Jessica Costescu writes for the Washington Free Beacon about an apparent double standard for George Mason University’s top official.
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.
