George Mason University, a public institution in Virginia, shared the syllabi of courses that would go toward fulfilling a new diversity, equity, and inclusion-related core-curriculum requirement with Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s administration, the university confirmed to The Chronicle on Monday.
Starting next fall, undergraduate students at George Mason will be required to take two courses that have a “Just Societies” designation, according to the university’s website. Upon completing those courses, students will be able to, among other things, “define key terms related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as related to this course’s field/discipline.” Some courses have already been approved, and others are under consideration.
In an emailed statement, Christian Martinez, Youngkin’s spokesman, called the “mandate” a “thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left’s groupthink on our students.” He did not answer The Chronicle’s questions about reviewing syllabi, but said that the governor’s administration had “heard concerns” about the requirement from some members of the university’s Board of Visitors.
The request to review course syllabi comes at a time when conservative lawmakers are intensely skeptical of anything DEI-flavored on a college campus, including in the curriculum. Youngkin has said that he thinks the concept of DEI has “gone off the rails.” He also recently told those who sit on the governing bodies of Virginia’s public colleges to remember their duty to the state. At a November orientation for new Boards of Visitors members, Youngkin said that he wanted to dispel the “myth” that board members are “cheerleaders” for their institutions and their presidents, according to a transcript of his speech obtained by Inside Higher Ed. “That is not the way it works,” the governor said. “You have a responsibility to the commonwealth of Virginia. … I as governor appoints you [sic] to play that role as a responsible extension of the executive branch.”
Youngkin had also sought an opinion from Virginia’s attorney general about whether public college boards serve the interests of their institutions solely or the state more broadly. It’s the latter, the attorney general ruled in October.
Criticism of the Just Societies requirement cropped up online earlier this year. Courses approved for fulfilling it “will no doubt be grievance-dominated and utopian,” wrote George Leef, who works for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, in a short January post for National Review. Donald J. Boudreaux, an economics professor at George Mason, later warned in a blog post that the university is about to impose an “unjust, illiberal” requirement that new students “be indoctrinated in the idiocies of woke ideology.”
On January 23, Virginia’s deputy secretary of education who is responsible for higher-education matters reached out to the university regarding the requirement after “seeing social-media attention” about it, Stephanie Aaronson, a George Mason spokesperson, told The Chronicle in an email. (Aaronson did not name the deputy secretary, but the person in that position is Nicholas Kent. He was appointed by Youngkin last year.)
According to Aaronson, the next day, Keith D. Renshaw, senior associate provost for undergraduate education, and Paul Liberty, vice president for government and community relations, communicated with the secretary of education’s office over Zoom. After that meeting, the university shared course syllabi with the deputy secretary, Aaronson said. (Kent did not respond to emailed questions about the meeting.)
On January 31, Renshaw broke the news to at least one faculty member who’d had a course approved for the requirement that that scholar’s syllabus, and others like it, had been requested by the deputy secretary and by the institution’s Board of Visitors, and that “we have complied with this request,” according to an email obtained by The Chronicle. Renshaw wrote that the copies provided had all identifying information of individuals redacted.
The senior associate provost warned in the email that “some individuals in various circles may seek to inflame passions around the types of issues we are working to address through the JS courses, and at times, this has the potential to lead to contact with — or even harassment of — individual faculty and employees.” If the faculty member received harassing or threatening messages, please report it, Renshaw wrote. And should that faculty member receive “any inquiries from anyone connected to the BOV or state government ... please reach out to me before responding, or feel free to refer them to me completely.”
Renshaw also wrote that any “work-related document” is subject to public-records laws, and he apologized if his message “raises any anxiety.” His email said he was “quite confident” that, “once we have fully explained this requirement, it will be clear that ... Mason is simply responding to student, employer, regional, and societal needs in a way that respects multiple viewpoints.”
Renshaw, who did not respond to The Chronicle’s interview request, made that case at a board meeting last week. He argued forcefully for the requirement’s necessity and attempted to dispel what he called “misconceptions” that are “floating around.”
