The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
On the Pro-Genocide Rally at George Mason University
Why didn't university president Gregory Washington speak up?
The Hamas massacre in Israel has revealed that the the DEI norms embraced by most American universities don't include protecting Jewish students from intimidation. Every day I hear new stories from friends about their college kids being threatened, ostracized, and bullied, because they object to the glorification of Hamas terrorists by other students. A good friend of mine, for example, has had to hire a civil rights attorney because other students in his daughter's program have taken to referring to her as "the little Jew bitch," and the program's administrators have not done anything about it.
At my own school, George Mason University president Gregory Washington has championed a variety of expensive, time-intensive, DEI measures. The goal, he wrote in an email to the university community in July 2023, is to ensure that "every student, faculty, and staff member is welcomed and respected as a full equal in this community of learning." He has, unfortunately, fallen far short of that lofty goal with regard to Jewish GMU students and faculty.
Just two days after Hamas's genocidal rampage in southern Israel, Mason Students for Justice in Palestine published a statement endorsing the actions of the Hamas terrorists, whom they described as "reclaiming land and seizing settlements considered illegal and a violation of international laws."
SJP then announced that it would be holding a rally on the university's main campus on October 12. In support of "the resistance," i.e., the perpetrators of the massacre, Hamas. SJP Mason also called for the destruction of the State of Israel, the "liberation of our homeland and our people, from the river to the sea. Show up and show out for Palestine, and let GMU know that we will rise against the occupation!" Moreover, SJP Mason suggested that students bring "face coverings or kuffiyehs" to hide their identities.
In short, SJP Mason was proudly organizing a pro-genocide rally, and, like other racist and antisemitic hate groups such as the KKK, sought to mask themselves. I, and I'm sure many others, urged President Washington and other university officials to make a statement condemning a recognized student group being poised to endorse genocidal terrorism, and expressing a commitment to protecting Jewish students' safety. I did not get any responses to my emails, nor did any university official say anything about the rally. Meanwhile, I understand that many Jewish Mason students were too frightened to be on campus during the masked hate-fest.
As of this writing, the only official GMU mention of the pro-genocide rally was an oblique reference in an October 17 email from President Washington, alluding in a morally neutral tone to a "quite visible [gathering], in the middle of the Fairfax Campus, in the middle of a day of classes."
President Washington hid behind the First Amendment in the email, noting that he may not quash student protests. That's true, with two caveats. First, masking at a protest is illegal in Virginia, and the university police have not been enforcing the law despite being alerted to it and urged to enforce it. Second, nothing in the First Amendment prevents Washington from condemning the rally.
I'm in favor of universities following the famous Kalven Report, which recommends that university leaders should rarely if ever opine on controversial matters, including publicly expressed opinions on hot-button issues by faculty and students. But such a policy must be consistently applied, and Kalven has not been George Mason University policy under President Washington. It has been ignored especially when it comes to DEI issues, and in particular when it comes to promoting an inclusive climate on campus.
Washington's silence about a pro-genocide rally on his own campus is in marked contrast to, among other examples, his multiple campus-wide emails in the wake the killing of George Floyd, and launched a flurry of initiatives to overhaul university policy to extirpate "racist vestiges" and "racial inequities." A mandatory DEI training at GMU calls discrimination a form of "violence" – and we can now see that those who call words violence, have no words for violence.
On October 18, sixteen Law School professors sent a letter to President Washington, asking that the university administration reconsider its silence on SJP hate rallies on campus. We have not received a response, or even an acknowledgement.
It seems that when it comes to DEI at GMU, Jews don't count.
