For the latter half of 2025, I was outside counsel to the George Mason University Board of Visitors as it came under multiple federal antidiscrimination investigations — as did many schools in the early Trump administration. Unfortunately we were not able to resolve them before the change in power in Richmond, but we made what I thought was very good progress with federal enforcement authorities.
In many ways, GMU is exactly what we need more of in higher ed. Yes, it’s an R1 research institution, but it’s also the kind of school where kids in Northern Virginia can get a solid and affordable education to cement them in the middle class with good jobs.
In recent years the school put in place important antidiscrimination policies that solidified its commitment to excellence. The Board of Visitors worked closely with president Gregory Washington to reaffirm the school’s commitment to merit-based excellence, quash antisemitism, and get the school in voluntary compliance with shifting certification requirements.
Now that I’m just an observer of the goings on at GMU, it sure seems like these policies are working. For example, at graduation, the school ejected a pro-Palestinian grad student who violated school rules in an attempt to hijack the event.
More importantly still, yesterday GMU announced that Dan Kelly will be the next dean of its Antonin Scalia Law School. Scalia Law is one of the crown jewels of GMU, rocketing through the rankings and becoming — for my money — the best law school in the D.C. area. It’s also become the top feeder for the federal bench.
Kelly is perfectly positioned to continue the school on this trajectory, with a background in the Law and Economics movement that put Scalia on the map but also a fresh perspective, coming from St. Thomas in Minneapolis and Notre Dame.
As President Washington said, Kelly will help move Scalia “from excellence to eminence.” Kelly is impeccably qualified for the role, as a current law school dean who founded multiple innovative interdisciplinary centers at Notre Dame after working at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, clerking on the Second Circuit, and graduating with distinction from Harvard Law School.
The process for selecting Kelly seems to have gone off without a hitch, even though it could have been politically fraught. The prior rector, Cully Stimson, put together a search committee under a board that Virginia Democrats kept under a quorum. While the process was ongoing, Governor Abigail Spanberger appointed a new board virtually from scratch. But under President Washington, the process continued the way it was supposed to, and the result was a superb selection.
I don’t know what the status is of the GMU investigations because my involvement ended in January. But if they’re still ongoing, I think this shows that they’ve more than run their course. The policies work. The leadership works. Things at GMU are going great. I think it’s time for the Department of Justice to come back to the table and give GMU a clean bill of health.