A Virginia university often under scrutiny for its wide-ranging diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives renamed its DEI office on Monday and promised “compliance” with the Trump administration.

George Mason University President Gregory Washington announced its “Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” is now the “Office of Access, Compliance, and Community” in a statement Monday. Washington complained that DEI is “misunderstood” as discriminatory after overseeing years of race-based programs.

The office’s renaming “is not an attempt to evade compliance through clever wordsmithing – it simply affirms our actual compliance through more precise naming,” said Washington, who became George Mason’s president in July 2020. “The fact of the matter is, ‘DEI’ and ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ are terms that have become so broadly misunderstood and misapplied as to become counterproductive to our work.”

“We cannot unilaterally correct the broadening public misperception that anything with DEI in its name is just a new form of discrimination aimed at a different group of Americans,” Washington said. “So we will change the name of this office and move on, committed as always to the substance of that office: ensuring a fair, welcoming, and supportive environment for all, and observing state and federal civil rights laws to the benefit of all.”

The university’s communications team did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Washington’s statement came in response to a Feb. 14 Department of Education (ED) letter directing universities with federal funding to eliminate any DEI programs that stereotype people and “race-based decision-making.” Washington said George Mason has “always complied with existing civil rights laws” and does not “discriminate” based on protected characteristics.

Washington emphasized that he will not allow “loss of federal funding” to George Mason by failing to comply with the Trump administration.

George Mason had 87 DEI staffers as of May 2024, a number larger than its history and art professors combined, the College Fix reported. It has also boasted of numerous support and recruitment programs explicitly aimed at “underrepresented groups.”

Washington also defended using demographics as a factor for hiring in 2021 before the Supreme Court declared such efforts unconstitutional in 2023.

“If you have two candidates who are both ‘above the bar’ in terms of requirements for a position, but one adds to your diversity and the other does not, then why couldn’t that candidate be better, even if that candidate may not have better credentials than the other candidate?” Washington said in response to criticism of the school’s “Inclusive Excellence Framework for Hiring.”

George Mason stopped requiring DEI courses for graduation in May 2024 after an investigation by Virginia’s Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

A local campus chapter of Young Americans for Liberty praised the DEI office change in a Monday Instagram post, declaring, “D.E.I. is dead!” and “total liberty victory!” A student leader of the group, Sam Brown, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that Washington’s statement is a positive sign for the school’s political environment, even if somewhat performative.

“I don’t think this changes much but it’s a shift in the right direction,” Brown said.

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