Calling the virulent antisemitism and anti-Jewish crimes on campus “shameful,” House Education and Workforce Committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx in a Friday letter requested documents and information regarding Northwestern University president Michael Schill’s concessions to anti-Israel encampment organizers.
The North Carolina Republican sent the letter in advance of Schill’s congressional testimony in on May 23.
“I have grave concerns regarding Northwestern’s persistent failure in addressing antisemitism,” Foxx wrote. “Most recently, Northwestern’s decision to capitulate to antisemitic, pro-terror encampment organizers prompted seven members of Northwestern’s antisemitism advisory committee to resign in protest and for three national Jewish organizations, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Louis D. Brandeis Center, and StandWithUs, jointly to call for President Schill’s resignation or removal.”
“The unlawful pro-terror encampment, dubbed the ‘Northwestern Liberated Zone,’ disrupted campus life and became a hotspot for pervasive antisemitic harassment and hostility,” the letter says. “Rather than enforcing University rules and disciplining those who violated them, Northwestern’s leaders surrendered to the violators in a shameful agreement.”
The terms of the deal Northwestern leadership struck with encampment organizers include a promise to offer full-ride scholarships to Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics, provisions that, according to legal experts, may not comply with civil-rights law. Northwestern already faces at least two civil-rights complaints as a result of the concessions, as well as a class-action lawsuit over its alleged failure to provide a suitable learning environment.
Moreover, as Foxx noted in the letter, Schill did not consult his own antisemitism task force before making the agreement with student activists, leading seven members to resign and the committee to disband. Martin Eichenbaum, an economics professor at Northwestern and a former member of the committee, told National Review that he and the others who resigned “felt that we were just wasting our time.”
Foxx catalogued the “numerous crimes and antisemitic incidents, including assault, obstruction of justice, harassment, and theft” that occurred inside the “Northwestern Liberated Zone.”
She noted in the letter that a student journalist at Northwestern was assaulted by an encampment member while filming and another, taking photographs, was chased out of the encampment and followed to the university’s Hillel building “by an adult encampment member.”
A Jewish Northwestern student reported being “told to go back to Germany and get gassed” at the encampment and claimed to have overheard classmates in her dorm “talking about the white Jewish power on campus, and what we have to do to address this Jewish power.” Another student who wears a yarmulke and as a result is identifiably Jewish reported being spat at while walking near the encampment.
One student told the committee that “a couple dozen young men in masks” with Hamas-associated symbols intimidated Jewish students and said they were at the encampment “for everyone’s safety.” A masked encampment member wearing a sweatshirt with a drawing of a Hamas spokesman on the front asked a Jewish student whether he spoke Hebrew, seemingly attempting to identify whether that student was in fact Jewish.
The encampment also featured graffiti and “virulently antisemitic signs,” Foxx wrote. Activists spray-painted the words “Death 2 Israel” on the wall of a nearby building and displayed posters with a crossed-out Star of David and a cartoon of Schill, who is Jewish, with devil horns and blood dripping from his mouth.
Several Northwestern professors and teaching assistants either moved classes to the encampment or canceled classes altogether to encourage students to join the protest, including African American studies professor Marquis Bey, art history professor Hannah Feldman, English professor Rachel Jamison Webster, legal studies professor Jesse Yeh, and classics professor Nick Winters.
Faculty, alongside students, physically resisted Northwestern University police officers who attempted to clear the lawn where demonstrators had gathered. The head of the police department’s investigative arm was caught on camera preventing officers from detaining the students and faculty fighting with officers.
One of the leaders in the scuffle with police was Steven Thrasher, the Medill School of Journalism’s “chair of social justice in reporting,” who bragged on his X account that he was forming “a faculty defense line” to “try to stop arrests.” He later posted that the “Northwestern University Gaza Solidarity Encampment ha[d] survived its first attack.”
Foxx noted multiple other instances in which university police officers refused to respond to criminal activity or take reports from witnesses and victims.
