BY JENNIFER RUTH
“We stand determined to see that Mason—the largest public institution of higher education in Virginia with one of the most diverse student bodies in the US—remains a university of, by, and for the people.” — Bethany Letiecq, Professor in the College of Education and Human Development, George Mason University
George Mason University is in the belly of the right-wing beast. Right-wing politicians, libertarian oligarchs and their well-funded think tanks, and lobbying groups have been hammering at the institution for years, fancying that they can do to it what their allies did in Florida to New College. As Bethany Letiecq, Jim Finkelstein, and Tim Gibson traced in a two-part blog post in February, their board of visitors has gone from bad to worse. Please see here and here. Yet more often than not the actors attempting to remake George Mason in their ideological image have been stymied because GMU-AAUP is powerful. They know what they are doing. In 2022, GMU-AAUP leaders Bethany Letiecq and Tim Gibson helped write “How to Organize around Issues and Build Faculty Power,” a primer for chapter leaders and faculty activists. They are a factory for op-eds, politically educating local and national audiences alike. They have an excellent social media game that often uses satire and humor (see here and here). They organize rallies and turn out their people (see the August 1 rally for Greg Washington). Academe magazine profiled the chapter as recently as 2024 (and I highly recommend the profile for more insights into this effective chapter), but with George Mason so much in the news over the last months, I wanted to circle back and check in with longtime leader Bethany Letiecq.
How long have you been involved with GMU-AAUP and in what capacities?
Prior to joining GMU’s faculty in 2013, I had helped build a faculty union at Montana State University (which we subsequently lost in part—there is still a non-tenure track faculty union there). When I witnessed first-hand how weak the Faculty Senate was at Mason—for example, the administration just ran roughshod over the senate in the process to rename the GMU Law School to the Antonin Scalia Law School—I looked around campus for other opportunities to build faculty power. The Mason chapter of the AAUP, founded in the early 1970s, was made up of stalwart faculty leaders who knew the Redbook inside and out, but they were not actively organizing. I asked my colleagues if I could jump-start the chapter and start acting like a union, even though we are in a right-to-work state (for now). While not all were on board, reflecting the tension between chapter advocacy and pre-majoritarian unionism, there was ample support. I attended the AAUP Summer Institutes, started studying and learning from others about the art of organizing in earnest, and asked others to join with me. Thankfully, I met Tim Gibson early on in the journey and, when I asked him to co-lead the chapter with me, he said yes! We’ve been sharing the load ever since, building upon each other’s strengths, while building a fighting union.
Truth be told, over the years, our efforts at organizing have ebbed and flowed, but we are building again. Back in 2015, we had some twenty dues-paying members, and today, we are up to 160 members and growing. Our members have taken part in AAUP’s Skills to Win trainings, and we are excited to be in the first round of the dues-sharing program. The past few months, we have been building out our structure, establishing an Organizing Committee and Onboarding Committee, in addition to our executive committee. This structure has allowed us to divvy up the workload among member-leaders, become more efficient as an organization, and broaden our reach and impact. As you mentioned, we also engage the media quite a lot as it’s been an effective tactic to expose undue donor influence, political interference from the federal to state to local levels, and the coordinated attacks on our university and President Washington. Tim Gibson and Jim Finkelstein deserve the credit for our media work—they are an awesome team!
You are a leader in AAUP 6741, too, right? Can you tell us a little about that?
Yes! When AAUP formally affiliated with the American Federation of Teachers, the AFT created Local 6741, made up of all AAUP advocacy chapter and at-large members. When we realized we were a 10,000+ member local with tremendous collective power, a group of us ran on the United Faculty for the Common Good slate. Since our election, the Common Good leaders of AAUP-AFT Local 6741 have been organizing and working with the leadership of both the AAUP and AFT to bring much needed resources and supports to advocacy chapters, including the Skills to Win trainings and dues-sharing program. It’s been exciting to witness the rapid growth of advocacy chapters across the country. We are now 16,000 strong nationwide. People are mobilizing, organizing! That’s real power and it’s inspiring.
What can you tell us about your board of visitors (actions they’ve attempted lately, recent or imminent turnover of members, etc.)?
Okay . . . back to Mason.
In Virginia, the governor appoints the board of visitors for each public institution of higher education. At Mason, we have sixteen board of visitors (BOV) members. Historically, these boards have been comprised of people from varied backgrounds and political persuasions—often wealthy business owners, former politicians, alumni of the institution, and community leaders—who generally worked to uphold the mission of the institution while respecting their governance lane. In other words, BOVs have not typically interfered with university operations or faculty matters. However, as we’ve written elsewhere, Governor Youngkin, stymied by a state legislature led by Democrats, has politicized BOVs across the Commonwealth, including at the University of Virginia, the Virginia Military Institute, and Mason, to do his bidding. The governor has appointed political ideologues, operatives, and MAGA extremists to carry out his Trumpian goals, which include dismantling DEI and chilling free speech and academic freedom. The governor particularly likes to appoint people from the Heritage Foundation, the Koch-funded astroturf nonprofit “Defending Education,” those affiliated with the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, the Federalist Society, and, of course, those with deep ties to the Scalia Law School and Trump administration.
At Mason, once Youngkin’s operatives were in the majority, they interfered with our core curriculum, effectively putting the kibosh on our Just Societies course requirements, and threatened involvement in promotion and tenure decisions. In August of 2024, the BOV forced the university to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism as part of our nondiscrimination policy. As readers know, the IHRA definition blurs the line between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of the State of Israel, chilling free speech and academic freedom.
