George Mason University’s controversial efforts to diversify faculty have done little to change the racial makeup of its professors, data shows. Since 2021, 80 percent of the university’s 211 hires have been white and Asian, according to data from the university.
The Education and Justice Departments have launched several investigations into the university and its president, Gregory Washington, for hiring practices that they say discriminated against white, Asian, and male applicants.
The federal investigations have caused many to speculate that he will be fired by the university’s board or forced to resign. Earlier this month, a Democratic-controlled State Senate committee in Virginia blocked six appointees of Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, from joining the university’s Board of Visitors, leaving the board without a quorum.
A Board of Visitors meeting scheduled for Thursday was postponed, according to the university’s website. A GMU spokesperson did not provide The Chronicle with a reason.
When Washington joined the university in 2020, at the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, George Mason’s board members, alumni, faculty, and students were advocating for the hiring of more faculty of color to reflect the diversity of the student population. George Mason, a federally designated minority-serving institution, is one of Virginia’s most racially diverse public universities.
Some research suggests that faculty diversity has a direct link to student outcomes since minority faculty members are more likely to recruit, mentor, and help retain students of color. Studies have also found that minority students feel more connected to institutions that have a racially diverse faculty.
Less than a year into his presidency, Washington created an antiracism task force to examine the university’s policies, hiring practices, and ways that racial bias can influence decisions. The university assigned “equity advisers” in every academic department to ensure that more women and people of color were considered for faculty hiring and tenure, according to a 2020 statement from Washington.
Washington has vigorously defended the university against claims that the faculty-hiring process discriminated against anyone. Between the 2021 and 2025 fiscal years, the university hired 20 Black, 16 Hispanic, and two American Indian/Alaska Native tenure-track faculty members. The university hired 90 white tenure-track faculty members in that same time frame.
“I hasten to make clear that an examination of hiring data shows that this was not caused by racial discrimination, and certainly not because anyone put their thumb on the hiring scale to achieve certain outcomes,” Washington said in a statement posted on the university’s website.
George Mason had 234 faculty departures during this period, the majority of which occurred among white faculty members. Of the 177 departures of white faculty, 60 percent were retirements.
In the statement, Washington maintained that hiring is a “bottom-up process” that is faculty driven. Washington added that disparities in the university’s faculty demographics also reflect a high number of white faculty retirements and a “disproportionate” number of Asian applicants who were hired into the engineering faculty.
“With that said, it is important to return to George Mason’s definition of diversity, which is far broader than the current and exclusive federal focus on ethnic diversity,” Washington said. “At George Mason, ‘diversity’ is defined as one’s origin, identity, life circumstances, and viewpoint.”
‘Small Success’
Not everyone at the university shares that view. Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics there, said that the university’s diversity policies and training created an environment that pressured faculty to discriminate against applicants on the basis of race and gender.
“Anyone who’s involved in hiring knows that they’re under this kind of pressure. The simplest thing is if you aren’t willing to go and play ball and go and take [race] into account, that you’re not going to be getting hiring slots in the future,” Caplan said. “It is very likely they’re not hiring meritocratically.”
A spokesperson for the university did not respond to The Chronicle’s request for comment on this characterization of the faculty-hiring process at the time of publication.
Michael K. Fauntroy, an associate professor of policy and government and the founding director of the Race, Politics, and Policy Center at George Mason, said that faculty hiring never discriminated in favor of faculty of color — and the number of Black faculty members on campus proves it.
“These investigations are not serious,” he said, referring to the federal government’s complaints. “Because if you take even a surface level look at things, a net gain of eight Black faculty is minuscule. … These diversity efforts at Mason are successful, but it’s a small success if it’s just plus-eight among Black faculty.”
Fauntroy said that his experience as a George Mason faculty member has been mostly positive since he arrived at the university in 2002.
Racially diversifying a university’s faculty can be difficult, experts say. Barriers such as biased hiring practices, a lack of available tenure-track positions, and a narrow Ph.D. pipeline for students of color can hinder the diversity of faculty, one expert said.
“The structural inequities across the pipeline aren’t just about what happens to folks once they become faculty. It’s related to what happens in doctoral education. It relates to the pool that we’re drawing from, but also what it means to retain folks at an institution once they’ve been admitted,” said Royel M. Johnson, director of the National Assessment of Collegiate Campus Climates at the University of Southern California’s Race and Equity Center. “So many institutions of higher education have focused primarily on what it means to recruit a diverse applicant pool to the institution but fall short of what’s necessary to retain.”
