George Mason University Violated Civil Rights Laws In Hiring Practices: US Federal Officials

Key points

Education Department found GMU breached Title VI by favouring candidates based on race
President Gregory Washington must apologise and overhaul hiring practices
DEI policies allowed bypassing competitive searches for diverse hires

ISLAMABAD: The US Department of Education has found that George Mason University unlawfully used race in hiring decisions, violating federal civil rights laws, the department said in a statement Friday.

President Donald Trump’s administration has aimed to stamp out discrimination at colleges across the country, and the education department opened an investigation against George Mason last month. Now, the department says it has found specific violations and is publicly demanding the university fix them within 10 days, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch.

George Mason president Gregory Washington “waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “You can’t make this up.”

“A serious matter”

The department called for Mason’s president to publicly apologise and set a new protocol for hiring. In a statement, the university’s board of visitors said it is reviewing the Department of Education’s instructions and called the findings “a serious matter.”

“Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the university and the people of the commonwealth of Virginia,” the board said.

According to the education department, George Mason said on its website as recently as 2024 that it may waive its competitive search process for employees when there is an opportunity to hire a candidate who advances the school’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. That amounts to a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits any entity that receives federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, colour or natural origin, the department said, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Advancing “antiracism”

The department opened its investigation July 10 after George Mason professors filed a complaint, saying university leadership gave preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from “underrepresented groups” in an effort to advance “antiracism.” During the investigation, an administrator told the department that Washington kept a close eye on hiring decisions and whether they fulfilled DEI objectives. The department also determined the school’s faculty handbook requires the university’s office of DEI to approve hires before the university extends an offer.

To remedy the situation, the department says Washington must issue a statement apologising for the school’s unlawful hiring practices and pledging to follow the law. The school must review its policies and documents, such as instructions for hiring panels and scoring rubrics for resumes, to ensure they comply with Title VI. And Mason must conduct an annual training for administrators who make hires and promotions.

Diverse pool

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, said the allegation that university would abandon its search process if it finds a diverse candidate is a troubling one. “But DEI practices don’t necessarily violate the law if they encourage a diverse pool of employees,” he said.

The Trump administration is assuming DEI practices are a violation of civil rights law, “but it isn’t clear to me that it is,” Tobias said. Title VI “doesn’t mean you can’t try to have a diverse faculty.”

In an effort to eradicate DEI from college campuses across the country, the Trump administration made Virginia’s colleges an early focal point. Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s appointees to college boards also took part in the effort.

First black superintendent

In February, the board of visitors at Virginia Military Institute voted not to renew the contract of Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, the university’s first Black superintendent in its 186-year history. University of Virginia president Jim Ryan resigned in June under pressure from the Department of Justice, whose officials accused him of responding too slowly to a mandate that universities strike all forms of DEI from their campuses.

George Mason, in Fairfax County, has been the focus of investigations from the Departments of Justice and Education amid allegations that the administrators used illegal racial preferences in hiring faculty and created an “antisemitic environment” since the start of the war in Gaza.

Under previous administrations, the Department of Education conducted investigations quietly and did not individually target university presidents. Whether the president was directly responsible was a matter for the university’s board to consider.

“I think it’s extraordinary to call out leaders of particular universities — personally,” Tobias said, according to Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Crusade against US colleges

Another public university, the University of California at Los Angeles, was found in violation of civil rights law late last month, according to Bloomberg. Less than a week later, the administration suspended more than half a billion dollars in federal grants. UCLA has since entered talks with the White House to restore the funding, in exchange for a significant fine and concessions to the Trump administration’s political priorities.

It is not clear what consequences would follow a refusal to comply with the proposed resolution agreement. But the department’s finding echoes a pattern that presaged funding freezes and subsequent negotiations at schools including Columbia, Brown, Harvard, Northwestern and Cornell — suggesting that George Mason could be subjected to similar penalties, further widening the scope of the White House’s crusade against US colleges beyond the Ivy League.

Last week, the Justice Department announced similar findings of civil rights violations, this time for allegedly tolerating campus antisemitism, against George Washington University in the District of Columbia.