When the Schooling Division’s Workplace for Civil Rights notified George Mason College on July 1 that it was opening an antisemitism investigation primarily based on a current criticism, the college’s president, Gregory Washington, stated he was “perplexed.”
In contrast with different campuses, the place protesters had ransacked buildings and hunkered down in encampments, George Mason had been comparatively quiet over the previous 12 months, he stated. His administration had taken in depth steps to enhance relations with the Jewish neighborhood, had enacted strict guidelines on protests and had communicated all of that to the OCR throughout a earlier antisemitism investigation that remained open.
By the subsequent day, although, there have been indicators that the brand new investigation was a part of a coordinated marketing campaign to oust him.
One piece of proof: the velocity with which conservative information shops reported on the OCR’s motion, which hadn’t been publicly introduced. The OCR letter was embedded in a July 2 article revealed by a right-wing information outlet, The Washington Free Beacon. The following day, the Metropolis Journal, revealed by the influential and conservative Manhattan Institute, ran an opinion essay headlined “George Mason College’s Disastrous President.” The article accused Washington, the college’s first Black president and a first-generation faculty graduate, of backing “racially discriminatory DEI packages” — referring to variety, fairness and inclusion efforts — and failing to deal with campus antisemitism. It concluded that “Washington’s monitor report warrants his resignation or dismissal.”
The similarities to current occasions at one other public college in Virginia had been onerous to disregard. The OCR’s George Mason investigation was opened simply 4 days after the College of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, introduced that he was resigning to assist settle a federal probe into the college’s DEI commitments.
That occurred after a gaggle of conservative College of Virginia alumni, the Jefferson Council, revealed weblog entries and newspaper adverts decrying the president — partly for focusing too closely on variety efforts — and demanding that he resign. The council’s connections to board members and Justice Division legal professionals led many observers in larger schooling to conclude that Ryan’s compelled resignation was the results of a coordinated assault.
Now, Washington is feeling the identical warmth coming from related sources.
The temperature cranked up a number of levels Thursday morning, when the Schooling Division notified George Mason that it’s opening a second investigation — this one alleging the college illegally considers race in hiring and selling workers. The division stated it was performing on complaints from “a number of professors” at GMU.
In a press assertion Thursday, Craig Trainor, the Schooling Division’s performing assistant secretary for civil rights, advised that the company has already reached sweeping conclusions concerning the college’s hiring practices. “Regardless of the management of George Mason College claiming that it doesn’t discriminate on the idea of race, it seems that its hiring and promotion insurance policies and practices from 2020 to the current, applied below the guise of so-called ‘Range, Fairness, and Inclusion,’ not solely permit however champion unlawful racial preferencing in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This type of pernicious and wide-spread discrimination — packaged as ‘anti-racism’ — was allowed to flourish below the Biden Administration, however it is not going to be tolerated by this one,” he wrote.
The college rebutted these accusations in an announcement saying it’s complying with all federal and state mandates and doesn’t discriminate. The college “obtained a brand new Division of Schooling letter of investigation this morning because it was concurrently launched to information shops, which is unprecedented in our expertise,” the assertion stated. “As at all times, we are going to work in good religion to provide a full and immediate response.”
In the meantime, dozens of Jewish school members at GMU have signed on to an announcement condemning “an assault on our college neighborhood and our GMU President that’s rapidly intensifying below a false, racially divisive, and deeply cynical declare of combating antisemitism.”
Even earlier than Thursday’s announcement, Washington stated he had detected a sample that’s been enjoying out at different universities focused by President Donald Trump’s administration: A number of investigations are filed in fast succession and phrase leaks to information organizations.
“It looks as if that is orchestrated,” Washington stated throughout an interview Wednesday. “The identical people who find themselves sort of aligned that removed Jim Ryan are aligned towards me.”
He finds the timing of the assaults towards him and his college troubling.
“Provided that the Workplace for Civil Rights doesn’t publicly announce who’s below investigation, we had been questioning how these conservative shops even received the knowledge within the first place,” Washington stated. The “nearly hateful discussions of me” within the Metropolis Journal article appeared like “a concerted effort to attempt to paint the establishment in a adverse mild.”
