George Mason University, Virginia’s largest public university, sits less than 20 miles from the District of Columbia, yet its president apparently thinks he can somehow outrun the national vibe shift on the misuse of race. But whatever you may read in the press, Gregory Washington is running out of options.

The Justice and Education departments have each launched two investigations on GMU’s use of race in hiring and promotion and on the divisive and often illegal practices known as diversity, equity, and inclusion.

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GMU’s Board of Visitors is responsive to the state’s voters and taxpayers, not to a leftist professoriate predictably circling the wagons around Washington. The board did not fire Washington last week as many expected, but soon enough, it will have to do its duty and vote on whether to remove him.

The inquiries are damning. One by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights investigates two complaints by professors. The first is that GMU has allowed antisemitism to thrive on campus, making Jewish students feel unsafe.

The other Education Department investigation is “based on a complaint filed with OCR by multiple professors at GMU who allege that the university illegally uses race and other immutable characteristics in university policies, including hiring and promotion.”

The DOJ investigations seek to “determine whether it is engaged in discriminatory employment practices based on race and sex,” and “whether the university has denied equal treatment of individuals based on race or national origin, in violation of Title VI.”

Give Washington credit for his adroit use of the faculty, the press, and friendly Democrats in Virginia’s legislature and congressional delegation. They have rallied to his cause and given him the Houdini-like abilities to escape accountability that we saw last week — so far.

But Washington’s use of politics and PR is being recognized for what it is: a refusal to accept that the nation’s mood has changed. Trump was elected in part because voters have had it with the use of race in hiring, promotions, and as a cudgel to change society.

Despite getting by on a reputation for conservatism that it deserves less every day, GMU is not that different from other universities that Trump is trying to reform. Professors at GMU outside of the economic and legal faculties are just as liberal as those at other universities, and their support for Washington is seen as par for the course.

Ditto for the political cover Washington has been able to garner, as valuable as that has been for the moment.

For example, Sens. Mark Warner (D-VA), a liberal Democrat, and Tim Kaine (D-VA), a left-wing progressive, rushed to Washington’s aid in a July 9 op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, likening Washington’s predicament to the recent ousting of Jim Ryan as president of the University of Virginia.

The two senators, both former governors, wrote, “We fear that what happened at UVA is just the beginning. Already, the Trump administration appears to be eyeing its next target: George Mason University President Gregory Washington. The accusations … are eerily similar to those lodged against Ryan.” They said Trump was leading a “calculated campaign … to politicize higher education.”

Warner and Kaine added, sagely, that “decisions about who leads our colleges and universities should rest with their boards — appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state legislature — not with partisan actors in Washington seeking headlines or revenge.”

This was cheeky on several fronts. First, it is the Left that politicized higher education in the first place, when it began to hire only like-minded liberals to populate the faculty lounge and then leveraged that monopoly to indoctrinate students into a leftist worldview.

But it doesn’t stop there. The only reason the Board of Visitors likely didn’t fire Washington at its meeting last week was that Washington’s allies in the Virginia Senate have voted down four board members appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA).

A judge sided with the Democrats, and the four Youngkin appointments are still not off the board, but the matter should be resolved once Youngkin’s team takes it to the state’s Supreme Court. It could be resolved much earlier if either federal department finds that GMU — that is, Washington — is not compliant with strong antidiscrimination laws.

Not that the board gave Washington a ringing endorsement at its meeting last week, either — far from it. It voted to give him the smallest raise possible and did not verbally support him. It was the same lack of support by the UVA board that convinced Ryan this summer that his gig was up. But Washington wants to wait it out, apparently.

Unfortunately for Washington, the evidence that he uses racial preferences is clear. Just four years ago he wrote, “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?”

And it’s not just something he said four years ago. GMU included in a recent student orientation video a land acknowledgment statement, and it referred to America as “Turtle Island,” a term supposedly originating with some Indian tribes that leftists use to legitimize the United States.

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Three members of the GMU faculty wrote in the Chronicle of Higher Education recently, “Let’s be clear: This campaign against George Mason and its president isn’t about antisemitism or so-called reverse racism. It’s about political control — plain and simple.”

They view it that way because they started the takeover of higher education with that mindset. Washington gives them the political control of GMU they want — for the moment. But time is running out.

Mike Gonzalez is the Angeles T. Arredondo senior fellow on E Pluribus Unum at the Heritage Foundation and the author of NextGen Marxism: What It Is and How to Combat It. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its board of trustees.