Republicans Allege Discrimination at George Mason, but the Data Tells a Different Story

FAIRFAX, Virginia — Amani Banks, a George Mason University freshman, sat on the south side of the campus last week and pointed out that the student body is more diverse than her professors. 

When the college’s president, Gregory Washington, arrived on campus in 2020, he encouraged the hiring of more people of color through what its administrators called an “Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence” initiative. Through the effort, the university pledged to ensure “faculty and staff demographics … mirror student demographics.” The plan also called on some departments of the university to commit to making sure that people of color made up two out of every three new hires.

While Washington’s efforts aren’t changing the demographics of Banks’ professors, who are all white this semester, members of a congressional committee have labeled the move as something else: discrimination.

Washington has been accused by members of the U.S. House Judiciary Committee of lying to Congress about the university’s inclusion practices and engaging in “in racial discrimination to further its diversity, equity, and inclusion goals.”

In a staff report published on Nov. 6, the committee accused the university president of mandating that schools within the university implement plans to hire a certain percentage more of minorities from the Black, Latino and Indigenous communities. The 50-page document also said that Washington, who testified before the committee in September, lied when he said that the administration did not review the diversity goals. 

Members wrote that Washington “likely violated federal civil rights law by discriminating based on race in its hiring practices.” 

The committee’s report is part of an effort by President Donald Trump and his administration to dismantle DEI efforts throughout higher education. Numerous institutions have come under fire, but Washington is one of the few presidents to receive this level of scrutiny by the Republican Party this year. 

Despite the report, Washington previously shared data that shows that the majority of George Mason University professors are white. For some departments, such as the College of Science, where Black and Latino professors each made up less than 2% of the faculty, Washington has called for members of underrepresented groups to fill 60% of new hires. 

To Banks, who is 19, the university’s first Black president is not discriminating based on race or ethnicity — he just would like it if more members of the faculty, who are majority white, could reflect the institution’s diverse student body. 

“They’re almost kind of like skewing it as discrimination,” Banks said about the Republican-led committee’s report. “He might be trying to hire more people of color, more representation and trying to create a more diverse, authoritative body. I guess I can understand how it can come off that way to white people.” 

Banks and some of her fellow students said their campus is pretty liberal. The student population is diverse, but their professors are not. 

Diverse students, majority white faculty 

Madison Dinges, a 20-year-old English major who is white, said when she worked in the career center on campus, her manager was Black. Dinges, a junior at the university, said many of the students she worked with came from diverse ethnic backgrounds. 

Banks and Dinges, both members of the Unite Against Cancer Society, agreed that the majority of their professors are liberal and discuss topics such as Charlie Kirk and the Virginia election. The students, though, are typically also liberal, they said. 

George Mason University is the largest public research university in Virginia, with over 40,000 students and an admission rate of 90%, according to the college. It is the state’s most diverse economic institution, with more than 30% of its students being Pell Grant recipients, a grant provided by the federal government for low-income students. 

In a letter to the university community, Washington wrote that during his time as president, 80% of the tenured faculty have been either white or Asian, with Black, Latino, Indigenous and multiracial faculty accounting for just 19% of the university’s hires. The reason for the decline in the number of white tenured faculty is due to retirements, many of which were by white faculty members, he said in the statement. 

However, the committee’s report said the dean of the Antonin Scalia Law School, Ken Randall, testified that if George Mason faculty did not have a plan to diversify hiring, they could be fired. 

But in Randall’s transcript, included in the report, he said he heard about these consequences from others, and not directly from Washington. 

“This is the Antonia Scalia Law School,” said Douglas F. Gansler, Washington’s attorney. “The very idea that there was discrimination at a law school named after the most conservative Supreme Court judge in modern times is surreal on its face.” 

The House committee called Washington’s DEI efforts illegal and said it led to discrimination against South Asians, Southeast Asians, Arabs, Caucasians, and other demographics.

Gansler said that the university has hired only one Black faculty member since Washington became president five years ago. 

“If Dr. Washington was discriminating in favor of people of color, he’s not very good at it,” Gansler said. 

The report includes detailed April 2021 plans from several departments within the university, such as the College of Visual and Performing Arts, the School of Policy and Government, and the College of Sciences, that were going to hire more faculty from underrepresented minority backgrounds. The groups were identified as Black, Hispanic/Latino and Indigenous, according to the report. 

Gansler said the report is ridiculous. 

“The political theater of the politicians accusing Dr. Washington of anything … is unadulterated nonsense,” Gansler said in a statement to Capital B. “Dr. Washington has never discriminated against anybody for any reason and did not utter one syllable of anything not verifiably completely true.” 

George Mason’s president faced earlier scrutiny 

The Judiciary Committee’s report is not the first time that Washington has come under fire for the university’s inclusion plans: Earlier this year, on Aug. 22, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights determined that the institution violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race in public education.

The weekslong investigation, announced in July, was the fourth investigation into the public university at the time. The American Association of University Professors released a statement calling it “gross” and a “misuse of federal power to chill speech.” 

“The AAUP stands in full solidarity with the faculty of George Mason University,” the organization said in a statement. “We will not sit silently as the DOJ targets educators for doing their job: deliberating, debating, and speaking out in defense of their institution and its leadership.”

The civil rights office put together a resolution agreement, which included having Washington issue a personal apology to students and faculty at George Mason University. 

Washington refused.

The agreement also required the university to conduct an annual training of “all individuals involved in and responsible for recruitment, hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions to impart that GMU will not give preferences based on race, color, or national origin,” according to a press release. 

In Washington’s testimony before the committee in September, he said the university has a “broad” definition of diversity that includes diversity of circumstance, diversity of identity, and diversity of thought. 

Washington also said that several diversity efforts at the institution, including the Anti-Racism and Inclusive Excellence Initiative and the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, have been discontinued. 

He said that he is a product of diverse representation. 

“There’s nothing wrong with wanting the faculty to be diverse and as representative as possible,” Washington said in the testimony. “You don’t have to discriminate in order for one to achieve — in order to have — to achieve both.”

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