George Mason Faculty Members Asked Their President To Denounce Anti-Semitism Like He Did Islamophobia. He Declined, Emails Show.

When three Palestinian college students were shot in Vermont, George Mason University president Gregory Washington issued a statement from his Northern Virginia office titled, “Denouncing Islamophobia.” It came just weeks after a group of nearly 20 law professors asked Washington to release a similar statement denouncing anti-Semitism—a request Washington declined, emails reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

One professor wrote to Washington in December 2023, roughly a month after his “Denouncing Islamophobia” statement. “I do not recall reading a single email you have sent to the GMU community of professors, staff, and students since Oct. 7, 2023, in which you solely denounced antisemitism, in which you identified the harassment, assaults, vandalism, and other criminal acts as motivated by antisemitism,” the professor said.

That message followed Washington’s argument that such an email was unnecessary, given that he had already “condemned the acts of Hamas and called them terrorist acts” in the wake of Oct. 7. Washington did so in an Oct. 17, 2023, statement titled, “World events, the First Amendment, and George Mason University,” which condemned “the craven acts of terrorism by Hamas on innocent Israelis, while acknowledging the plight of the people of Palestine to seek self-government, and the deaths of innocent Palestinians last week.”

For the professors, that statement was part of the problem, not the solution. University statements mentioning anti-Semitism, they noted to Washington, were full of caveats. When a man distributed anti-Semitic flyers on campus, for example, Washington penned a message titled, “Statement on President’s Patriot Plan for Community Safety and Well-Being” that addressed “increased acts of violence and hostility toward members of the Jewish and Muslim communities.” In the case of the Vermont shooting—which occurred some 500 miles from George Mason’s campus and did not result in hate crime charges—Washington was more direct.

“As we acknowledge and address the fear that our students are experiencing, it is important to denounce all forms of Islamophobia present in our community,” he wrote. “To the Palestinian communities at George Mason University, I offer this: Mason is also your home.”

Now, George Mason is facing a civil rights investigation by the Trump administration in response to a civil rights complaint alleging the Virginia university “discriminated on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) by failing to respond effectively to a pervasive hostile environment for Jewish students and faculty”—a charge the university has denied. The Chronicle of Higher Education on Thursday reported that “there were signs that the new probe was part of a coordinated campaign to oust” Washington and pointed out that the Free Beacon published the administration’s notice to George Mason on July 2, a day after it was sent.

The Trump administration, also on Thursday, initiated a second investigation into George Mason’s alleged race-based hiring and promotion of faculty members.

Washington, as George Mason’s president, has a long history of speaking out against what he sees as social injustices off-campus. Yet when 17 law professors asked him to condemn anti-Semitic incitement, particularly from the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter, Washington refused, emails show.

The president, in a Dec. 9, 2023, email, said the Virginia attorney general’s office told George Mason that “from the river to the sea” was considered “‘protected’ free speech.” Two free speech scholars similarly told him, “this is hate speech but hate speech is protected speech.”

“We have been doing our best to deal with this issue and maintain the campus’ stated policy relative to free speech,” Washington wrote. “We are a public institution and have a different set of rules relative to what we can do and what we can’t.”

But he didn’t explain why he didn’t publicly denounce the rhetoric and instead “personally addressed it with the SJP leadership” in private meetings.

“By the way, our engagement on this issue has not gone unnoticed by SJP,” Washington wrote. “They are hearing us, my concern here is that you are not.”

Those decisions mark a significant departure from his past outspoken behavior.

In a July 2020 campus-wide email, Washington noted that “George Floyd was still alive” when he accepted the job as president six months earlier. He pointed to “a collective reckoning with fundamental racial inequities that we have allowed to simmer just beneath the surface for far too long” and wrote that “[t]here can be no academic excellence in a system structured to exclude people.”

Washington put out another statement in April 2021 after Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering Floyd.

“We can breathe a collective sigh of relief that jurors reached the verdict they did,” he wrote. “Speech that brings harm, violence, or destruction of property is not appropriate and we have an obligation to ensure our community remains a safe place to live, study, and express ourselves.”

And after the Vermont shooting, Washington wrote in a November 2023 campus-wide email, “As we acknowledge and address the fear that our students are experiencing, it is important to denounce all forms of Islamophobia present in our community.”

He also told Palestinians at George Mason, “You ARE supported here, as all students are supported. Every student’s safety and sense of belonging are of utmost importance to Mason, and yours is no different.”

One George Mason law professor complained that Washington never offered similar assurances to Jewish students.

“It’s hard for me to understand why you will not denounce antisemitic incitement on your own campus, including overt support for the 10/7 massacre as justified resistance which should be repeated … but are eager to jump to conclusions well ahead of law enforcement and denounce the Vermont incident as Islamophobia, even though it has nothing directly to do with the university,” one professor wrote in a Dec. 8, 2023, email.

In a Dec. 29, 2024, email, that professor also said they couldn’t imagine Washington “treating masked, pro-terrorist, on-campus student demonstrations explicitly endorsing the massacre, mass rape, torture, and kidnaping of Israelis” as a matter of free speech if they were “praising atrocities against other groups.”

In his responses, Washington argued that he had already condemned anti-Semitism and pointed to his past statements. George Mason spokeswoman Stephanie Aaronson also sent those statements to the Free Beacon, but declined to comment on the “anonymous opinions” included in the emails.

“George Mason is committed to ensuring a safe and welcoming campus,” Aaronson said. She also sent the university’s safety plan and said George Mason strengthened its response to anti-Semitism by “observing” the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of anti-Semitism.

Even after police found weapons and pro-Hezbollah and pro-Hamas materials at two SJP leaders’ residence and after a third student was arrested and accused of plotting a terror attack on an Israeli consulate building, Washington held firm in his refusal to offer a full-throated statement condemning anti-Semitism, emails show. One professor said it was “shocking” that neither statement Washington published in response mentioned their anti-Semitic nature. Another said the president had “implicitly encouraged pro-terrorist sentiments and actions.”

In Washington’s reply, he said the second professor continues “to make accusations totally out of context and at some point we will have to chalk this up to either ignorance or something more nefarious.”

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