Joshua Kleinfeld, Chief Counsel to the Secretary of the Department of Education, is currently on leave from his professorial role at George Mason University’s law school (ASS Law, to its friends) but would love to be its next dean. His agency, of course, launched an investigation into George Mason University for alleged “DEI violations,” accusing the school’s first Black president of waging a “university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies,” and generally trying to bully the institution into submission.
No conflicts of interest there!
But beyond the general skeeviness of applying for a job at the school your Department is harassing, Kleinfeld penned an application letter for the job that reads less like a cover letter and more like a note slipped under the door by a guy who knows where you live.
George Mason has been under siege by the Trump administration since mid-2025. The Department of Education opened a Title VI investigation in July 2025 based on complaints from a handful of conservative professors. By August, the DOE had already concluded that the university violated federal civil rights law, with the Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary Craig Trainor declaring that President Gregory Washington “waged a university-wide campaign to implement unlawful DEI policies that intentionally discriminate on the basis of race.” That a federal probe reached this wide-ranging conclusion within one month might make you think it was all a sham investigation except….
Yeah, I’ve got nothing to add there.
After the DOE delivered this pretextual salvo, the DOJ piled on with its own investigation, congressional Republicans accused Washington of lying under oath, conservative outlets ran coordinated hit pieces, and the university’s own board — stacked with appointees made by Virginia’s former Republican governor Glenn Youngkin — pressured Washington behind the scenes. The board’s rector was literally texting allies that “GW is already in panic mode.”
That’s multiple compounding investigations carpet bombing one university president. If only Republicans could muster the sort of outrage they have for a Black university administrator and apply it to — oh, I don’t know — a pedophile sex trafficking ring with ties to the White House. Washington, to his credit, has refused to resign — unlike UVA’s Jim Ryan, who was effectively pushed out over similar manufactured controversies.
As a tenured professor taking a leave of absence to serve in the federal government, Kleinfeld applying to serve as the dean isn’t inherently unusual. What IS unusual is that he’s applying to lead a school that’s part of a university his agency investigated. One suspects he would say that his current job — and its directly adversarial relationship to the university he hopes to hire him — shouldn’t have anything to do with the decision. But when he took a job with the federal government to help oversee education, he had to understand that it might carry consequences that could complicate his future return to higher education. You don’t get to accept the prestigious benefits of high government service and then claim to be a victim when it creates a conflict.
And then there’s this letter from Kleinfeld making his case to the ASS Law community for the job. For most of its 12 pages, it’s a pretty standard deanship pitch. But then, in the second-to-last substantive paragraph, he flags “past controversies, sometimes with political overtones, have strained ties between the law school and the university,” which is quite the spin on “I’m senior legal counsel for a federal agency that launched a probe to pressure the university president to resign.” Then to close out the letter, in the final substantive paragraph, Kleinfeld puts forth a key qualification to separate him from the rest of the candidates:
As Scalia’s dean, I may also be able to present positive aspects of GMU to the federal government, showcasing the university’s good faith commitment to marketplace of ideas values. Over my last year-plus in government, I’ve had a broad portfolio developing relationships with people not just at the Department of Education but throughout the grant-making and civil rights agencies of the government. My commitment to a marketplace of ideas in higher education is well-known, and I would be able to speak with credibility about my efforts to implement that commitment at Scalia Law.
Whatever he might have intended, that paragraph sure reads as “nice school you’ve got here… shame if anything happened to it.” He set up that there had been “controversies… with political overtones” and then immediately asserts that — if he gets the job — then maybe the federal government doesn’t cause as much trouble. He frames it as a byproduct of his stellar skills at “developing relationships,” but it certainly gives protection money vibes. And if it isn’t what he meant to signal, then you’ve got to question his drafting skills.
The Trump administration’s assault on higher education, by its nature, creates an environment where institutions feel compelled to install compliant leaders. Watching the DOE ramrod a month-long investigation, heap on more pressure across the government, and then have a DOE official offer himself up as a way to smooth over relations with the government? There’s a certain irony in seeing a broad based attack on “DEI,” accusing minorities of getting positions that aren’t based on merit and then watching someone from the attacking agency try to get a job citing his relationships.
Again, maybe he’s not trying to spell it out like this, but we have to evaluate the four corners of the document. Since the legal profession runs on avoiding even the appearance of impropriety, the question for the powers-that-be at George Mason should be: if they hire the DOE’s lawyer, and investigations subsequently go away, will anyone believe it was a coincidence?
Unfortunately, I’m not even sure ASS Law has the requisite sense of shame to care one way or the other.
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.
