Trump administration launches investigation into George Mason University over racial discrimination – Washington Examiner
The U.S. Department of Education, under the Trump administration, has launched a Title VI investigation into George Mason University (GMU) over allegations of racial discrimination. The investigation focuses on claims that GMU has illegally used race and other “immutable characteristics” in its policies and personnel decisions, especially through its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives. Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin at institutions that receive federal funding.
This inquiry follows a previous investigation concerning GMUS alleged failure to address a antagonistic surroundings for Jewish students and faculty. The Education Department alleges that GMU’s leadership adopted unlawful DEI policies sence 2020, giving preferential treatment to faculty from “underrepresented groups” and applying race-based criteria in hiring, promotion, and tenure decisions.GMU’s president defended the university’s practices, stating they comply with civil rights laws and announced changes to the DEI office.
The education Department criticized GMU for what it called “pernicious and widespread discrimination” disguised as anti-racism, which it vows to end. Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor emphasized the need to judge individuals by merit rather than race and expressed disappointment that an institution named after a founding figure would engage in such practices.
Trump administration launches investigation into George Mason University over racial discrimination
The Department of Education launched a Title VI investigation Thursday into George Mason University for allegedly illegally using race and other “immutable characteristics” in the school’s policies and personnel decisions.
Title VI prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.
The investigation comes after the Education Department launched a different inquiry into GMU last week based on “allegations that it failed to respond effectively to a pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty from October 2023 through the 2024-2025 academic year.”
Department of Education Secretary Linda McMahon and the Trump administration have made it a point to pursue charges against schools they feel do not adhere to their anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. The complaint against GMU alleges that “GMU leadership have promoted and adopted unlawful DEI policies from 2020 through the present, which give preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from ‘underrepresented groups’ to advance ‘anti-racism.’”
The Education Department said the school’s president, Gregory Washington, sent out an email in March 2025 announcing the school’s DEI office would be changed to the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community,” and said there was nothing for GMU to change about its hiring, promotion, and other university policies, adding that GMU has “always complied with existing civil rights laws.”
The department said the school has hired “equity advisers,” who survey faculty hiring for race, sex, and other characteristics. The university president has also allegedly directed the university to “develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process” based on whether an employee is a “[person] of color” that “recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus.”
Additionally, the president has also directed the school to hire “once candidates have cleared a certain ‘bar’ of requirements for the position,” which would be on “the basis of a candidate’s ‘diversity’…even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate.”
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“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, implemented under the guise of so-called ‘Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,’ not only allow but champion illegal racial preferencing in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This kind of pernicious and widespread discrimination, packaged as ‘anti-racism,’ was allowed to flourish under the Biden administration, but will not be tolerated by this one,” acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said in a press release.
“The Trump-McMahon Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights will investigate this matter fully to ensure that individuals are judged based on their merit and accomplishment, not the color of their skin. That the leadership of a university named in honor of the author of the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which informed the Constitution’s Bill of Rights, needs a refresher on the primacy of treating individuals equally under law is deeply disheartening,” he added.
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