“The concept of the just society has been around for centuries,” Renshaw told the governing body, “and it’s still written about today in circles that range from the American Enterprise Institute to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and everywhere in between. At its heart, the phrase simply means a society that is fair. Now as you might imagine, the ideas about what makes a society fair are going to be really different if you’re reading that from the AEI than from AOC. And that’s the point. That’s why we’ve named it Just Societies, not Just Society.”
He also said that the requirement had taken years of preparation, that the board had been kept informed about it along the way, and that the vast majority of Just Societies courses that have been either approved or are under review for approval are existing courses offered at George Mason, not new ones.
Renshaw’s arguments did not sway at least a few board members, who voiced their skepticism. Jeffrey A. Rosen, a former acting attorney general of the United States and a nonresident fellow at AEI, took note of the second learning outcome of the Just Societies requirement, which says that students will be able to “articulate obstacles to justice and equity and strategies for addressing them.”
“You’re just in the realm of politics,” Rosen said. “... And there’s plenty of poli sci classes, sociology classes, and so forth. So, I’m kind of at a loss to understand how this should be mandatory.”
Charles (Cully) Stimson, a board member who was appointed by Youngkin, told the room that corporate America was moving away from DEI because “they realize the Ibram X. Kendi thing is a hoax.” Stimson said he’d read all of the syllabi for the approved Just Societies courses and found the requirement objectionable. George Mason was “creating an ecosystem here where you have the oppressed versus the oppressors, and that’s not what Mason should be about,” Stimson said. “Mason should be focusing on what Mason does great, which is training STEM and other really good students who can go out and get great jobs.”
Stimson, who is deputy director of a legal and judicial studies-focused center at the Heritage Foundation, added that there are students “on the center right” who are afraid to share their views in class.
Tension arose during the meeting regarding who, exactly, controls establishing core-curriculum requirements, and what should happen next. At one point, Reginald Brown, a board member appointed by Youngkin and a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of the law firm Kirkland & Ellis LLP, expressed that the board has the power “to approve this as a program or not as a program.”
“I don’t know about that,” Renshaw said, with a laugh.
“Of course we do,” Brown replied. “It’s just flat out. We get to set your budget. We could zero it out if we wanted to, but we’re not doing that.” (He seemed to amend this view later in the meeting, saying, “I don’t have a view about the outcome. I don’t know as to who makes the decision,” though he noted that “technically” the board can “fire anybody.” To that, Renshaw let out a “phew.”)
Brown told The Chronicle in a Tuesday email that he thinks “new mandatory degree requirements” should be reviewed by the board’s committee on academic programs, diversity, and university community. “I expressly made it clear that my concern was process-related and that I have no view yet on the merits of the proposed requirement or where the decision should be made as a governance best practice,” Brown wrote.
At the meeting, Brown pressed Renshaw on if he would hold off implementing the new requirement. “Even though you’ve spent a lot of time on it,” he asked, “are you willing to take a little bit more time to see if you can achieve consensus in a Mason way?”
“This has been going on for half a decade or more,” Renshaw replied. “... We have engaged the board. We have engaged the faculty. We have engaged the students. We have engaged employers. The board turns over just like students turn over, and so we do what we can as we go.”
The university’s American Association of University Professors chapter had encouraged professors and students to attend the meeting, to send the message that the university’s curriculum “must be determined by Mason’s faculty, not by political appointees,” according to a form circulated by the group. Bethany Letiecq, the chapter’s vice president, told The Chronicle that “good governing boards know their role and know their lane. And this board is clearly overreaching.”
During the meeting, the board agreed to form a committee that would look more in depth at the requirement. Aaronson, the George Mason spokesperson, said in an email that the committee includes two board members and four faculty and staff members who will “continue the conversation and report back with recommendations” in May. Martinez, Youngkin’s spokesman, said in the statement that “we support the Board taking additional time to address these concerns,” as educational institutions “should be teaching our students how to think, not what to think and not imposing ideological conformity.”