More recently, with five ongoing Department of Education Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations, including the DOJ’s targeting of the faculty senate, we have watched with incredulity as the BOV has abdicated its responsibility to defend the university and President Washington. For example, Rector Charles “Cully” Stimpson—a Heritage Foundation and MAGA loyalist—and the board recently hired Torridon Law PLLC. Torridon is a relatively new boutique firm founded by former US Attorney General William Barr and staffed with many former Trump administration officials, including Pat Cipollone, Mike Pompeo, and Kate Comerford Todd. These folks played key roles in Trump’s efforts to weaken federal civil rights protections, including those in higher education, and now we are to believe they have our interests at heart?
Torridon’s Mike Fragoso, the attorney now representing Mason, previously served as chief counsel to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and has long played a key role in efforts to reshape the federal judiciary, including prepping Brett Kavanaugh during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. Indeed, we believe one of the OCR complaints may have come from a law school faculty member, where Justice Kavanaugh often teaches as an adjunct professor. Like his Torridon colleagues, Fragoso’s legal career has been marked by promoting a conservative ideological agenda rather than defending academic institutions or supporting inclusive policy.
That’s the concern. It’s not just who is legally representing the university; it’s the political maneuvering that’s afoot. In August of 2025, the GMU-AAUP voted no confidence in the BOV.
To counter the egregious political interference and BOV overreach at Mason, the GMU-AAUP also turned to Virginia lawmakers to intervene, as they have the power to confirm or reject these gubernatorial appointments. To our delight, the Democrats in the Senate answered our personal pleas and letter-writing campaigns (our chapter sent over four thousand letters), and have now blocked ten BOV members in total, which has left the BOV without a quorum and made it more difficult for them to enact their ideological agenda, including the ousting of President Gregory Washington.
While this recent action by the senators was a significant win for us, we know this fight is by no means over. Indeed, we anticipate the BOV will continue its campaign to oust President Washington and install a Youngkin-Trump ally to helm the institution, following the DeSantis playbook at New College.
What can you tell us about the attack on Greg Washington that you all seemed to do so much to avert? Is that crisis over or likely to re-emerge?
As I mentioned, despite some very tangible wins as of late, our efforts alongside some incredible community organizations (e.g., Hands Off Mason, Stand with Mason) have only temporarily averted the expected ouster of President Washington.
Here’s the latest as reported out by our executive committee:
On August 22, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a determination letter stating that Mason violated Title VI and Title IX by discriminating against white applicants in hiring and promotion (yes, you read that correctly). The letter then listed a series of demands that GMU must meet, including, incredibly, a demand that President Washington issue a public apology for his support for diversity, equity, and inclusion policies.
The OCR’s letter was straightforward: unless Mason confirms within 10 days that it will accept the proposed Resolution Agreement, OCR will issue a “letter of impending enforcement action.” This could lead to referrals to the Department of Justice for litigation and administrative proceedings that might threaten federal research funding and Title IV student aid.
On Friday, August 29, just two days before the OCR’s 10-day deadline, the Board of Visitors issued a statement claiming it had notified OCR of its desire to “negotiate a resolution” along with counsel for President Washington. But as far as we can tell, neither the full Board nor its Executive Committee has met since August 22. Unless the BOV intentionally violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act, which requires public meetings and advance notice, no legally valid meeting of the BOV has authorized this statement.
We now are questioning whether the Rector exceeded his authority under the BOV Bylaws in issuing this statement. The Bylaws do not give the Rector the authority to unilaterally make statements of this magnitude on behalf of the Board or the University. This overreach raises serious questions about governance, legality, and accountability.
What do you feel are the most effective things you all have done as GMU-AAUP over the last two years?
We have worked pretty damn hard to move from an “advocacy” chapter to an organizing chapter that acts like a union. Growing our membership has been key as has been building an effective structure to house our union. But with so much on the line—people’s livelihoods, their safety and security, our academic freedom, our democracy—we have also worked hard to build trusted relationships based on an ethic of care, shared commitments, and solidarity. We have tried to get on the offensive whenever feasible. Constantly reacting to every crisis feels like we are drinking out of a fire hose. It’s not sustainable, and it’s hard to be effective, which our enemies know well. Like most AAUP chapters, we write a lot of letters and statements and circulate a lot of petitions, but we know those only go so far. We are rolling up our sleeves and mobilizing. We are building coalitions with powerful allies—from students and alumni to community members and business leaders. We are showing up at BOV meetings, rallying, and holding press conferences. And we are working hard to expose the coordination of the attacks against our institution and the playbook being used by Youngkin and the Trump Administration in an effort to bring Mason (and so many others universities) to heel.
At this moment, the stakes could not be higher. If OCR proceeds to enforcement, Mason’s financial foundations—student aid, research funding, and federal grants—could be threatened. If Rector Stimson elects to act outside his authority, Mason’s governance will be reduced to unilateral decisions made without transparency or accountability. If Youngkin gets his way, Mason will be the next New College.
So while we celebrate our recent wins, we know this fight is far from over. And we stand determined to see that Mason—the largest public institution of higher education in Virginia with one of the most diverse student bodies in the United States—remains a university of, by, and for the people.
Jennifer Ruth is coeditor, with Ellen Schrecker and Valerie Johnson, of The Right to Learn: Resisting the Right-Wing Attack on Academic Freedom. She is the director, with Jan Haaken, of the film The Palestine Exception: What’s at Stake in the Campus Protests? which will be released in October with Watermelon pictures. She organizes with AAUP and Coalition for Action in Higher Ed.
