by Brandon Jarvis and Andrew Kerley
Another Virginia university president appears to be in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s administration — just weeks after pressure from Trump’s Department of Justice pressured University of Virginia President Jim Ryan until he resigned.
The federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights notified George Mason on July 1 that they are opening an investigation into the university after receiving a complaint about antisemitism on campus.
GMU’s president, Gregory Washington, said he was perplexed by the letter, noting that GMU largely avoided the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that many other campuses have experienced in recent years.
Washington told ProPublica that by July 2, however, he realized this was an effort to oust him.
From ProPublica’s reporting:
One piece of evidence: the speed with which conservative news outlets reported on the OCR’s action, which hadn’t been publicly announced. The OCR letter was embedded in a July 2 article published by a right-wing news outlet, The Washington Free Beacon. The next day, the City Journal, published by the influential and conservative Manhattan Institute, ran an opinion essay headlined “George Mason University’s Disastrous President.” The article accused Washington, the university’s first Black president and a first-generation college graduate, of backing “racially discriminatory DEI programs” — referring to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — and failing to address campus antisemitism. It concluded that “Washington’s track record warrants his resignation or dismissal.”
On Wednesday, United States Senators Tim Kaine and Mark Warner sounded the alarm over the Trump administration targeting Washington.
“We fear that what happened at UVa is just the beginning,” they wrote in an op-ed for the Richmond Times-Dispatch. “Already, the Trump administration appears to be eyeing its next target: George Mason University President Gregory Washington. The accusations — which are pushed by bloggers with ties to ultra-conservative groups with histories of false claims about Mason and advocacy for the removal of university presidents — are eerily similar to those lodged against Ryan.”
Warner and Kaine’s warning on Wednesday that GMU is in the federal government’s crosshairs was warranted.
The Education Department announced a second investigation on Thursday, stating that multiple professors at GMU “allege that the university illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion.”
“Despite the leadership of George Mason University claiming that it does not discriminate on the basis of race, it appears that its hiring and promotion policies and practices from 2020 to the present, implemented under the guise of so-called ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,’ not only allow but champion illegal racial preferencing in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
GMU responded with a statement, writing that they received the notification of the second investigation at the same time as the press, calling that “unprecedented in our experience.”
GMU said they do not discriminate, and constantly review policies to make sure they are following state and federal guidelines.
“It seems like this is orchestrated,” Washington told ProPublica on Wednesday. “The same people who are kind of aligned that got rid of Jim Ryan are aligned against me.”
ProPublica also reported that several Jewish faculty members are condemning the actions against Washington, calling it a “false, racially divisive, and deeply cynical claim of combating antisemitism.”
“We think the DOJ, Governor Youngkin, and Youngkin’s appointees to our BOV are trying to force President Washington out so they can hire an ideological ally who will impose the Governor’s political ideologies on Mason’s governance and curriculum.” – AAUP
The GMU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a statement saying the school’s independence and integrity are under attack.
“In June, the Department of Justice blackmailed the University of Virginia and forced President James Ryan to resign. We have every reason to believe that George Mason will be next,” AAUP wrote. “The same unfounded and coordinated attacks that pushed Ryan out of UVa are now being leveled at GMU President Greg Washington. We think the DOJ, Governor Youngkin, and Youngkin’s appointees to our BOV are trying to force President Washington out so they can hire an ideological ally who will impose the Governor’s political ideologies on Mason’s governance and curriculum.”
Dr. Bob Holsworth, one of Virginia’s leading political analysts who served on the VCU board for four years, predicted earlier this week that GMU would be in the federal government’s crosshairs.
“They [GMU] have a board appointed by Youngkin, so they’re not going to be resistant in any way,” he said.
Virginia Scope reported Thursday that Democrats in the General Assembly are working to block Gov. Glenn Youngkin from imposing his ideology on Virginia’s universities through his appointments to the Boards of Visitors, the governing bodies of the institutions.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, believes many members of the boards are not expressing their own independent judgment, but rather taking direct instructions from the Youngkin and Trump administrations on how to vote on certain policies
“Many members of the Senate have received reports of the Youngkin admin trying to influence members on all kinds of different internal governance matters, from really minor, routine stuff all the way up to who ought to be the next rector of their board or president of the university,” Surovell said.
At a June 9 state Senate panel called to vote on some of Youngkin’s board appointments, Sen. Adam Ebbin, D-Alexandria, mentioned GMU specifically as an example of a university marred by appointees who have been brought on “to disrupt, and if they can, even to destroy,”
“The false threat was made that ‘the board can fire anybody’ when staff members disputed a board member’s statements,’” Ebbin said. “In this same setting, during the board’s committee meetings, university staff also were accused, without evidence, of engaging in illegal racial quotas, using ‘language codes’ and ‘warping inclusion efforts to actually exclude people.’”
The Senate panel voted to block eight of Youngkin’s appointments to boards at schools across the commonwealth. The Youngkin administration has said the Senate panel vote is not final.
State Senate Democrats are suing the leaders of the boards of visitors at GMU, Virginia Military Institute and the University of Virginia to decide whether or not the eight rejected appointees will be allowed to continue serving on the boards, first reported on by the Washington Post.
“At the behest of Virginia Republican leadership, the federal government is trying to ruin Virginia’s top ranked education system,” Speaker of the House Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, said Friday morning. “Republicans are cheering on the destruction of Va’s economy and our higher education system.”
Washington told ProPublica that GMU will move forward with these investigations in good faith.
“We will work in good faith to move through this,” Washington said. “We will know if we’re given due process by how they manage our particular case.”