George Mason University, where I teach, is embroiled in federal civil rights investigations over how it has handled campus antisemitism, and over racial preferences in hiring and admissions.
Various members of the faculty and faculty institutions, notably the local chapter of the AAUP and the Faculty Senate, have risen in defense of President Gregory Washington. The latter organization voted on a hastily-drafted resolution that praised Washington for using racial preferences to try to match the ethnic composition of the faculty with that of the student body. Given that this is blatantly illegal, and was even before the 2023 SFFA decision cracked down on racial preferences more broadly, the resolution not surprisingly attracted additional federal attention.
In any event, I was, as the young people say, "triggered" by a particular paragraph written by professors Tim Gibson, Bethany Letiecq, and James H. Finkelstein in an opinion piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education (paywalled):
