by Dick Hall-Sizemore

The Trump administration has found that George Mason University (GMU) has violated federal law with its DEI policies. A spokesman for the Dept. of Education said, GMU “waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.”

The penalty? The president of the university, Gregory Washington, must publicly apologize for his actions and pledge to follow the law. In addition, the Richmond Times Dispatch reports, “the school must review its policies and documents, such as instructions for hiring panels and scoring rubrics for resumes, to ensure they comply with Title VI. And Mason must conduct an annual training for administrators who make hires and promotions.”

Wow! That’s it for such serious offenses? All he has to do is apologize and promise not to do it again? At UVa., the president had to resign. At Harvard, Columbia, and Brown, fines are in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars. The administration is seeking a $1 billion settlement against UCLA.  Trump is obviously going after schools with deep pockets and lots of federal research grants. There is not that kind of leverage against a large, public university that has a relatively small research budget. In addition, thumping GMU does not generate the national headlines.

Regardless of the lenient penalty, there is a serious policy question inherent in this case. Usually, in the system that is established in the United States, it is the judicial branch that determines whether a law has been broken. In this case, the Trump administration has assumed the role of investigator, prosecutor, judge, and jury. In its approach as judge and jury, the Trump administration is declaring that DEI policies, on their face, are violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. However, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond and a close observer of the federal courts, said, “it isn’t clear to me that it is,” Title VI “doesn’t mean you can’t try to have a diverse faculty.”