This story was reported and written by our media partner, The Virginia Mercury.
When student Hanaan Kazia first heard about the federal civil rights probe into George Mason University, she wasn’t surprised. But the junior political science major and member of the school’s Political Science Honor Society says the implications still scare her.
“I think it is kind of frightening, because I know that one of the reasons that I went to Mason and one of the reasons why other people have attended Mason is because it is one of the most diverse public universities in Virginia,” Kazia told The Mercury in an interview Tuesday.
“And I think that the multitude of experiences that we have on campus … that the university’s previous DEI practices have made part of the culture here is something that’s really important to me and really important to a lot of other students.”
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it had launched an investigation into GMU over allegations that the school’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in institutions receiving federal funds.
According to the agency, the probe stems from a complaint filed by multiple professors who accuse GMU of giving unlawful preference in hiring and promotion to faculty from “underrepresented groups” in the name of anti-racism. OCR officials argue the university’s DEI practices, in place since 2020, constitute “pernicious and widespread discrimination” that runs afoul of federal law.
“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 … not only allow but champion illegal racial preferencing in violation of Title VI,” said Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor.
“This kind of pernicious and widespread discrimination — packaged as ‘anti-racism’ — was allowed to flourish under the Biden Administration, but it will not be tolerated by this one.”
OCR cited a number of practices in its opening letter, such as the presence of Equity Advisors in each department who take immutable characteristics into account in hiring; GMU President Gregory Washington’s stated commitment to tenure and promotion criteria that recognize “the invisible and uncredited emotional labor” of faculty of color; and diversity cluster hire initiatives meant to eliminate demographic gaps between students and faculty.
In a university-wide email sent in March, Washington also announced the renaming of GMU’s DEI office to the Office of Access, Compliance, and Community, stating that there was nothing for the university to change because it has “always complied” with existing civil rights laws.
“This is a more specific and intuitively accurate reflection of its charter. It is not an attempt to evade compliance through clever wordsmithing — it simply affirms our actual compliance through more precise naming,” he wrote in the email.
A broader political context
The new federal probe comes amid an aggressive rollback of DEI initiatives across higher education nationally under pressure from Republican lawmakers and advocacy groups, sanctioned by the administration of President Donald Trump. In Virginia, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has made reducing DEI spending and restructuring public university governance central pillars of his education agenda.
But for Kazia, the charges feel like another escalation in what she sees as a broader political attack on the university’s identity.
“Honestly, it feels kind of like an attack, especially on our student body,” she said. “And we’ve been under these attacks for a long time, at least a few years, especially because before the Trump administration, Governor Youngkin had an eye on us, and we have members of the Heritage Foundation on our board of visitors. So I think it just kind of feels like it’s hurting the university in the long run.”
In a statement Friday, GMU said it received the letter announcing the investigation simultaneously with news outlets.
“George Mason University again affirms its commitment to comply with all federal and state mandates. The university consistently reviews its policies and practices to ensure compliance with federal laws, updated executive orders, and on-going agency directives,” the statement read.
And: “George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.”
The latest investigation follows a separate Title VI probe launched earlier this year into GMU’s response to antisemitism on campus.
That case involves allegations from students and faculty that the administration failed to adequately respond to a hostile environment for Jewish individuals after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October 2023. The school refuted those claims, with Washington stating “antisemitism has no place at George Mason University, and never has.” Some observers argue the Trump administration is using those allegations to build a broader political case against Washington.
Diverging views on diversity and merit
Recent reporting by ProPublica and NBC News has underscored how the Trump administration’s OCR has increasingly focused on public universities in politically competitive states like Virginia, using Title VI as a mechanism to challenge campus diversity programs.
Liam Keen, a 2024 graduate and former GMU student government leader, pushed back on that idea.
“Using Jewish identity as a cover for political attempts to restructure an institution is not true support, it’s instrumentalization,” Keen said. “And ultimately, it does more harm than good.”
Keen, who is white and has family ties to GMU, said diversity has always been a core institutional strength.
“Educational institutions are more than places to earn a degree. They’re spaces where we develop a deeper understanding of the world, of each other, and of ourselves,” he said. “That mission can only be achieved when we’re exposed to a variety of perspectives.”
He added, “At GMU, diversity isn’t a slogan, it’s a reflection of who we are, and it’s something students consistently say they want more of, not less.”
The student population at GMU is majority-minority, with more than 50% of students identifying as people of color, but its faculty remains more than 65% white, according to internal reports.
