George Mason University

George Mason University (GMU) was founded in 1949 as the Northern Virginia University Center of the University of Virginia. The school was originally located in Arlington, Virginia, a suburban town just across the Potomac River from Washington, DC.

In 1956, the Northern Virginia University Center was upgraded to University College of the University of Virginia; at the same time, the school moved to the nearby town of Bailey’s Crossroads. In 1959, University College changed its name to George Mason College of the University of Virginia.

George Mason (1725–1792) was a Virginia delegate to the US Constitutional Convention in 1787. He was one of only three delegates who refused to sign the Constitution in its original version, without the Bill of Rights. As one of the authors of the “Fairfax Resolves” of 1774 and the “Virginia Declaration of Rights” of 1776, which formed the basis for the first ten amendments that were added to the Constitution in 1789, Mason is sometimes referred to as the “father of the Bill of Rights.”

In 1964, George Mason College moved again, to its present location in Fairfax, Virginia—the birthplace of George Mason—and in 1977, the school severed its ties to the University of Virginia, becoming fully autonomous under the name of George Mason University.

Today, GMU comprises 11 colleges, schools, and institutes, including, notably, the Antonin Scalia Law School, the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution, and the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study.

Also associated with GMU is the Mercatus Center, a free market-oriented, economic-policy think tank. Overall, the student body numbers more than 38,000 individuals.

Among many distinguished GMU faculty and alumni, we may note the following:

• Mathematician, Duminda Wijesekera
• Computer scientists, Jonathan Katz, Kenneth A. De Jong, Robert Axtell, Qing Tian, Jana Košecká & M. Brian Blake
• Poet, Eric Pankey
• Novelist, Alan Cheuse
• Children’s author, Sharon Creech
• Documentary filmmaker, Carma Hinton
• Actors, Rhea Seehorn, Paige Moss & Archie Kao
• Artist, Deborah Willis
• Astrophysicist, Arthur I. Poland
• Physicist, Robert Ehrlich
• Chemists, Gerald Weatherspoon & Rebecca M. Jones
• Biochemist, Harold J. Morowitz
• Neuroscientists, Rob Cressman & Avrama Kim Blackwell
• Psychologists, Stephen Zaccaro, June Tangney, Lois Tetrick & Todd B. Kashdan
• Sociologist, Joshua Greenberg
• Anthropologists, Susan Hirsch & Mary Catherine Bateson
• Political scientists, Jack Goldstone, Mark Rozell, Mark N. Katz & Richard E. Rubenstein
• Criminologist, David Weisburd
• Legal scholar, Todd Zywicki
• Economists, James M. Buchanan (Nobel laureate), Vernon L. Smith (Nobel laureate), Gordon Tullock, Walter E. Williams, Lawrence H. White, Peter Boettke, Steven Horwitz, Bryan Caplan, Tyler Cowan, Christopher Coyne & Donald J. Boudreaux
• Historians Martin Sherwin, Richard Norton Smith, Rex A. Wade & Roy Rosenzweig
• Civil rights activist and African-American studies scholar, Roger Wilkins
• Investigative journalist, Brian Krebs
• TV journalists, Angie Goff & Hala Gorani
• Economics journalists, Stephen Moore & Jeffrey Tucker
• Business journalist and columnist, Steven Pearlstein
• US Republican Party political consultant and presidential policy advisor, Karl Rove
• Current Supreme Court Justice, Brett Kavanaugh