CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Jim Ryan Friday served his last day as UVA’s President before stepping down for COO JJ Davis to become President, the day after the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) sent George Mason University notice of a Title VI investigation regarding hiring and promotions.

GMU President Gregory Washington told ProPublica in response, “The same people who are kind of aligned that got rid of Jim Ryan are aligned against me.”

Thursday’s was the second investigative notice the Education Department has sent to GMU. The first was last week, and both notices sound very similar to allegations that led to Ryan’s pressured resignation. The latest complaint is Title VI violations in regard to GMU hiring practices the OCR. The complaint the week before, alluded to again in the Thursday notice, involves allegations the University “failed to respond effectively to a pervasively hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty from October 2023 through the 2024-2025 academic year”. That complaint and timeline is very similar to UVA student Matan Goldstein’s complaint that as a first-year, he experienced antisemitic abuse from classmates beginning the day he moved into his dorm in August 2023, which intensified after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israeli citizens. UVA settled a lawsuit last December that Goldstein had filed that claimed UVA did not adequately respond to his situation.

The new allegation in the Thursday notice stated “This investigation is based on a complaint filed with OCR by multiple professors at GMU who allege that the university illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion. This alleged conduct creates a racially hostile environment and is prohibited under Title VI and its implementing regulation at 34 CFR § 100.3(C), which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in the employment practices of educational institutions that receive federal funds. According to the complaint, GMU leadership have promoted and adopted unlawful DEI policies from 2020 through the present, which give preferential treatment to prospective and current faculty from “underrepresented groups” to advance “anti-racism.”

Specifically about President Washington, the complaint alleges Washington directed “the university will ‘develop specific mechanisms in the promotion and tenure process’ based on whether an employee is a ‘[person] of color’ that ‘recognize the invisible and uncredited emotional labor that people of color expend to learn, teach, discover, and work on campus’.”

Another allegation in the notice, “According to the complaint, in a university-wide email sent in March 2025, GMU President Gregory Washington announced that the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” office was renamed to the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community.” President Washington allegedly wrote that there was nothing for GMU to change about its hiring, promotion, and other university policies, stating that GMU has ‘always complied with existing civil rights laws’.”

The people “aligned against me” to whom Washington refers is, according to ProPublica, The Washington Free Beacon who published an article about the allegation GMU received June 10 back on June 2, and the City Journal which published an article called “George Mason University’s Disastrous President” accusing Washington of backing “racially discriminatory DEI programs”.

A difference is while George Mason’s notices are coming from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, the UVA investigative notices and inquires came from the the U.S. Department of Justice Office of Civil Rights whose top two leaders are UVA Law grads. There’s no apparent connection between the Education Department’s Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary for civil rights, who’s written the GMU investigative notices, and George Mason University.

Click here for the entire latest Education Department complaint.

George Mason University later Thursday issued a statement, “George Mason University (GMU) received a new Department of Education letter of investigation this morning as it was simultaneously released to news outlets, which is unprecedented in our experience.”

“George Mason does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, ethnic national origin (including shared ancestry and/or ethnic characteristics), sex, disability, military status (including veteran status), sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, pregnancy status, genetic information, or any other characteristic protected by law.”

Click here for the entire GMU statement.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Civil Rights outlined months of inquiries they claim UVA did not answer about their hiring and promotions practices during a similar Title VI investigation. Ryan announced June 27 his resignation, then announced July 2 that July 11 would be his last day.

Washington tells ProPublica the Trump Administration might take its investigation to the DOJ’s OCR which would have the authority to “level punishments against the University”.