Tim Gibson, a longtime GMU professor and president of the Virginia Conference of the American Association of University Professors, called the latest federal complaint baseless and politically motivated.
“What these policies and these programs do, is they say that we’re going to do it as an institution, where we value the diversity of experience and diversity of perspective … because we think we’re stronger that way,” he said in a phone interview. “It’s not about quotas, it’s not about hiring preferences.”
Gibson argued the Trump administration is mounting an effort to ideologically police public education.
“They are trying to exert more control over scientists and researchers, and in the classroom, to train the next generation of researchers and scientists,” he said. “They’re trying to control the production of knowledge so that it only produces knowledge that agrees with their preexisting views. I think it’s as simple as that.”
Gibson emphasized that the “anti-DEI” movement disregards Virginia’s long history of legally enforced racial exclusion in public education — a history DEI efforts are meant to address.
“I think the argument itself is deeply cynical and ahistoric,” he said. “Let’s not forget that Virginia was a state that was segregated, within living memory, and that African Americans were excluded by law from attending many of our public universities.”
He continued, “Whatever objections President Trump and others have had about universities, I believe are simply because the researchers and universities are publishing research knowledge that contradicts — not for political reasons, but because it’s true — all assumptions and myths about the world. And that is one of the functions of universities.”
Parallel to UVA controversy
Longtime Virginia political analyst Bob Holsworth said the GMU case shares similarities with the recent controversy at the University of Virginia, where President Jim Ryan resigned under pressure following Title VI complaints and political scrutiny.
“In some ways, it’s similar to UVA, where you have a complaint coming from probably a minority in the university,” Holsworth said. “Now you have a Youngkin-appointed board of visitors that is silent … and you have a federal Department of Education that is really aggressively pursuing the complaints.”
But Holsworth said GMU is an unusual target.
“Mason is certainly not a paragon of intellectual wokeness. It has the Mercatus Center; it has the Antonin Scalia Law School. It probably has more conservative-based intellectual elements than any university in Virginia,” he said. “So it’s kind of surprising, but this no longer seems to matter.”
He added that the political pressure may be tied to Virginia’s upcoming elections, with control of the state’s executive branch and attorney general’s office on the line.
“If the attorney general was a Democrat right now, we’d be in a very different situation with both UVA and George Mason,” Holsworth said, referring to the office’s responsibility to appoint counsel to all of the state universities. “So not only is the governor’s election critically important, but this may be the most important attorney general election in a generation.”
Voices of support and resistance
Former Gov. Doug Wilder, the nation’s first Black governor and a GMU supporter, framed the attack on GMU’s president in historical terms.
“The elementary school I attended had no cafeteria, no auditorium, and had outdoor toilets. It was named for George Mason,” Wilder recalled. “I learned that George Mason was an early American patriot who believed that education and commitment could lead to the fullest participation in the American dream. I wonder how he would feel today about the university which bears his name and its treatment of its first president of color.”
Wilder also pointed to a pattern: “(Washington) is not the only person of color heading our colleges and universities being subjected to specious and questionable charges,” he said, referencing Cedric Wins at Virginia Military Institute, who in February was ousted in a move that sparked widespread pushback.
Three Democratic GMU alumni now serving in Virginia’s state Senate also issued a joint statement of support of Washington and the university he leads.
“From 2020 to 2025, GMU jumped from 45 to 30 in Wall Street Journal Public University Rankings, and from 72 to 51 in US News Public Institution rankings, all while maintaining affordability near our nation’s capital,” said Sens. Jeremy McPike, Stella Pekarsky, and Saddam Azlan Salim. “Instead, following the successful attack on UVA President Jim Ryan, opportunists have set their sights on another of Virginia’s prized universities.”
“To claim that anti-racism is racially discriminatory makes a mockery of the laws the Department claims to be enforcing,” they added. “We call on the U.S. Department of Education to end this sham investigation.”
For students like Kazia, the values at stake go far beyond policy documents or legal interpretations.
“These attacks aren’t necessarily new, but they are ramping up in a way that is frightening, especially for the culture and the environment of our university,” she said. “It’s going to harm all of us in the long run.”
GMU’s Gibson offered a final reflection on the broader context.
“That is the history that diversity, equity, and inclusion programs since the civil rights movement have been trying to redress,” he said.
“And these programs are about opening that door and then basically sending invitations to groups that have been historically excluded. That is really the point. It’s not about political favoritism, it’s about fulfilling a promise.”
