Gregory Washington’s race-focused policies and handling of campus anti-Semitism spurred multiple federal discrimination probes against the university
George Mason University’s Board of Visitors passed a resolution dismantling President Gregory Washington’s racially focused projects on Friday, but opted to keep the embattled chief.
The resolution ordered the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community—called the Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion prior to President Donald Trump’s inauguration—to “eliminate all programs, trainings, [and] processes not specifically required for federal or state law.” It also dissolved the Access to Research and Inclusive Excellence program, a project that involved a task force, conferences, and initiatives aimed at pushing anti-racism policies. Washington was the force behind the office and the program.
The board also banned George Mason from requiring diversity statements for employment, promotion, and tenure.
It’s a tumultuous time for Washington and George Mason. The Trump administration has launched five discrimination probes, all stemming from the president’s alleged race-based hiring policies and his handling of campus anti-Semitism.
Washington retained his own personal counsel, former Maryland attorney general Douglas Gansler. The move is expected to complicate George Mason’s negotiations with the Trump administration, particularly given that the board hired former U.S. attorney general Bill Barr’s firm, Torridon Law, to handle the federal discrimination probes against the university.
Still, Washington managed to keep his job and secured a mandatory 1.5 percent raise following a closed-door board session regarding his performance. Observers initially speculated that the board would oust Washington on Friday, but that became unlikely after a Fairfax County circuit court judge ruled Tuesday that four of Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin’s appointees couldn’t be recognized. That meant they couldn’t vote or even attend the closed session.
Almost immediately after taking office in July 2020, Washington implemented a flurry of race-conscious initiatives aimed at changing the way the university hired, promoted, and paid faculty members, the Washington Free Beacon reported. They included plans to “recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend” during the school’s tenure process and to launch “diversity cluster hire initiatives,” all in the name of making George Mason “a national exemplar of anti-racism and inclusive excellence in action.”
“Professional experience will always be vital in recruiting our workforce, but so must lived experiences,” Washington wrote in an April 2021 message titled “Adopting an Inclusive Excellence Framework for Hiring Will Deliver Best Candidates.” “If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?”
Years later, as anti-Israel agitators began to grip George Mason’s campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attack, a group of nearly 20 lawmakers asked Washington to denounce anti-Semitism. They argued that any comments he’d made on the matter were full of caveats, unlike his statements condemning Islamophobia and supporting racial justice.
In response, the Trump Department of Education launched two probes in July, one into the alleged race-based hiring and another into campus anti-Semitism. The Justice Department launched two of its own, as well as a third scrutinizing a resolution George Mason’s Faculty Senate adopted defending Washington. The university has denied wrongdoing.
