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When VA250 Honorary Chair Carly Fiorina sought a campus discussion going beyond "convenient legends" to tell "the full story" of our nation's upcoming anniversary, CML and its Director George Oberle were a natural choice as guide and conversation partner.

CML’s contingent at the Fairfax event consisted of three members of the university’s history faculty and four doctoral students representing all phases of the department’s degree program, from year one to dissertation. Hands-on activities made fascinating research and techniques of local history accessible to attendees of all ages.

From the Enlightenment through the Early Republic, real scientific breakthroughs existed alongside dubious or speculative claims. Exploring debates between Federalists and Jeffersonians, Oberle looks at why "critical judgment, not just access, is what creates an informed public."

Speakers, objects and hands-on activities will fill multiple rooms in the Fairfax County Government Center, Saturday, April 18, 2026, for an all-day history event exploring Fairfax County's experience of the American Revolution. Tied to the nation's 250th birthday, the program includes talks by three George Mason University history professors with ties to the Center for Mason Legacies as well as several CML graduate students.  

After 100 yearas, Black History Month is becoming what it was meant to correct: a charge against an education system that reproduces violence through omission and distortion.

George Mason's Center for Mason Legacies hosted its fourth Black Lives Next Door symposium on February 10 with the African and African American Studies Program as a celebration of Black History Month.

Concepts of space and place are embedded in cultural narratives and discourses that shape our understanding of who belongs and who is considered an outsider, our ideas of possession and dispossession, our conception of social and cultural heartlands and frontiers.

“The limited sources we had on Mason were an opportunity to use him and his legacy as a teaching tool, to help students learn and engage critically with the complexities of the past,” said George Oberle, director of the Center for Mason Legacies ... [T]his is where the real learning begins for George Mason students."