Washington stated the piece gave the impression to be urging the Trump administration to take the investigation to the subsequent stage, the Division of Justice, which may levy punishments towards the college.
Many school members at George Mason agree. They fear that regardless of the OCR’s insistence in its letter to the college that its investigation will probably be unbiased, the Trump administration has already reached a verdict on the establishment’s president and desires him out. As proof, they level to a net of ties between right-wing information organizations and politicians — together with Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin — in addition to some George Mason board members.
“The identical unfounded and coordinated assaults that pushed Ryan out of UVa at the moment are being leveled at GMU President Greg Washington,” the campus chapter of the American Affiliation of College Professors wrote in a web based submit. “We predict the DOJ, Governor Youngkin, and Youngkin’s appointees” to GMU’s governing board “try to pressure President Washington out to allow them to rent an ideological ally who will impose the Governor’s political ideologies on Mason’s governance and curriculum.”
Late Wednesday, Virginia’s two Democratic U.S. senators, Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine, doubled down on these warnings, publishing an opinion piece within the Richmond Occasions-Dispatch saying that the Trump administration “seems to be eyeing its subsequent goal” with George Mason’s president.
“The accusations — that are pushed by bloggers with ties to ultra-conservative teams with histories of false claims about Mason and advocacy for the elimination of college presidents — are eerily just like these lodged towards Ryan,” they wrote. “They embody imprecise and politically charged accusations centered round ‘DEI’ and recommendations that the college’s administration has been insufficiently attentive to considerations raised by Jewish college students about their security on campus. That’s even supposing the college’s leaders have repeatedly and publicly condemned antisemitism and truly been praised by the native Jewish Relations Council and campus Hillel for his or her management and dedication to Jewish members of Mason’s neighborhood.”
The schooling division’s July 1 letter notified George Mason that it was investigating a criticism, filed in June, that Jewish college students and school members confronted a hostile setting on the Virginia college between October 2023 and the top of the 2024-2025 educational 12 months. It gave the college till July 21 to show over voluminous details about its response to antisemitism complaints.
It additionally assured the college it could take a impartial stance in evaluating the knowledge.
Warner and Kaine are skeptical that the investigation will probably be honest and neutral: Of their opinion piece, they stated it’s extra possible “to function yet one more smokescreen to punish universities and leaders who don’t align with their ideological targets.”
Some George Mason school members share these considerations.
“Once you begin seeing these hit items come out one after one other in a matter of days, you already know it’s coordinated,” Bethany L. Letiecq, a professor within the Faculty of Schooling and Human Improvement, stated in an interview.
Certainly, larger schooling leaders have accused the Division of Justice’s Job Pressure to Fight Anti-Semitism, which formally oversees investigations by a number of federal businesses, of ignoring procedures meant to offer due course of, racing towards predetermined outcomes, after which punishing universities by stripping them of billions of analysis {dollars}.
Washington’s critics have ties to right-wing advocates of eliminating variety efforts and different examples of what they see as larger schooling’s “woke” insurance policies. The writer of the essay calling Washington a “disastrous” president, Ian Kingsbury, has co-published articles selling conservative causes with Jay P. Greene, a senior analysis fellow with The Heritage Basis. Christopher F. Rufo, one of many nation’s most aggressive and influential opponents of variety, fairness and inclusion initiatives, is among the many contributing editors at Metropolis Journal.
Such critics are properly represented in George Mason’s management as properly.
Youngkin, the governor, appointed most of GMU’s governing board, referred to as the board of tourists. The college’s normal counsel, Anne Gentry, is married to a longtime conservative activist and government with the Koch Basis, Letiecq identified. “At Mason, the foxes are within the henhouse,” she stated. “It’s an inside job.”
Letiecq worries that Youngkin would possibly exert the identical sort of affect that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a fellow Republican, has in making an attempt to reshape larger schooling to suit a conservative playbook. Neither Youngkin nor the board of tourists instantly responded to requests for remark.
