In recent years, the university community has made a deliberate effort to confront and reconcile this history, including the creation of a memorial to the enslaved children George Mason owned — an initiative championed by Dr. LaNitra Berger, an associate professor of history and art history and director of Mason’s African and African American Studies program (AAAS).
In 2020, the university hired its first Black president, Dr. Gregory Washington.
“It was an awakening for the university,” Berger said in an interview with The EDU Ledger. “For the rectors to hire a Black president at that time signaled that Mason was continuing to ascend to higher heights.”
Progress Under Scrutiny
But even with the visible progress, Berger is quick to remind students who celebrate Mason as the one of the state’s most diverse universities that it is still a public institution in Virginia, a state with its own complicated relationship with race. Washington himself has become a national figure in the fight over higher education and the Trump administration, drawing intense scrutiny as he has pushed back against federal pressure.
But inside Mason’s largest college, some Black faculty members — including Berger — say they have encountered a very different institution: one in which race and power still shape who is heard, who advances and who is allowed to remain securely in place.
At the center of their concerns is Dr. Ann Ardis, the dean of Mason’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences. Faculty members and others familiar with the college describe a pattern of administrative decisions involving Black women that they say has left them scrutinized, sidelined or stripped of authority. At the same time, Ardis has pursued changes to the African and African American Studies program that faculty members say would diminish the program’s independence and influence, even as students and faculty continue to support it.
Administrative Interference
Recently, Berger received a two-year contract extension for her role as director of AAAS. The standard contract term, according to those familiar with the process, is four years, and Berger had secured a unanimous recommendation for the standard renewal from the faculty committee responsible for her review. She was told by Ardis that the program would be folding into the Department of Integrated Studies, and Berger would be demoted to concentration lead, reporting instead to the executive director for the Integrated Studies department.
The issues go beyond simple contract anomalies. An employee at Mason familiar with the renewal process spoke to The EDU Ledger on the condition of anonymity.
“The facts are really interesting here,” the source said. “Dean Ardis did pursue changes to the governance [process]. She did intervene in Dr. Berger’s reappointment process after the committee that was assigned to that process had already completed that work. She did try to limit Dr. Berger’s contract to two years instead of the four years that are in the faculty handbook. She did try to restructure the AAAS program in a way that would diminish its influence … without consultation, without due process.” The source went on to say there was evidence the dean tried “to influence the decision or reverse the decision that had already been pushed out through appropriate faculty governance progress.”
Power, Unchecked
The university’s formal systems for enforcing the governance have crumbled under remarkable turnover in the provost’s office; Mason has had five provosts in the last six years, with Dr. Marion Underwood taking the seat most recently on July 27.
“Dean Ardis did not have anybody to hold her accountable for her actions. That is a problem here, because accountability matters in a public institution that holds Virginia taxpayer money,” the source said.
The lack of a stable supervisor for much of the period in which these disputes unfolded has allowed Ardis, who leads the largest college on Mason’s campus, to emerge as a sort of super dean with unfettered power, the source said.
“Here I am, I’ve been at Mason for 15 years, and every time I ask for basic renewal or promotion, [it’s denied], said Berger, who noted she has followed the requirements for publication, even while managing a larger teaching load than her peers in the chairs and directors group.
“Discrimination — especially in academic context — is rarely announced explicitly,” said the source close to the matter, who added that “Dr. Berger has been subjected to intervention [and] scrutiny that were not imposed on some of the white leaders in the college.”
“It’s not like the program has suffered from anything. It’s not like Dr. Berger has [been less effective]. It’s really something that has happened suddenly,” and witho
Dr. LaNitra Berger
An Emerging Pattern
Berger is not the only Black faculty member with complaints against Ardis. In fact, an anonymous source verified there are currently at least four cases that have met the threshold for formal investigation.
Dr. RaShall Brackney-Wheelock said she has notified the dean and leaders in the university multiple times that she felt she was being treated disparately and targeted as a Black woman and the sole full-time faculty member in AAAS. Brackney-Wheelock brought on in 2022 as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Practice in the African and African American Studies program, but she said her courseload was recently cut to part-time recently without notice.
“I wanted my professorship to be anchored in AAAS — not Criminology, Law, and Society — to try to stabilize and have formal faculty assigned to that department, versus everybody having another home base and being farmed out to AAAS. And that was agreed upon that that would be my only assignment,” said Brackney-Wheelock.
“Things were going well, it appeared, but there was really no movement in trying to get the department to a major, and then I find out through HR, only because my insurance had failed to go through, that the dean had reclassified me as part-time and I was losing my health insurance,” she said.
