Williams: George Mason typifies the folly of the war on DEI (2024)

George Mason University’s diversity, equity and inclusion web page celebrates a school where at least 80 languages are spoken by a student body representing more than 130 countries. Students of color make up 40% of its enrollment.

The Fairfax school boasts the most diverse campus in Virginia. But Gov. Glenn Youngkin has board of visitors members — a sizable chunk of them affiliated with The Heritage Foundation — who view diversity as a curse rather than a blessing.

A recent piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education describes this Heritage Foundation takeover on the GMU board, which sounds similar to what Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis executed at the formerly progressive New College of Florida.

“Eradicating diversity, equity, and inclusion is the primary force driving conversations about who should lead the board, according to several people with knowledge of the discussions,” reads the article, whose headline asks: “Could George Mason U. Be Republicans’ ‘Test Case’ for Project 2025?”

You’d be advised to peep at that GMU DEI page while you can. Recall how Virginia’s DEI Office underwent a name change soon after Youngkin took office, with “equity” being swapped out for “opportunity.”

There’s something about “equity” — defined as fairness and justice — that drives these folks nuts. Go figure.

Mason, with 40,000 students, is the largest university in Virginia. A remake of this institution is a much heavier lift than at New College of Florida, which has fewer than 1,000 students. But right-leaning ideology has already established a toehold at Mason, whose law school is named for former Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and whose economics department donors include libertarian billionaire Charles Koch.

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 was viewed as a blueprint for a Donald Trump return to the White House — at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration contributed, according to CNN — before its disastrous public reception led to this week’s resignation of its director, Paul Dans, and compelled Trump to distance himself, unconvincingly, from the project.

Youngkin’s appointments at Mason, and his recent appointment of Meg Bryce to the state Board of Education, continues his race-based attack on education, which began with his first official act, an executive order banning the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts” (read: lessons about systemic racism) in the classroom. This whitewashing campaign has resulted in the demise of diversity-themed coursework at Mason and a racial literacy requirement at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Bryce is a daughter of Scalia. Last November, she lost a bid for a seat on the Albemarle County School Board by 62% to 37%, but not before arguing that the existence of systemic racism should be up for debate.

“When we talk about systemic racism, I think that there needs to be an openness about, you know, not everybody agrees that there is systemic racism. And it has to be OK for people to disagree about that,” she said during a virtual forum hosted by the Albemarle-Charlottesville NAACP, as reported by The Daily Progress newspaper in Charlottesville.

“It has to be OK for some people to be able to say, ‘Well, I do recognize that racism exists and there are racist people in the system. I don’t agree that there is systemic racism,’” she continued. “And I don’t think somebody should be shamed into silence for expressing that.”

Youngkin’s press secretary, Christian Martinez, noted in an email Tuesday that Bryce earned her Ph.D. and master’s in cognitive psychology from the prestigious University of Virginia.

“In light of the Commonwealth’s youth mental health crisis, the push for cell-phone-free education, the need for fentanyl awareness, and the ongoing social and emotional developmental delays affecting early childhood and K-12 students due to extended school closures and pandemic-related measures, having an expert in psychology with teaching experience on the Board is an invaluable asset for addressing these critical challenges in our public schools,” he said.

That’s all well and good. But earning doctorates and master’s degrees from one of the finer universities in America does not give one license to ignore or reinvent history.

To argue that U.S. racism is entirely due to individuals, at the exclusion of institutions and systems, is anti-intellectual, at odds with documented history and empirical data. I spelled out in a previous column how systemic racism is readily evident in our nation’s history of enslavement, Jim Crow, and discrimination in voting, lending, housing, employment, education, criminal justice and health care.

A person who would argue otherwise is either racist, close-minded or engaging in ideological pandering for political gain. They should have no role in guiding public education policy.

To further argue that a nation designed for white male hegemony should feel no imperative to address and remediate that history defies common sense, unless the goal is maintaining power and privilege.

As for George Mason, one of Youngkin’s appointees, Lindsey Burke, “wrote the Project 2025 chapter on how to dismantle the federal Department of Education, strip billions of dollars from public schools and seriously undermine civil rights oversight and enforcement,” says Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, a professor of educational leadership at VCU.

The Chronicle article cites five other Youngkin appointees with past or present connections to The Heritage Foundation, including Nina Rees, its former senior education policy analyst and spokesperson; Charles Stimson, a senior adviser to the president; and Kenneth Marcus, a former assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department under Trump who three years ago signed onto Heritage’s call to “end critical race theory influence in schools.”

Martinez defended the governor’s appointments.

“The members appointed by Governor Youngkin to the Board of Visitors at George Mason are exceptionally qualified. Any suggestion to the contrary only fuels unfounded conspiracy theories and distracts from the real issues facing our students,” he said. “Instead, critics should focus their scrutiny elsewhere.”

The media is not the conspiracy theorist here.

The conspiracies are being spun by the folks who fashion sinister narratives surrounding critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion to stoke white-voter grievance.

The mainstream media did not elevate philanthropist George Soros into an all-purpose bogeyman who pulls the levers of a vast global plot. Nor did we create the racist birther conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.

Youngkin has consistently attempted to burnish his national brand by attacking state institutions. But Mason, which surpassed the 40,000-student mark last August — a record for a Virginia college — has grown even as college enrollments have trended downward. You don’t attract that many students unless you’re selling a product people want or need.

Diversity — at Mason and in our nation — is a strength, not a weakness. We dismantle it at our peril.