Congressional committee demands GMU president testify

George Mason University President Gregory Washington, whose university already faces four federal investigations launched this month by the Trump administration, has now been called to testify before the GOP-controlled House Judiciary Committee.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, the committee’s chairman, and U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, chair of the Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, sent Washington a letter Tuesday stating, “[I]t appears there is a pervasive culture of intolerance at George Mason that violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Civil Rights Act. During your tenure, George Mason seems to have engaged in racial discrimination in the hiring and promotion of faculty and staff contrary to both federal statutes and executive order.”

The Ohio and Texas congressmen, both Republicans, requested extensive information about George Mason’s diversity, equity and inclusion programs, which the letter says are in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The letter requested that Washington appear for a “transcribed interview” with the committee.

The letter also demands that Washington produce “all documents and communications” from his first day as George Mason’s president (July 1, 2020) to the present regarding DEI, “antiracism, and/or inclusive excellence,” as well as any document referring to a job applicant’s race or gender, the use of race or diversity in the hiring of faculty or staff, and the university’s antiracism and inclusive excellence task force and equity advisers programs. It asks for any document from Nov. 1, 2024, to the present that is related to compliance with a federal mandate or executive order related to DEI.

The documents are due by 10 a.m. Aug. 12, and Washington must schedule his testimony by that date, the letter says.

The congressmen’s letter, made public in a news release Tuesday, echoes the U.S. Department of Justice’s July 17 investigation and the U.S. Department of Education’s July 10 probe into alleged race- and sex-based discrimination in hiring and promotions at George Mason that disadvantage white and male candidates, allegations Washington denied in a statement earlier this month.

Meanwhile, George Mason faculty groups and others, including federal and state Democratic lawmakers and regional business organizations, have defended Washington, who is George Mason’s first Black president. Many have accused the Trump administration of using its powers to drive Washington out of office, drawing parallels to Jim Ryan’s resignation as the University of Virginia’s president in June, after a similar campaign by the DOJ’s civil rights division accused Ryan of failing to dismantle U.Va.’s DEI structures.

The congressmen’s letter accuses George Mason, the state’s largest public university by enrollment, of not fully complying with federal law following President Donald Trump’s executive order eliminating DEI offices at universities. “George Mason simply changed its name to the ‘Office of Access, Compliance and Community,'” the letter alleges, with the university making “mere cosmetic changes to its discriminatory DEI programs.”

On Friday, the Justice Department’s civil rights division targeted the university’s faculty senate, which passed a resolution last week in support of Washington, and requested in a letter that the members of the senate and the president’s office preserve “all written communications” regarding the resolution, including earlier drafts, emails, texts and voice mails.

American Association of University Professors President Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor, issued a statement Tuesday in support of the Mason Faculty Senate and called the DOJ letter “a gross misuse of federal power to chill speech, silence faculty members, and undermine shared governance. It is an attack on academic freedom, plain and simple.”

He also called on George Mason’s board of visitors, which is set to meet Friday and to discuss Washington’s job performance, to “stand with their faculty and president by rejecting this attempt to weaponize federal authority against shared governance. They must not only refuse the DOJ’s request but also affirm that faculty speech will be protected, not punished.”