George Washington University
The 'George Washington University is a private federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College', it was chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress and is the first university founded under Washington, D.C.'s jurisdiction. It is one of only six federally chartered universities in the United States.
GW is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very High Research Activity". It is a member of the Association of American Universities. The university offers degree programs in seventy-one disciplines, enrolling around 11,500 undergraduate and 15,000 graduate students. The school's athletic teams, the George Washington Revolutionaries, play in the NCAA Division I Atlantic 10 Conference. GW also annually hosts numerous political events, including the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's Annual Meetings.
Several notable individuals have served as trustees, including two presidents, John Quincy Adams and Ulysses S. Grant, as well as Alexander Graham Bell. GW has over 1,100 active alumni in the U.S. Foreign Service and is one of the largest feeder schools for the diplomatic corps. In the 2023–2024 academic year, GW had $227 million in externally funded research.
History
Founding
The first president of the United States, George Washington, long favored the establishment of a university in a central part of the United States. He advocated for its establishment to the U.S. Congress and others throughout his political career. Washington envisioned the new university would be in a central part of the new national capital, and he hoped the university would educate the most promising students from across the country while reaping the benefits of its location in Washington, D.C.On December 14, 1799, George Washington died at his home in Mount Vernon. Washington included a bequest of his shares in the Potomac Company to establish the university in his last will and testament, though the shares lost their value and no educational institution ever benefited from them. Following his death, his desire was shared and encouraged by U.S. presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who both expressed the need to carry out Washington's plans.
In 1821, the Baptist missionary and leading minister Luther Rice secured funds from James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, and other benefactors for a college to educate citizens from throughout the young nation in Washington, D.C. A large building was constructed on College Hill, which is now known as Meridian Hill. On February 9, 1821, President Monroe approved the congressional charter, creating the non-denominational Columbian College. Washingtonians, Congress, and the academic community celebrated this new institution as the fulfillment of Washington's vision. In 1824, the first commencement was considered an important event for the young city. In attendance were President Monroe, John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, the Marquis de Lafayette, and other dignitaries.
Freemasonry symbols are prominently displayed throughout the campus, including the foundation stones of many of the university buildings.
19th century
During the 19th century, most of the university's students came from the South. As the American Civil War commenced in 1861, many left their studies to join the Confederate States Army. However, the college was still fractured. Professor of anatomy A. Y. P. Garnett left the university to serve as Jefferson Davis' physician, and Robert King Stone stayed in Washington, D.C., serving as physician to Abraham Lincoln. The college was temporarily turned into a Union Army military camp during the Civil War. Poet Walt Whitman worked at this camp while visiting his wounded brother.In 1873, following the Civil War, Columbian College was renamed Columbian University and moved to an urban downtown location centered on 15th and H streets.
20th century
In 1904, Columbian University was renamed George Washington University following an agreement with the George Washington Memorial Association. In honor of George Washington, funds from the memorial association were donated to construct Lisner Auditorium.In 1912, the university moved its principal operations to the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Many of the colleges of the George Washington University are notable for their age and history. The law school is the oldest law school in the District of Columbia. The medical school is the 11th-oldest medical school in the nation and the first established in the nation's capital. The Columbian College was founded in 1821 and is the oldest unit of the university. The Elliott School of International Affairs was formalized in 1898.In the 1930s, the university was a major center for theoretical physics. George Gamow, a cosmologist, developed the Big Bang theory at the university in the 1930s and 1940s. On January 26, 1939, Niels Bohr announced that Otto Hahn had successfully split the atom at the Fifth Washington Conference on theoretical physics in the Hall of Government.
During the Vietnam War era, Thurston Hall, an undergraduate dormitory housing 1,116 students at 1900 F Street NW, located three blocks from the White House, was a staging ground for student anti-war demonstrations.
In 1996, the university purchased the Mount Vernon College for Women in the city's Palisades neighborhood that became the school's coeducational Mount Vernon Campus. The campus was first utilized in 1997 for women only but became co-educational in a matter of years. The Mount Vernon campus is now totally integrated into the GW community, serving as a complement to the Foggy Bottom campus. In 1999, GW hosted the Town Hall with President Clinton, the first presidential town hall to ever be webcast live.
21st century
In December 2006, the university appointed Johns Hopkins University provost Steven Knapp as the 16th President of the George Washington University, and his presidency began August 1, 2007. In 2017, Thomas LeBlanc, provost of the University of Miami, was named the President of the George Washington University.In 2016 the University closed the food court named J Street at its Foggy Bottom campus. In 2023 a new dining hall, inside Shenkman Hall, opened. During the period in between, on-campus food options were limited.