Brackney-Wheelock said she first noticed an issue after she was selected for a social justice fellowship at Harvard University. First, she said, Ardis called Harvard to verify the truth of Brackney-Wheelock’s claim that she was selected for the honor. Then, the dean, citing a conflict of commitment, asked the Harvard administrators to make assurances that her class and work at Mason would not be compromised by her participation in the fellowship.
An incredulous Brackney-Wheelock said she believes she is “the only teacher in history [at Mason] who has ever been told I have to continue my teaching load while being a fellow.”
“My courses that I teach rank higher on average than any course across the university, as well as my college, as well as the discipline,” she continued.
Brackney-Wheelock, whose husband, Dr. Stefan Wheelock, is an associate professor in the English department at Mason, was initially a spousal hire who was brought on for her vast experience in law enforcement. Now, she said, she is being punished for the same law enforcement ties.
As a nine-month employee with a reduced course load, Brackney-Wheelock recently signed on to be the police chief in Jackson, Miss. And while her colleagues in Jackson are supportive of her role at Mason, Brackney-Wheelock said is still awaiting approval from Mason to continue teaching her hybrid course while maintaining her law enforcement job.
“I have repeatedly been told that I’m the test case for conflict of commitment,” she said.
'I Think She Has an Issue With Black Women'
Brackney-Wheelock also served as a member of Berger’s evaluating committee when she was up for reappointment and said the “pressure [was] so great from the dean that other members of the recommendation committee were starting to ask if they should rewrite their recommendations.”
She doesn’t believe the pressure to change their recommendations for Berger’s reappointment and her own experiences are disconnected.
“I think she has an issue with Black women,” said Brackney-Wheelock, “especially Black women who do not bow down to a white female deanship.”
“She has the position of you need to be grateful for the fact that you are in this position, and we will allow you to be in this space,” she continued. “I think she’s fascinated with us when we first get there, and when we don’t have a go-along-to-get-along attitude of gratitude for her, then [she] will remind you of who is in charge. She will hold your contracts up, she will attack your livelihood.”
Her husband, the English professor who is affiliated with AAAS, said he hasn’t experienced the same overt racism from Ardis.
Discipline Disparities
"I think this is an issue across many universities — there are [fields that are considered more] legitimate disciplines. Disciplines that are thought to be within the mainstream and the main current of university or academic life,” he said. “But there are also, with [the College of Humanities and Social Sciences] in particular, that there is a sense that the courses that I teach or RaShall teaches are really identity-driven, and they are really at a lesser level of importance than, say, Shakespeare.”
What remains unclear is whether Ardis’ attacks are a signal of her disdain for Black women specifically, or her desire to shutter the African and African American Studies department — the first of its kind in the Commonwealth. But the anonymous source, who is neither Black nor woman, said he has seen evidence that Brackney-Wheelock’s claims may have some merit.
“It is not a conspiracy by three Black women against the dean,” he said, adding, “There is a dean who is treating Black women very disparately and in a very strange way.”
A Breakdown of Governance Processes
And not only that, he said, but if the decisions were truly being made solely in the interest of budget and streamlining the administration of the program, the dean should have followed the usual procedures of faculty governance involved in such a decision and with “respect [for] the due process of the college and the university and the faculty handbook.”
“The dean did not consult the faculty — they did vote to stop” the dean from closing the program, he said, but only after Berger sounded the alarm to the faculty after learning of Ardis’ intent to shutter the program when she received a reduced contract. “That vote was really crucial, because this was a hush-hush deal, and that actually remained a key part in stopping [a plan that was being enacted] without consultation, without due process,” the source said.
Another concern is whether faculty members feel empowered to speak up or cooperate with investigations, given that the dean is still actively leading the department.
“The dean continues to do the job the dean is doing, and there are people who are witnesses who may not be able to come forward, because they report directly to the dean,” he said. “You are setting yourself up to be a subject of retaliation by the dean, and how is this university protecting those [impacted parties] when the same retaliator is still the dean?”
“At what point does this office see that there are glaring similarities and enough information here to move forward,” he asked.
Berger remains hopeful that there can be a path forward for the African and African American Studies department under her leadership.
“I felt and continue to feel so proud of the work I’ve done as director,” she said. “We have students who graduated, are alumni, and now they give money [to Mason] because they had a strong college experience [thanks to their time in the African and African American Studies program]. And the college cashes those checks, but we don’t get credit for that for the work we did in making sure those students feel like they belong on campus.”
“I have students that love me and adore me and tell me I’m doing important work, and I have this institution that’s hell-bent on telling me I don’t matter and I don’t belong here and that’s very frustrating,” she said.
