George Mason University blasts Heritage Foundation DEI report: ‘Wholly fictitious’
Jeremiah Poff
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The leadership of George Mason University is firing back after a report from the Heritage Foundation said the school had one of the largest diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies in the nation.
The report states that George Mason, a public university in northern Virginia, employs one of the largest DEI operations among United States colleges, with at least 69 diversity, equity, and inclusion staff, meaning that the university employs 7.4 DEI staff for every 100 faculty members.
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Melanie Balog, a spokesperson for the university, blasted the report in a statement, calling it a “bizarre and wholly fictitious picture of Mason as a toxic campus churning ‘radical ideologies’ through its diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“The report cites wrong numbers, math mistakes, and anecdotes that never happened at Mason or any other university,” Balog told the Washington Examiner. “Further, the Heritage Foundation misunderstands Mason’s broad definition of diversity, which includes communities of color and the LGBTQ+ community, but also international students, students with disabilities, veterans, and those who are first-generation, parenting, low-income, neurodiverse, and of many religious traditions. Assistance to all of these students would be eliminated if policymakers were to follow the Heritage Foundation’s recommendations, which appear to be narrowly targeted at Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ students.”
Balog touted the university’s eighth-place position in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s free speech rankings and noted that the school has been rated the top institution for veterans by College Factual. It was also among a select number of schools given the “best of the best” rating by Campus Pride.
“Ultimately, Mason graduates its students at nearly identical rates despite race, gender, or economic status,” Balog said. “And Mason is even home to both the Antonin Scalia Law School and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. There is not another university that has such a comprehensive ideological balance.”
Balog noted that Heritage previously praised the university’s response to attempts to cancel a commencement address by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA), in which the foundation said “other universities could learn a lot from George Mason’s example.”
“Mason, with its race-neutral, test-optional, and broadly inclusive admissions, is a national leader in welcoming everyone who applies and is prepared for the rigors of our research university curriculum,” she said. “As such, it encourages a serious conversation about inclusivity on its college campuses. In that spirit, it is issuing a standing invitation to the authors of this report to come to George Mason University, meet in open session with our university leaders, and discuss their analysis in greater detail, including the methodologies it employed to drive its conclusions.”
Jay Greene, one of the two authors of the report, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that the university provided no specific rebuttals to the report.
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“The statement by George Mason University in response to our report on DEI bureaucratic bloat at GMU and other Virginia public universities does not provide a single example or fact to support its claims that our report is ‘wholly fictitious,'” Greene said. “At the Heritage Foundation we believe such claims require proof and GMU’s statement offers none.
“Responding to our allegations by bragging about how well GMU serves veterans is like bragging about what an excellent dance program GMU has,” Greene added. “We are not suggesting that GMU has no positive accomplishments. We are criticizing the specific problems of DEI bureaucratic bloat and radical content on its websites. If GMU wishes to rebut those claims they would need to provide evidence on those issues and not talk about how excellent the food in its dining halls is or a host of other irrelevant successes it would like to highlight.”