George Mason University’s efforts to diversify its workforce violate a civil rights law intended to end segregation, according to the Trump administration.
Following a roughly six-week-long investigation of GMU’s hiring practices, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has found that the Northern Virginia-based university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race in public education.
To resolve the alleged violation, the department
has proposed an agreement that would require Mason President Gregory Washington to issue a statement and “personal apology … for promoting unlawful discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion, and tenure processes.”
The university would also have to revise any policies deemed noncompliant and conduct annual trainings for staff involved in hiring and promotional decisions.
OCR announced Friday that Mason leaders would have 10 days to agree to the directives.
“In 2020, University President Gregory Washington called for expunging the so-called ‘racist vestiges’ from GMU’s campus. Without a hint of self awareness, President Washington then waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race,” Education Department Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a statement, calling the past five years an “unfortunate chapter” in Mason’s history.
The Education Department says it launched the Title VI investigation into GMU on July 10 after “multiple” professors filed a complaint that the university was giving “preferential treatment” to job candidates and current faculty members from “underrepresented” backgrounds.
Though Mason’s U.S. student body for 2024-2025 was racially diverse, with white students representing the largest percentage (33.7%), its faculty and staff, as of July, is more than 50% white, according to data shared by GMU.
Mason’s eighth president and the first Black person in the position, Washington took office on July 1, 2020 just weeks after students joined nationwide protests against police brutality, prompting him to establish an anti-racism task force and order a review of the university’s policies.
Envisioned as a model that other universities could follow, the anti-racism initiatives continued efforts already underway to reckon with namesake George Mason’s history as a slaveholder. A memorial to the people he enslaved was ultimately dedicated in April 2022.
When asked in 2021 how Mason could make its staff more representative of the student body without illegally targeting people based on race, Washington noted that only 30% of the faculty at the time were from ethnic minorities or the international community. To attract a more diverse workforce, the university needs to rethink its search processes and what might make someone the “best” candidate for a job, he argued.
“Our mission of educating and preparing the future leaders of America’s economy and society demands that we recruit people with the full breadth of lived experiences as well as professional backgrounds that our students encounter,” he wrote.
As evidence that GMU was violating Title VI, the Education Department points to that statement as well as a requirement that new faculty hires get approved by the university’s Office of Access, Compliance, and Community (OACC), among other officials.
Previously known as the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, the OACC, which oversees accommodations for people with disabilities and investigations of bias and discrimination complaints, was renamed in March after the Education Department demanded universities end “race-based decision-making.”
The OCR also cites “one high-level university administrator” who said Washington “created an atmosphere of surveillance” when it came to diversity in hiring.
The GMU Board of Visitors called the Education Department’s finding “a serious matter” and said it’s reviewing the proposed agreement.
“We will continue to respond fully and cooperatively to all inquiries from the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the U.S. House of Representatives and evaluate the evidence that comes to light,” the board said. “Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the University and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The Title VI investigation is one of five different civil rights probes opened by the Trump administration against Mason this summer. Others led by the education and justice departments focus on alleged antisemitism, the consideration of race in admissions, and a July 24 resolution passed by the GMU Faculty Senate in support of Washington’s leadership.
How the Board of Visitors responds to the Education Department’s findings remains to be seen. It’s next scheduled to meet on Sept. 25.
Despite fears from many students, faculty and community leaders that they would remove Washington, GMU’s visitors — all appointees of Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin — gave him a 1.5% pay raise at their last meeting on Aug. 1, though faculty members who participated in a rally to support the president called it “by far” the smallest increase he’s received.
At the same meeting, the board unanimously approved a resolution that officially prohibited race from being considered in any “aspects of student, academic, and campus life” and eliminated diversity-related programs and trainings, including the Access to Research and Inclusive Excellence (ARIE) program that emerged out of Washington’s anti-racism task force.
Many of the challenged policies and programs, including the use of diversity statements in hiring and promotion materials, had already been terminated, as university leaders told the board at a packed meeting on May 1.
The GMU chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a labor union for faculty members, blasted the Education Department’s investigation as a “gross misuse of federal enforcement authority” that ignores the actual history and context of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was a response to decades of segregation that denied Black Americans in particular access to jobs, education, businesses and public services.
“Efforts to fight discrimination and strengthen inclusivity are not violations of civil rights — they are the very fulfillment of our obligations under civil rights law and the principles of equal opportunity,” the chapter’s executive committee said in a statement. “The OCR’s findings distort both the spirit and the letter of Title VI, weaponizing it against the very goals it was enacted to achieve.”
The committee urged the Board of Visitors “to resist the Trump administration’s pressure campaign,” adding that they were “especially appalled” by the Education Department’s demand for an apology from Washington.
“We call on the University’s Board of Visitors, faculty, staff, students, alumni, and the wider community to stand firm in defending George Mason’s values,” GMU-AAUP said. “We urge the University to contest this baseless determination rather than submit to coercive remedies that would erode academic freedom, weaken shared governance, and undermine the integrity of our institution.”
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This story was originally published by FFXnow and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
