McCoul was dismissed in September after a video went viral, showing a student confronting her in class and claiming the professor’s gender identity lesson was illegal. McCoul is actively appealing her termination. The documented justification for her dismissal was that McCoul’s course content and material did not match the description in the course catalog, but the faculty council said this was false.
“The content of the course was the reason for the dismissal and not the stated reason: failure of academic responsibility,” the council wrote in its report. “Given the timeline of dismissal, the political pressure brought to bear, and statements by Regents that the course content was illegal, President Welsh’s assertion that the firing was for failure of academic responsibility appears pretextual.”
In an Oct. 2 memo obtained by the Tribune, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Blanca Lupiani rejected the council’s conclusions and said the council acted outside its charge to review matters that were “largely unrelated to academic freedom.” The complaint about McCoul was never assigned to the council, Lupiani said in the memo.
University rules require the department head to write charges for dismissal, seek approval from the dean and give the faculty member a notice of intent to dismiss with five business days to respond, but Welsh requested McCoul’s dismissal on Sept. 9 “effective immediately,” the Tribune reported.
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Dive Brief:
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights alleged Friday that Virginia’s George Mason University has violated civil rights law by illegally using race and other protected characteristics in its hiring and promotion practices.
Craig Trainor, the office’s acting assistant secretary for civil rights, accused George Mason President Gregory Washington of waging a “university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”
Under the Trump administration, Trainor and other officials have set their sights on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other policies that were designed to help historically disadvantaged groups.
The most recent allegations from the Education Department, announced just six weeks after it opened the probe, said the agency determined that the university violated Title VI.The civil rights law bars federally funded institutions from discriminating based on race, color or national origin.
The agency gave George Mason, which is located near Washington, D.C., 10 days to agree with the Trump administration’s proposal to voluntarily resolve the alleged violations.
Under the proposed agreement, Washington would have to release a statement saying the university’s hiring and promotion practices will comply with Title VI and explaining the steps for submitting a discrimination complaint.
The university would also have to review its employment policies, conduct annual training for all employees involved in hiring and promotion decisions,and maintain and share records with the federal government upon request to prove compliance.
The agreement would also require Washington to apologize to the university community “for promoting unlawful discriminatory practices in hiring, promotion, and tenure processes,” the Education Department said.
In a Friday statement, George Mason’sgoverning board said the Education Department notified it of the violation, and it will review the proposed resolution and fully respond to government inquiries.
“Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the University and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia,” the board said.
The Education Department said it opened the investigation following a complaint from multiple George Mason professors who alleged that university leadership has implemented policies that give preferential treatment to underrepresented groups since 2020.
In it, Washington said that leaders wanted staff and faculty to reflect the diversity of the student population. “This is not code for establishing a quota system,” he added. “It is a recognition of the reality that our society’s future lies in multicultural inclusion.”
He noted that a majority of George Mason’s students weren’t White, yet only 30% of the university’s faculty were part of a ethnic minority group, were multi-ethnic or came from international communities.To achieve the university’s vision, officials should focus on both professional credentials and lived experiences when recruiting employees, he said.
“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?” Washington said at the time.
On Friday, the Education Department also cited several George Mason policies it said violated Title VI, including one it said appeared on the university’s website in 2024. The policy said officials could forgo a competitive search process for faculty members when “there is an opportunity to hire a candidate who strategically advances the institutional commitment to diversity and inclusion,” the agency said.
Washington, George Mason’s first Black president, pushed back on the Education Department’s allegations when it first opened the investigation. In a July 16 statement, he said that the university’s promotion and tenure policies don’t give preferential treatment based on race or other protected characteristics.
He also pointed to a “profound shift in how Title VI is being applied.”
“Longstanding efforts to address inequality — such as mentoring programs, inclusive hiring practices, and support for historically underrepresented groups — are in many cases being reinterpreted as presumptively unlawful,” he said.
The U.S. Department of Justice has also opened several investigations into George Mason, including one over its hiring and promotion practices.
Another DOJ probe is looking into the university’s Faculty Senate after its members approved a resolution supporting Washington and the diversity initiatives following the federal investigations, according to The New York Times.The agency has demanded internal communications from the Faculty Senate as part of its investigation.
Todd Wolfson, president of the American Association of University Professors slammed the probe shortly after it was announced.
“Let’s call this what it is: a gross misuse of federal power to chill speech, silence faculty members, and undermine shared governance,” he said in a July statement. “It is an attack on academic freedom, plain and simple.”
The Virginia university has been under investigation since early July.
John M. Chase/iStock Unreleased/Getty Images
Gregory Washington, president of Virginia’s George Mason University, must apologize to the university community for “promoting unlawful discriminatory practices” in order to resolve allegations that the institution violated civil rights law, the Department of Education announced Friday.
The department claims that the university has illegally factored race and “other immutable characteristics” into hiring, promotion and tenure practices since at least 2020.
Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said the unlawful practices began shortly after the murder of George Floyd, when Washington called on faculty and administrators to expunge campus of “racist vestiges” by “intentionally discriminat[ing] on the basis of race.”
