When the Department of Justice recently opened an investigation into George Mason University over accusations that the university’s diversity programs were discriminatory, many members of the faculty were outraged.
Professors quickly published a resolution supporting their president and the university’s efforts around diversity.
Now, Justice Department officials say they will investigate the faculty, too.
In a letter sent on Friday, the Trump administration said it would seek drafts of the faculty resolution, all written communications among the Faculty Senate members who drafted the resolution, and all communications between those faculty members and the office of the university’s president, Gregory Washington.
The university referred requests for comment to an outside attorney, who did not immediately respond.
Free speech advocates quickly denounced the move as an attack on academic freedom.
The Justice Department’s interest in the faculty resolution suggested that the Trump administration was widening its targets as it escalates attacks on what it views as a left-leaning climate on college campuses.
Trump administration investigates George Mason University over complaints about hiring practices
Trump officials have accused George Mason, the largest state university in Virginia by enrollment, of having problems with antisemitism on campus. And they have said that the university’s policies encouraging the hiring and advancement of women and people of color in the faculty, and Washington’s promotion of those policies, are discriminatory.
The leaders of two other public colleges in Virginia who supported diversity efforts have lost their jobs this year.
Professors on the George Mason campus worry that Washington’s job will be on the line when the school’s Board of Visitors meets on Friday to examine his job performance. The board, which oversees the university, is appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who has filled it with his political allies.
“We’re worried it’s going to be high noon on Friday,” said Tim Gibson, an associate professor at George Mason and the president of the Virginia state conference of the American Association of University Professors, a faculty rights group.
A federal investigation of a nonbinding faculty opinion is “highly unusual,” Lindsie Rank, the director of campus rights advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy group, said in an email.
”While FIRE would prefer governing bodies such as faculty senates remain neutral on issues of political contention,” she said, “the federal government’s actions represent the latest in a pattern of shakedowns against colleges and universities that will certainly chill faculty speech.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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