George Mason University President Says DEI Is ‘Misunderstood’ Amid Office Renaming
George Mason University in Virginia has rebranded its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) office, renaming it the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community” in response to federal directives from the Trump administration. However, the university’s president, Gregory Washington, has claimed that DEI is often “misunderstood” as discriminatory.
Washington insisted the renaming was not an attempt to bypass compliance, claiming in a statement that it “is not an attempt to evade compliance through clever wordsmithing – it simply affirms our actual compliance through more precise naming.” He added, “The fact of the matter is, ‘DEI’ and ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ are terms that have become so broadly misunderstood and misapplied as to become counterproductive to our work.”
He added that the university cannot correct the public’s perception that DEI initiatives amount to discrimination. “So we will change the name of this office and move on, committed as always to the substance of that office: ensuring a fair, welcoming, and supportive environment for all, and observing state and federal civil rights laws to the benefit of all.”
According to a report by The College Fix, the university had 87 DEI-related employees as of May 2024—more than the number of history and art history professors combined. The school has also previously supported recruitment initiatives aimed at “underrepresented groups.”
Last May, George Mason stopped requiring DEI-related courses for graduation following an investigation by Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin. Washington had previously defended the use of race as a hiring factor in 2021, before the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in 2023.
“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?” Washington previously said regarding criticism of the school’s “Inclusive Excellence Framework for Hiring,” Washington said at the time, according to The Daily Caller.