“You can’t make this up,” Trainor said in the statement. “Despite this unfortunate chapter in Mason’s history, the university now has the opportunity to come into compliance with federal civil rights laws by entering into a Resolution Agreement with the Office for Civil Rights.”
The Education Department first announced in early July that it would investigate GMU for potentially violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on race and national origin. Later that month, the Department of Justice announced it would investigate the institution’s Faculty Senate after the panel passed a resolution in support of Washington, who had been quick to push back on the Trump administration and defend the university’s commitment to addressing social injustice. Many conservatives called for Washington—the institution’s first Black president—to be fired. But the university’s Board of Visitors spared him at a meeting Aug. 1, at least for now, and gave him a raise.
Trainor said in the statement that “the Trump-McMahon Department of Education will not allow racially exclusionary practices—which violate the Civil Rights Act, the Equal Protection Clause, and Supreme Court precedent—to continue corrupting our nation’s educational institutions.”
In addition to an apology, the Education Department is demanding that GMU post that statement “prominently” to the university’s website, remove any contrary statements from the past and revise campus policies to prevent future race-based programming. It also wants the institution to begin an annual training session for all individuals involved in recruitment, hiring, promotion or tenure decisions to emphasize the ban on racial consideration and provide records documenting compliance whenever they are requested moving forward.
George Mason officials have 10 days to respond to the department’s proposed resolution agreement.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has determined that George Mason University violated federal civil rights law by using race as a factor in hiring and promotion decisions, the agency announced on Friday.
The finding concluded that GMU violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, and national origin in federally funded education programs. The university now has 10 days to accept a proposed resolution agreement or risk losing federal funding.
Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor said President Gregory Washington led “a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”
“You can’t make this up,” Trainor said in a statement, noting that Washington had previously called for removing “racist vestiges” from campus in 2020.
The investigation, launched in July 2025, stemmed from complaints filed by multiple GMU professors who alleged the university adopted preferential treatment policies for faculty from “underrepresented groups” between 2020 and the present.
Federal investigators said that they found several problematic practices. As recently as fall 2024, they argue that the university’s website stated it “may choose to waive the competitive search process when there is an opportunity to hire a candidate who strategically advances the institutional commitment to diversity and inclusion.”
The current Faculty Handbook also requires approval from the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community” – previously called the “Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” until GMU renamed it in March 2025 – before extending job offers.
One high-level administrator told investigators that Washington “created an atmosphere of surveillance” regarding hiring decisions related to diversity objectives.
Under the proposed resolution agreement, Washington must personally issue a statement and apology to the university community, acknowledging the discriminatory practices. The university must also revise hiring policies, conduct annual training, and remove any provisions encouraging racial preferences.
GMU must post the presidential statement prominently on its website and remove any contradictory materials. The university would also be required to maintain compliance records and designate a coordinator to work with federal officials.
George Mason University, located in Fairfax, Virginia, enrolls approximately 39,000 students and receives federal funding that could be at risk if the violations are not resolved.
George Mason officials said that they are reviewing the specific resolution steps proposed by the Department of Education.
“We will continue to respond fully and cooperatively to all inquiries from the Department of Education, the Department of Justice and the U.S. House of Representatives and evaluate the evidence that comes to light,” the university said in a statement. “Our sole focus is our fiduciary duty to serve the best interests of the University and the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.”
The Department of Justice said Tuesday that George Washington University was “deliberately indifferent” toward Jewish students and faculty who said they faced antisemitic harassment and had violated federal civil rights law that bars discrimination based on race and national origin.
The four-page letter signals that George Washington could be the next university in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. The DOJ sent a similar letter to the University of California, Los Angeles, late last month, and then various federal agencies froze more than $500 million in federal grants at the university. Since then, the Trump administration has demanded $1 billion from the UC system to resolve the dispute—a move the state’s governor called “extortion.”
GW was one of 10 universities that a federal task force to combat antisemitism had planned to visit and investigate. That list included UCLA and Harvard and Columbia Universities, which also have been targeted by the Trump administration.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division, wrote in the letter that the department plans to enforce its findings unless the university agrees to a voluntary resolution agreement to address the agency’s concerns. She didn’t detail what such an agreement would entail or what enforcement might look like.
The department’s allegations largely center on how the university responded—or didn’t—to a spring 2024 encampment established to protest the war in Gaza. The university ultimately called in D.C. police to clear the demonstration after it persisted for nearly two weeks.
“The purpose of the agitators’ efforts was to frighten, intimidate, and deny Jewish, Israeli, and American-Israeli students free and unfettered access to GWU’s educational environment,” Dhillon wrote. “This is the definition of hostility and a ‘hostile environment.’”
She also wrote that university officials “took no meaningful action” in the face of at least eight complaints alleging that demonstrators at the encampment were discriminating against students because they were Jewish or Israeli.
George Washington spokesperson Shannon McClendon said in a statement that university officials were reviewing the letter.
