This story was reported and written by VPM News.
A growing number of George Mason University faculty are concerned about the fate of President Gregory Washington, whose annual performance review is set for the upcoming Board of Visitors meeting Friday morning — amid an onslaught of federal investigations.
“We're really pushing hard in advance to try to defend the president's record,” said Tim Gibson, vice president of the GMU chapter of the American Association of University Professors.
The university is currently subject to four federal investigations, two of which cite investigations into alleged racial discrimination in employment.
Gibson said faculty aren’t sure what will happen during Washington’s review — which will take place in a closed session Friday — but there is fear that the board could pressure him to resign to aid in the resolution of the investigations.
“We're understanding this to be a coordinated attack on our university and President Washington,” faculty member Bethany Letiecq told VPM News in a July 18 interview. “What's going on at Mason is really following on the heels of what happened at the University of Virginia and the ouster of President [Jim] Ryan and we're seeing a very similar play.”
Ryan announced his resignation as UVA president in late June after the federal Department of Justice pressured him to step down over an investigation into the Charlottesville university’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices; UVA’s board of visitors did not ask Ryan to step down.
Letiecq, president of the AAUP chapter at GMU, told VPM News that while there should be processes in place to investigate these complaints, she worries the federal investigations won’t be thorough — and will ultimately determine that the best course of action is that “President Washington needs to go.”
A July 17 letter announcing one of the investigations into alleged race-based employment practices indicates that DOJ’s Civil Rights Division believes Washington was a key figure in GMU’s diversity efforts.
“We have reason to believe that during Gregory Washington’s tenure as president of GMU, race and sex have been motivating factors in faculty hiring decisions to achieve ‘diversity’ goals,” the letter states. DOJ launched a second investigation into GMU’s diversity practices on July 21.
The day before DOJ’s July 17 announcement, Washington sent a university-wide email in response to the US Department of Education opening a separate Title VI investigation into the public university’s employment practices. (Title VI is the section of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that prohibits race-based discrimination in federally funded programs.)
“We are seeing a profound shift in how Title VI is being applied,” Washington wrote. “Longstanding efforts to address inequality – such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups – are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful.”
He added: “Broad terms like ‘illegal DEI’ are now used without definition, allowing virtually any initiative that touches on identity or inclusion to be painted as discriminatory. This shift represents a stark departure from the spirit in which civil rights law was written: not to erase difference, but to protect individuals from exclusion and to enable equal opportunity for all.”
The first federal investigation into GMU announced since President Donald Trump’s second term began in January involves alleged antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus.
Over 80 Jewish faculty members from the university have signed a letter stating that the notion of a hostile environment for Jewish students on the GMU campus does not reflect their personal experiences.
Ben Manski, a sociology professor and faculty advisor to the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, was among those who signed onto the letter; he said he hasn’t seen any instances of antisemitism expressed by students on GMU’s campus.
“If anything, Jews who are critical of Israel’s policies have not felt like they’ve had a space in which to speak up, and I know that from some of my Jewish students at GMU,” he said.
He said he thinks President Washington has gone “too far in clamping down on our Palestinian students” and has “bent over backwards” to accommodate attempts to suppress student protests over the conditions in Gaza.
He pointed out that SJP was temporarily suspended twice last year — first over a minor violation of the university’s tabling policy, then over a graffiti incident Manski said the organization was not involved in.
Manski said he’s also aware of at least one complaint someone filed after seeing a flyer on campus featuring images of someone wearing a keffiyeh, a traditional Arab headdress that is also worn by some as a political statement of solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
“People in the US need to get a clearer sense of what is actually a threat, and what is simply somebody representing themselves,” he told VPM News.
Manski and Lauren Cattaneo, another Jewish GMU faculty member, said they’re both offended by the Trump administration’s interpretation of antisemitism.
“This is using antisemitism in a deeply offensive way,” said Cattaneo, who helped draft the faculty letter. “Pluralism, spirited, deep debate … these are Jewish values. It’s particularly offensive to use antisemitism as a pretext for ideological control, which is essentially what this is and has become.”