New GMU diversity hiring practice encourages selecting for skin color over qualifications

President Greogory Washington said in a recent email “we need a more comprehensive framework for what constitutes ‘best’” in hiring faculty and staff.

He said in his April 15 email that his explanation came in response to concerns that college hiring must reflect achievement and preferring minorities would be illegal.

“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 wrote.

Washington further argued that the faculty at GMU do not proportionally represent the ethnicities of the student body or the surrounding region. A vision of diversity and inclusion in hiring “is a recognition of the reality that our society’s future lies in multicultural inclusion,” he said in his email.

This begins by redefining “best” to include “lived experiences” as a top hiring criteria alongside professional aptitude, he stated. In short, “We either believe that diversity and inclusion can improve our performance, or we don’t,” Washington stated.