“GW condemns antisemitism, which has absolutely no place on our campuses or in a civil and humane society,” McClendon said. “Moreover, our actions clearly demonstrate our commitment to addressing antisemitic actions and promoting an inclusive campus environment by upholding a safe, respectful, and accountable environment. We have taken appropriate action under university policy and the law to hold individuals or organizations accountable, including during the encampment, and we do not tolerate behavior that threatens our community or undermines meaningful dialogue.”
The U.S. Department of Justice issued a notice to the University of California, Los Angeles, on Tuesday alleging that it violated civil rights law. The move came just hours after the university announced a $6.45 million settlement to end a lawsuit brought by Jewish students over allegations of antisemitism last year.
“The Department has concluded that UCLA’s response to the protest encampment on its campus in the spring of 2024 was deliberately indifferent to a hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students in violation of the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI,” the notice read. It also said an investigation into the University of California system is ongoing.
The message made no mention of the settlement; UCLA divided the funds between the plaintiffs and Jewish advocacy and community organizations. The settlement also said the university cannot exclude Jewish students or staff from educational facilities and opportunities “based on religious beliefs concerning the Jewish state of Israel.” (Jewish student plaintiffs argued they were barred by pro-Palestinian protesters from entering certain areas of campus.)
According to the federal notice, UCLA now has until Aug. 5 to contact the DOJ to seek a voluntary resolution agreement “to ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated and reasonable steps are taken to prevent its recurrence.” DOJ officials said they’re prepared to file a complaint in federal district court by Sept. 2 “unless there is reasonable certainty that we can reach an agreement in this matter.”
“Our investigation into the University of California system has found concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability from the institution,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “This disgusting breach of civil rights against students will not stand: DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system.”
The U.S. Department of Justice alleged Tuesdaythat the University of California, Los Angelesviolated civil rights lawby failing to do enough to protect Jewish and Israeli students from harassment.
The findings stem from UCLA’s approach to a pro-Palestinian encampment that students erected on the university’s campus in the spring 2024 term.UCLA officials declined to disband the encampment for nearly a week, citing the need to balance free speech protections with student and employee safety.
In a letter to Michael Drake, president of the University of California system,Justice Department officials said they would seek to enter a voluntary resolution with UCLA to “ensure that the hostile environment is eliminated.”
Dive Insight:
The Justice Department is also investigating the entire University of California system over similar allegations. That systemwide probe found “concerning evidence of systemic anti-Semitism at UCLA that demands severe accountability,” U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a Tuesday statement.
“DOJ will force UCLA to pay a heavy price for putting Jewish Americans at risk and continue our ongoing investigations into other campuses in the UC system,” Bondi said.
Justice Department officials gave UCLA leaders until Aug. 5 to reach out about entering a voluntary resolution. They threatened the university with a lawsuit by Sept. 2 if they don’t believe they can strike an agreement with the institution.
The Justice Department investigation focused on the pro-Palestinian encampment erected on UCLA’s campus on April 25, 2024. Encampment demonstrators demanded that the university divest from companies with ties to Israel’s military.
On the same day it was erected, a university spokesperson told the campus community that officials were monitoring the situation to balance the “right to free expression while minimizing disruption” to the institution’s teaching and learning mission.
However, several days into the protest, some demonstrators formed human blockades to prevent some people on campus from moving freely throughout Royce Quad, including students wearing a Star of David or those who refused to denounce Zionism, according to an internal report from a university task forcereleased last October.
The task force also found the encampment violated university rulesand that the blockades disparately impacted Jewish people.
The Justice Department’s letter to UCLA heavily cited the university’s own task force report,as well as 11 complaints the university received alleging that encampment protesters discriminated against them based on their race, religion or national origin.
“UCLA’s documentation established that it did not outright ignore these complaints; however, the University took no meaningful action to eliminate the hostile environment for Jewish and Israeli students caused by the encampment until it was disbanded,” the letter states.
Violence broke out at the site on the night of April 30, 2024, when counterprotesters attempted to dismantle the encampment’s barricade, The New York Times reported.
The counterprotesters attacked those within the encampment,including by launching fireworks into the encampment and hitting the pro-Palestinian protesters with sticks, according to the publication. Some of the pro-Palestinian protesters also fought back.
Police arrived hours later, though they did not immediately break up the violence. The next day, UCLA officials made the call to have police break up the encampment, resulting in over 200 arrests.
“In the end, the encampment on Royce Quad was both unlawful and a breach of policy,” then-UC Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement. “It led to unsafe conditions on our campus and it damaged our ability to carry out our mission. It needed to come to an end.”
In their letter, Justice Department officials criticized university leaders, alleging they knew that protesters were “engaging in non-expressive conduct unprotected by the First Amendment” and were denying“Jewish and Israeli students access to campus resources” days before they moved to disband the encampment.
UCLA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Justice Department findings come the same day the university settled a lawsuit from Jewish students and a Jewish professor, who alleged their civil rights were violated because UCLA allowed protesters to block their campus access.
The agency’s letter mentioned the lawsuit’s filings, though it did not refer to the settlement.
As part of that agreement, UCLA agreed to pay about $6 million,with the funds going directly toward the plaintiffs and their legal fees, as well as to Jewish groups and a campus initiative to combat antisemitism.
