become the Universal Tool for Buying Silence

Most people associate NDAs with corporate settlements or high profile scandals, but in reality NDAs have become the everyday mechanism for managing institutional conflict across nearly every sector. Corporations use them when leaders leave abruptly, when internal investigations create liability risks, or when political donors exert pressure on management teams. Nonprofits use them when boards fracture or when external funders threaten to walk away if they do not get their way. Governments use them to discipline employees who raise concerns that officials do not want entering the public record. Schools, hospitals, foundations, and agencies all use them to keep conflict sealed and out of public view.

NDAs are often presented as neutral documents that protect all parties equally. They are framed as tools that help people move on without unnecessary drama or public conflict. But in practice, NDAs almost always protect the institution far more than the individual. They protect the reputations of those who contributed to the problem and prevent whistleblowers and departing employees from sharing what really happened. The people who are silenced are usually the ones who tried to operate with integrity, while the people whose actions should be examined remain insulated from consequences.

As NDAs have become normalized across different sectors, truth has become optional. Employees and stakeholders lose access to the information needed to understand how decisions are made. Communities are denied the context behind leadership changes. Investors, donors, students, customers, and the public are given curated emails and narratives rather than real explanations. The result is a culture in which institutions can hide their deepest failures simply by writing a check (or not) and requiring silence. The lesson from Ryan’s letter is not just a lesson for universities. It is a lesson for every organization that uses secrecy as a substitute for accountability.

The Twelve Page Letter as a Democratic Act for Everyone

James Ryan’s twelve page letter was not simply a resignation explanation. It was a public act of civic responsibility that demonstrated how powerful truth can be when a leader refuses to accept silence as the cost of leaving. By laying out the Trump Administration’s political pressure, internal university board dynamics, other community threats, and concealed decision making, he provided a rare and honest account of how institutions can be influenced by actors who do not have the public interest at heart. His letter was not an act of rebellion. It was an act of service to the community he led.

Anyone who has worked inside a large organization knows that many of the most consequential decisions occur in rooms without transparency. Those decisions often involve politics, personal alliances, hidden agendas, and pressures that are never shared with the community and people affected by them. Ryan’s letter shines light on a pattern that extends far beyond Virginia. It reflects the reality of modern governance in corporations, universities, nonprofits, foundations, and public agencies. Institutions often rely on secrecy to protect themselves from difficult questions, and when someone refuses to participate in that secrecy, it changes the conversation.

Twelve page letters allow communities to understand what really happened so that they can influence the organization to correct course. They provide a blueprint for accountability. They empower people to make informed decisions about the institutions they support, fund, work for, or rely upon. And they remind leaders that the public good is not served by secrecy. It is served by honesty, even when honesty is uncomfortable.

Every Sector Has Its Own Version of Behind the Scenes Pressure

The political pressure described in Ryan’s letter may seem unique to universities, but similar dynamics exist everywhere. Corporations face political pressure from investors, lobbyists, and government regulators. Nonprofits face pressure from major donors whose interests may conflict with the organization’s mission. Government agencies face pressure from elected officials who expect loyalty rather than independent judgment. Hospitals face pressure from powerful partnership groups. Foundations face pressure from wealthy contributors who expect influence.

These pressures shape decisions in ways that the public rarely sees. When institutions operate in darkness, communities lose their ability to understand why leaders leave, why programs change, or why certain decisions are made. Trust erodes because people sense that something important is missing from the explanation. When institutions are governed in secrecy, people assume the worst because secrecy makes accountability impossible.

Ryan’s twelve page letter reminds us that institutions should not be governed in the dark. Clarity allows communities to intervene when governance goes off course. It allows employees and members to advocate for values that are being compromised by toxic people. It builds a culture where accountability becomes not just possible but expected. And this lesson applies to every sector where secrecy has replaced transparency as the dominant practice.

Every Workplace Has a Letter Waiting to Be Written

Talk to people privately about what’s happening behind the scenes and you will hear the outlines of many twelve page letters waiting to be written. These letters contain the truth about why probelmatic leadership teams collapsed, why ethical people were pushed out, why harmful decisions were made, and why institutions abandoned their missions. These stories are carried quietly because NDAs and fear of retaliation force individuals to choose silence over truth. These stories matter because they reveal the health of institutions, the direction they are moving, and explain the decline.