“I’ve suspected that Youngkin, in his quest for political capital, has been following the DeSantis playbook and sees Mason as a possible New Faculty that they’ll take over and take down,” she stated. New Faculty of Florida, as soon as a progressive establishment, underwent substantial modifications to its curriculum and employees starting in 2023 when DeSantis stacked its board with conservative members.
Neither Kingsbury, the writer of the Metropolis Journal piece, nor the Division of Schooling responded to inquiries concerning the patterns Washington noticed. Eliana Johnson, editor of the Washington Free Beacon, stated in an announcement that “our reporting speaks for itself.” Metropolis Journal didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Washington defended his report in a public assertion on July 3. “As we put together a response to the criticism, it is crucial that all of us have an correct understanding of how protected and welcoming the George Mason neighborhood is, notably as we put together to welcome tens of hundreds of scholars to campus in only a few brief weeks,” he wrote.
“George Mason has not been marred by the form of violence that has rocked so many different campuses elsewhere in Virginia and across the nation following the Hamas assaults of 2023. It’s a distinction we’re happy with, and work onerous every day to take care of.”
In 11 messages that had been despatched to the campus neighborhood detailing the college’s responses to the Hamas assaults and that had been shared with The Chronicle of Increased Schooling, his workplace denounced “craven acts of terrorism as we’ve got seen in Israel,” urged “civil discourse, understanding, and peaceful meeting” on campus and denounced the “disgusting habits” of those that had been making an attempt to distribute antisemitic leaflets. College leaders coordinated with legislation enforcement to answer two violent antisemitic actions.
It’s been greater than a 12 months because the final campus demonstration associated to Gaza, Washington stated. That protest remained protected and authorized and didn’t disrupt college enterprise. “No encampments have ever fashioned at George Mason, and we is not going to allow them sooner or later,” Washington stated. The college was one of many first to introduce a complete security and well-being plan, which stays in impact.
“Our knowledge continues to point out that our surroundings has dramatically improved because the horrific Hamas assaults of 2023, so we’re perplexed to be receiving this investigation presently. Nonetheless, we are going to reply in a forthright, direct, and well timed method to this and any inquiry.”
Within the 2023-2024 educational 12 months, the college obtained 31 bias-incident reviews primarily based on antisemitism, in keeping with Rose Pascarell, vp for college life. Final 12 months, that quantity dropped to 12.
Plus, she stated, the college “responded absolutely” to a earlier OCR criticism associated to antisemitism — however by no means heard again from the federal government.
Letiecq stated that, in her view, Washington has overreacted, not underreacted, to complaints of antisemitism, instituting restrictions on protests and punishments for protesters that she considers “oppressive.”
“That is an insatiable marketing campaign on the correct and it appears there’s nothing you are able to do to fulfill them,” she stated.
George Mason, with greater than 40,000 college students, is essentially the most racially various public analysis college within the state, college officers say. To adjust to Trump’s government orders, the college has repurposed its DEI workplace to deal with compliance and neighborhood. It has lower six positions, eradicated variety coaching and expanded a program in constructive dialogue. All of these modifications are outlined in a prolonged report back to the board. Washington insists, although, that the college gained’t abandon its commitments to the underlying ideas its variety efforts help.
“If you find yourself a various establishment, it’s a must to function from that various framework,” Washington stated. “I don’t run away from that. I run towards it.”
DEI expenditures signify 0.1% of the college’s finances, GMU officers say.
Requested why he agreed to talk out publicly when so many presidents have stayed silent to keep away from angering the administration, Washington stated the assaults had been too private to keep away from.
“My philosophy is: Daylight is disinfectant. We’re going to be clear with the neighborhood all through the method,” together with the back-and-forth with OCR, he stated.
Washington says if the college is requested to make vital modifications with no commonplace investigation and dialogue of the info, it can take care of that as obligatory. “We’ll work in good religion to maneuver by this,” Washington stated. “We’ll know if we’re given due course of by how they handle our specific case.”
Katherine Mangan is a senior author at The Chronicle of Increased Schooling.
