Dear Fellow Patriots:
Sometimes, becoming a national leader means becoming an irresistible target for ideologues. That appears to be the case with a report recently released by The Heritage Foundation.
The report suggests that George Mason University is “bloated” with diversity, equity, and inclusion staff efforts that are “wasteful” and foment “worse campus climates.” It also suggests Mason and other universities like us “promote radical ideologies.” They call for all DEI staff to be fired, for Mason to be punished with reduced legislative appropriations, and for our Board of Visitors to conduct an ideological purity search to “rein in ideological excesses.”
I can only conclude its authors have not spent time at Mason, because the picture they paint is wholly unrecognizable to those of us who work, study, and live here. As we know, Mason defines diversity to include our communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community, but also international students, students with disabilities, veterans and those who are first-generation, parenting, low-income, neurodiverse, and of many religious traditions. As a result, Mason is ranked 8th in the nation for free speech rights by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. It is ranked No. 1 in America for veterans by College Factual. And it is one of just 30 universities to be given the “Best of the Best” rating by Campus Pride for our safe and welcoming environment for members of the LGBTQ+ community. Ultimately, we graduate our students at nearly identical rates despite race, gender, or economic status. And Mason is even home to both the Antonin Scalia Law School and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. I would challenge the authors to find another university – just one! – that has such a comprehensive ideological balance.
We are being attacked for supposedly having more staff associated with DEI work than any other university they identified on a per-faculty basis. This is both odd and erroneous methodology. Why, for example, index DEI staff to only tenured or tenure-track faculty? Why exclude non-tenured faculty, and why not against the student population for whom DEI services exist to serve? How did they even arrive at their numbers of DEI staff? They bear no resemblance to the figures we have provided those who have asked for them. Perhaps their arguments fall apart when such methodological course corrections are applied. Our own careful analysis shows the number of staff focused on DEI services at 17. Their report lists 20 titles, a number of which are no longer in use, and then asserts without evidence that there are actually 69 staff members. To help you understand where Mason really stands, we have attached a document using Heritage’s data and comparing it to the size of the student body it represents, for both clarity and comparison. Using their own data clearly shows that Mason has one of the largest student/DEI staff ratios, which is the exact opposite of a bloated institution.
To make matters worse, out of 39 public institutions in Virginia they single out Mason and compare it to Power 5 athletic conference universities. These are mostly private or flagship universities that are structured and supported differently than access institutions like Mason, which is why they have substantially more tenure track faculty. In addition, Mason’s student body has a majority of students who are of ethnic minorities, or are otherwise historically underrepresented, making it more diverse than MOST OF the other Power 5 schools. Simply put, we serve a different student body, economically and demographically, and should not be compared to these universities. We can only conclude that the authors committed the most basic error of bad research, by starting with an agenda in mind and cherry-picking data to support it.
George Mason University is proudly Virginia’s largest, most inclusive, and most innovative university, a national leader in recruiting, welcoming, educating, and graduating everyone who wants a college degree to change their lives. In Virginia, we accomplish this at a lower cost per student than any of our peers. We also accomplish it while maintaining race-neutral and test-optional admissions, and a NEAR 90-percent acceptance rate. We welcome everyone who is academically prepared for the rigors of a research university curriculum. Period.
We would like to learn more about how The Heritage Foundation came to its conclusion that somehow Mason is a hotbed of “radical ideologies.” We are issuing an open invitation to the authors of the research to come to our campus and meet with Mason leadership to describe the report and the methodologies that drive their conclusions and recommendations. We do so in pursuit of the very “balance” and “intellectual exchange” they call for. We are happy to host them on our campus. Perhaps there is something we can learn from their analysis. And perhaps there is something the Heritage Foundation can learn about George Mason University.
Sincerely,
Gregory Washington
President