The silence surrounding institutional dysfunction becomes a barrier to reform. Without truth, communities cannot correct systemic problems. Without truth, patterns of abuse continue. Without truth, institutions can drift further away from the values they claim to represent. A twelve page letter can break this cycle by providing a clear and documented account of what really occurred. It gives people information that helps them challenge harmful patterns before they become entrenched.

If more people wrote twelve page letters, the culture of governance across multiple sectors would change. Institutions would have to justify decisions openly. Boards and executives would be less likely to misrepresent the truth. Communities would be empowered to demand better leadership. And organizational culture would shift from secrecy to transparency.

Democracy Does Not Need More NDAs. It Needs More Truth.

The deeper lesson from Ryan’s departure is not about one university. It is about the state of governance across society. We are living in a moment when secrecy has become the default tool of institutional protection, and this habit has spread across nearly every sector. We are living in a moment when political pressure, donor agendas, and internal power struggles shape decisions that affect millions of people without those people ever knowing the full story. Silence allows these patterns to continue unchallenged, but truth interrupts them and makes transformation possible. Truth is the one force institutions cannot purchase, suppress, or negotiate when people choose to speak.

Whether the setting is a public university, a state agency, a tech company, a nonprofit, or a financial institution, the health of democracy depends on people telling the truth about the forces that shape public life behind the scenes. NDAs weaken our communities and institutions by hiding the dynamics that need to be confronted and repaired, and they hide them precisely because those dynamics cannot withstand daylight. Twelve page letters strengthen institutions by giving communities the information they need to defend their values and chart a more honest path forward. The stories we share become the mirrors through which institutions see themselves clearly, and clarity is the first step toward renewal. Communities cannot correct what they are not allowed to see.

It is time for a cultural shift that replaces secrecy with courage and silence with integrity. Please understand that the NDA is coming when an institution wants to protect its own bad behavior, because if the institution had nothing to hide it would have no reason to demand your silence. It has nothing to do with you. If you were the problem, they would not be offering money to keep you quiet. They want to stay clean and avoid questions and controversy from the community, because they fear the story you could tell far more than they fear the cost of paying you not to tell it. This is the truth behind nearly every NDA, regardless of industry.

Retire the NDA as the price of institutional peace and replace it with the courage to tell the truth about what actually happened. Encourage leaders and employees alike to speak with honesty, not to harm organizations but to heal them through transparency and integrity. Embrace the twelve page letter as a democratic tradition that belongs to everyone, not just former university presidents, and recognize that truth spoken plainly is a service to the communities that depend on these institutions for opportunity, learning, safety, and stability. Institutions cannot improve when they hide their failures. They improve when people refuse to let secrecy stand in the way of accountability.

Institutions deserve transparency. Communities deserve honesty. And democracy deserves nothing less, because democracy cannot survive on silence. It survives when ordinary people choose to tell the truth and trust that others will follow. It survives when people decide that courage matters more than the status quo. It survives when individuals understand that speaking the truth is an act of service, not an act of betrayal. And it survives when we refuse to let NDAs bury the stories that could save our organizations from repeating their most harmful mistakes. As Adharanand Finn wrote, “The Devil whispered in my ear: ‘You’re not strong enough to withstand the storm.’ I whispered back: ‘I am the storm.’” The people who refuse silence are the storm, and they are the ones who push institutions back to integrity.

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Julian Vasquez Heilig is an award-winning civil rights leader, scholar, and public intellectual whose academic leadership career has spanned two decades in higher education. He has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs at Western Michigan University, dean of the College of Education at the University of Kentucky, and held faculty and leadership roles at the University of Texas at Austin, and California State University Sacramento. As the first provost of color at WMU, he led major institutional transformation initiatives while championing equity, shared governance, and inclusive excellence. A national voice on education policy, leadership, and social justice, he has testified before state legislatures, advised political campaigns, and keynoted across the world. His LinkedIn account and his newsletter, Without Fear or Favor, have become influential platforms for education and policy commentary. In 2025, he has reached more than 1.5 million readers on LinkedIn. He is the founding editor of the acclaimed blog Cloaking Inequity.