A protester in the encampment stole American and Israeli flags from a Jewish man standing on public property, taking them into the occupied area of the lawn. NUPD’s deputy chief refused to retrieve the flags, Foxx wrote, and would not allow the man to file a police report. A witness to the physical altercation between faculty and student protesters and the university officers who attempted to clear the lawn attempted to file a report with the department, but the officer she spoke with turned her away, saying she had been ordered not to take reports.
Video taken at the encampment shows a university officer refusing to take action on blatant violations of university policy, saying it was “above [his] pay grade” and that he was required to “follow the chain of command.” Police department leaders told the Daily Northwestern that university engineers were instructed to turn off the lawn’s sprinkler system while students occupied the area.
While there were many examples of antisemitic harassment and anti-Jewish hostility in the camp, Foxx wrote, the problems did not start when the tents went up.
After the campus Students for Justice in Palestine chapter targeted a student who wrote an op-ed discussing the “From the River to the Sea” slogan — which is used to call for the elimination of Israel — and assembled printed copies of her op-ed with the slogan written across in bright red, Schill wrote that he would not make “a judgment about whether the statement ‘From the River to the Sea’ is antisemitic,” contending that some “view it as a call to respect the human rights and freedoms of Palestinians.”
That same SJP chapter issued a statement on October 8 defending Hamas’s attack and blaming Israel for any violence. The university’s Middle Eastern and North African Student Association similarly described Hamas terrorists as “martyrs” and said its members “resoundingly support Palestinian resistance.”
Three members of the since-disbanded antisemitism task force — associate professor of pediatrics Reema Habiby, anthropology professor Robert Launay, and Middle Eastern studies professor Jessica Winegar — signed an open letter opposing the formation of the committee. Another member, an undergraduate student named Mahdi Haseeb, is a leader of the Middle Eastern and North African Student Association.
Weeks after October 7, students printed fake copies of the Daily Northwestern and distributed them across campus, covering desks and dorm walls with falsehoods about Israel and accusations that Northwestern was “complicit in the genocide of Palestinians.” The mock newspaper compared Hamas’s hostages to reusable food containers and accused Jews who visit Israel of stealing Palestinians’ homes. Northwestern convinced prosecutors to drop charges against those students, and it is unclear whether they have faced any disciplinary action from the university.
Another incident that was not met with any university response was an administration-organized candlelight vigil honoring Martin Luther King Jr. at which the invited speaker, Reginald Williams Jr., accused Israel of committing “genocide” against Palestinians and compared Israel to apartheid South Africa and Nazi Germany.
The university’s lack of action is not limited to Schill. According to Foxx’s letter, Northwestern’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion head, Robin Means Coleman, allegedly refused to respond to multiple reports of antisemitic harassment and discrimination on campus.
Foxx also noted the close relationship that Northwestern has with Qatar, which provides shelter for Hamas leaders. Northwestern has accepted nearly $602 million in contributions from the Qatari government and operates a satellite campus in the capital city of Doha.
Khaled Al-Hroub, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar, said on a National Public Radio affiliate that there was no evidence to suggest Hamas had killed women and children on October 7. Northwestern initially condemned his comments before revising its statement to simply state that his opinions did not represent the views of the university.
In addition to the donations it takes from Qatar’s government, Northwestern has a partnership with Qatari state-run media outlet Al Jazeera, which has been accused of serving as a propaganda arm of Hamas. In 2013, the university announced that it would advise Al Jazeera as the outlet attempted to enter the U.S. market, saying it would “conduct consultations with Al Jazeera leadership based on its faculty research interests and expertise in the American media industry.
Foxx closed the letter with a series of recorded statements from Jewish Northwestern students at a town hall held in November. One student said that, since Schill took over as the university’s president in fall 2022, “he has normalized antisemitism.” Another said that Jewish students “have had meetings with the administration,” arguing that, while Northwestern leadership is aware of the problems on campus, “they don’t care.”