In July 2020, the university began forming special committees to look at possible name changes to an on-campus building and the school moniker. In a statement on the university's website, LeBlanc said one of the panels would examine the Colonials moniker, which critics said conjured up racism, violence, and genocide. In 2022, the Colonials name was officially retired. The following year, in 2023, the new nickname, the George Washington Revolutionaries, was announced. Another panel looked into renaming the Marvin Center, which was named after former school President Cloyd Heck Marvin, a segregationist.
In January 2022, LeBlanc was succeeded by former Washington University in St. Louis Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton as interim university president. A year later, in January 2023, the university named Ellen Granberg, provost at Rochester Institute of Technology, as the university's new president, with a start date of July 1, 2023. George Washington University joined the Association of American Universities in 2023.
In February 2025, Leo Terrell, the head of the Trump administration's Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, announced that he would investigate George Washington University as part of the U.S. Department of Justice's broader investigation into antisemitism on college campuses.
In December 2025, the Russian government designated the university as an "undesirable organization" on charges of promoting anti-Russian sentiment and false claims about the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Campuses
GW has three fully integrated campuses in the Washington, D.C. area: the Foggy Bottom campus, the Mount Vernon campus, and the Virginia Science and Technology campus. The Foggy Bottom Campus houses the vast majority of academic programming. Residence halls exist on the Foggy Bottom and Mount Vernon campuses.The GW library system contains the Gelman Library, the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library, the Burns Law Library, Eckles Library, and the Virginia Science and Technology Library. The GW Library System is a constituent member of the Washington Research Library Consortium, which allows for resource sharing among the university libraries of the Washington metropolitan area.
Foggy Bottom
The main GW campus consists of in historic Foggy Bottom and is located a few blocks from the White House, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, State Department and the National Mall. Barring a few outlying buildings, the boundaries of campus are delineated by Pennsylvania Avenue, 19th Street, E Street, Virginia Avenue, 24th Street, and New Hampshire Avenue. The university owns much of the property in Foggy Bottom and leases it to various tenants, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Other institutions in proximity include the U.S. State Department, the Kennedy Center, the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Watergate complex, and embassies of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Uruguay. The University Yard is the main open space and historic heart of the university. Along with George Washington's main library, Gelman Library, it constitutes the hub of the main campus. The seven-story Gelman Library building contains over two million volumes and is constructed in the Brutalist architectural style of the 1970s. It features a concrete façade punctuated by windows that are divided by projecting vertical slabs. For most of the year, parts of the library are open 24 hours a day, seven days per week for use by students, faculty, and staff. The library's seventh floor includes the Special Collections Research Center, National Security Archives, Global Resources Center, and Kiev Library.The National Security Archives is a research institution that publishes declassified U.S. government files concerning selected topics of American foreign policy. It was a National Security Archive Freedom of Information Act request that eventually made the Central Intelligence Agency's so-called "Family Jewels" public.
Close to the library is Lisner Auditorium and a large open area between them is known as Kogan Plaza. Southeast of the plaza and located near Monroe Hall and Hall of Government is the Monroe Court, a landscaped area with a large fountain. The Foggy Bottom–GWU Washington Metro station is located at the intersection of 23rd and I Streets NW due south of Washington Circle, and provides access to the Orange, Blue and Silver lines. The University Hospital is located next to the Metro station entrance.
The Foggy Bottom campus contains most of the residence halls in which GW students live. The most notable include Shenkman Hall, Thurston Hall, Madison Hall, Potomac House, Fulbright Hall, Mitchell Hall, Munson Hall, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis Hall, Phillip Amsterdam Hall, Guthridge Hall, Madison Hall, Townhouse Row, South Hall, and the newest, District House, which opened in 2016.
In late 2007, construction began on a large mixed-use residential, office and retail development located on the site of the old GW Hospital and just east of the Foggy Bottom–GW Metrorail station. It was the second-largest undeveloped lot in the District of Columbia at the time of initial construction activity. In 2014, the university assumed ownership of the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the oldest private art museum in Washington, D.C. and independent college of art and design. The college of art and design became The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design under the Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. The National Gallery of Art will acquire many of the 17,000 pieces of art from the Corcoran and the rest will be donated to other museums around the country. In May 2014, GW opened the Milken Institute School of Public Health, a nine-story building that received LEED certification for sustainability features including a green roof, rainwater collection system, and special heating and air conditioning technologies that helps mass air displacement. The Textile Museum reopened to the public in March 2015 after the institution merged with the university in 2011 and closed it for renovations two years later.