Gregory Washington is defending George Mason Univeristy’s diversity efforts despite pressure from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Gregory Washington, the first Black president of George Mason University, is refusing to issue a forced apology for the school’s diversity initiatives, despite a call from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) to do so.
Washington is defending the university’s diversity efforts, backed by faculty, one week after OCR concluded an investigation accusing him and George Mason University of unlawful race-based hiring and violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Chronicle reports. OCR’s proposed resolution included a demand that Washington personally apologize to the campus community for the diversity initiatives he oversaw, but Washington says that’s not going to happen.
“It is glaringly apparent that the OCR investigation process has been cut short, and ‘findings’ have been made in spite of a very incomplete fact-finding process, including only two interviews with university academic deans,” Washington’s lawyer, Douglas F. Gansler, wrote in a response letter.
But Gansler says abiding by the investigation and issuing an apology “would be falsely admitting to conduct that did not occur and would open GMU to further legal risk in concurrent and future investigations by other agencies.”
Finkelstein warns that by apologizing, Washington could expose himself to further legal trouble, asking whether a white male applicant passed over in favor of a minority or female candidate “would have a claim.”
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Source: Black Enterprise
