Not all Harry Potter comparisons by higher education critics take nine years to appear in print. (See the preceding article by Elizabeth Baird Hardy for one that did.)

Like a lot of professors in Virginia, I followed with intense interest the Board of Visitor’s unexpected June 10th dismissal of University of Virginia (UVa) President Teresa Sullivan, and the sixteen days of protests by faculty, students and alums. The debacle ended with Dr. Sullivan’s reinstatement on June 26th. The Chronicle of Higher Education, happily a bit quicker on the draw with this story, has a detailed summary of the events here.

Allusions to our favorite Shared Text were quickly popping up all over social media: Twitter, Facebook, and commentary on online news article by people following the story. Rector Helen Dragas was compared to virtually every bad guy in the series, from Lucius Malfoy to Lord Voldemort to Dolores Umbridge. I also spotted at least one Hunger Games illusion, wherein it was suggested that Dragas and Sullivan fight it out in the Arena to settle their dispute.

Most of the Harry Potter allusions popped up in tweets or in comments on news articles, hard to document with URLs. But combining the #UVA hashtag with the key words brings quite a few up from the Twitter archives. A few sample Tweets:

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