George Mason caught up in Trump assault on diversity efforts

The move is part of the right-wing playbook to minimize the contributions of minorities and scare universities into compliance with federal policy.

In its bid to scare universities into compliance with its right-wing policies, the Trump administration is putting pressure on a Northern Virginia university over the school’s efforts to be more welcoming to historically oppressed minorities. 

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced Friday it opened investigations into 45 universities – including the graduate program at Virginia’s George Mason University – for allegedly racially discriminatory practices as part of their work with a group called The PhD Project.

“Students must be assessed according to merit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the color of their skin,” US Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release. “We will not yield on this commitment.”

The dozens of investigations launched for these universities is happening as the Trump Administration puts the screws on institutions of higher education to fall in line with its right-wing agenda. The Trump administration orchestrated the deportation of student activist Mahmoud Khalil over his support for Palestine and cut funding for Columbia University over concerns about how Jewish students are treated.

The PhD Project said in a statement that in 2025 it had opened its membership application to anyone who shares its vision of creating “a broader talent pipeline of current and future business leaders who are committed to excellence and to each other.”

But The PhD Project appears to have historically focused on promoting diversity within the ranks of business professors and helping doctoral students from diverse backgrounds pursue academic careers.The group appears to have scrubbed its website of explicitly mentioning its focus on diversity. 

The Phd Project’s website says it was founded in 1994 “with the goal of creating more role models in the front of the business classrooms.” But the website used to say The Phd Project was formed “with the goal of diversifying corporate America by diversifying the role models in the front of classrooms,” according to a March 2024 archived version of the website accessed using the Wayback Machine. 

A spokesperson for George Mason told The Dogwood in an email the university is working to answer the Department of Education’s questions and is committed to engaging with the agency “in a spirit of transparency.”