After five days of anti-Israel demonstrators occupying Deering Meadow on Northwestern University’s campus, Northwestern president Michael Schill and the rest of the university’s leadership decided to accede to several of the protesters’ demands.
While not committing to divesting its endowment from companies that do business in Israel and ending partnerships with Israeli institutions, the university released a list of concessions in a celebratory statement Monday afternoon in exchange for the removal of the encampment on the lawn.
Most notable among those concessions is a promise to offer full-ride scholarships to Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics.
“The University will support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk (funding two faculty per year for two years; and providing full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers),” the document reads. “The University commits to fundraise to sustain this program beyond this current commitment.”
As National Review reported in March, over 70 percent of Palestinians support Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel and 75 percent support Hamas as the governing body of the Gaza Strip.
Northwestern will also provide a “house for MENA/Muslim students” and will “advise employers not to rescind job offers for students engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.”
Other concessions in the deal Schill and the rest of Northwestern’s leadership struck with the encampment occupants — one of whom assaulted a student journalist attempting to take video — include student oversight of the university’s partnerships with suppliers and the investment of its endowment.
“The University will include students in a process dedicated to implementing broad input on University dining services, including residential and retail vendors on campus,” Northwestern’s leadership wrote, as well as forming a committee on “investment responsibility” with “representation from students, faculty, and staff.”
The deal Northwestern struck with the protesters — who hung a sign showing a crossed-out Star of David on the lawn’s fence — has drawn condemnations from a variety of groups and individuals.
The Midwest division of the Anti-Defamation League — itself often criticized for a disproportionate focus on antisemitism on the Right rather than on the Islamist and social-justice-oriented Left — issued a statement on the agreement, which it called “reprehensible” and “dangerous”:
“The agreement between Northwestern University leadership and encampment organizers is reprehensible, dangerous, and a case study in failed leadership,” the group said in a statement. “For days, protesters violated campus codes of conduct and policies, intentionally fanned the flames of hate and antisemitism, and wreaked havoc on campus life. Instead of holding the perpetrators accountable, the university rewarded them. It would be unbelievable if it wasn’t true.”
Israel’s Chicago consulate posted a statement on X as well, writing that the university had “declared itself a safe space for Antisemitism.”
“We are appalled by Northwestern’s decision to turn its back on Jewish and Israeli students who have been targets of hateful harassment and intimidation,” the consulate wrote. “This decision rewards the pro-terror, anti-Israel, and anti-American aggressors on campus. This appeasement agreement is a dark day in Northwestern history.”
Dan Senor, host of the Call Me Back podcast and author of multiple books on Israeli society, described the agreement as “unnerving.”
“So how will this work? Pro-Hamas demonstrators get to influence decisions on @NorthwesternU hiring of Jewish vendors?!?,” he wrote in a post on X.
Guy Benson, a Northwestern alumnus and political commentator, asked whether there will be “any consequences for people who knowingly violated” campus policy, “especially the students and faculty who resisted NUPD on video, and the individual who assaulted a student journalist on video.”
One of those Northwestern employees who violated university policy is Steven Thrasher, chair of social justice in reporting at the Medill School of Journalism. With a history of unsavory comments about Israel — comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany and transatlantic slave traders — and a thread posted on X immediately after October 7 in which he justified Hamas’s terrorism, Thrasher was one of several Northwestern professors to join the encampment and the most visible.
When Northwestern police attempted to dismantle the tents and disperse the protesters shortly after students and faculty occupied the lawn, Thrasher, alongside other professors, was captured on video fighting with the officers.
He acknowledged as much in a speech he delivered to the encampment occupants, the text of which he later shared online:
“King went up against the American empire. And so have you. You have gone up against the American empire,” he said. “It might feel scary at times. Because, in essence, a colonial war of occupation is playing out on this lawn. The empire has not just struck back at our efforts; it has hit extremely close to your homes. And when the university became an imperial battle site, the administration wanted to side with the warmongers instead of with you, the peacemakers.”
Thrasher described his communications with the son of Hassan Zaid, a former Houthi official, and preached his theory of journalism to those in attendance.
“To the Medill students and journalists within ear shot [sic], I say to you: our work is not about objectivity,” Thrasher said. “Our work is not about ‘scooping’ one another. Our work is about you putting your brilliant minds to work, and opening your compassionate hearts, and linking your arms together understanding all of our fates are interconnected.”
Another faculty member in the encampment, global health professor Noelle Sullivan, was captured on camera putting her hands on a student filming her and attempting to knock his phone out of his hand. Josh Honn, a faculty librarian at Northwestern, published a screed accusing peaceful pro-Israel counter-protesters of carrying out acts of “aggression” and “violence.” Honn has posted a litany of images on his social-media accounts glorifying Palestinian terrorist groups and wrote that “Israel taught [him] to believe in hell.”
National Review has previously reported that Northwestern has not taken antisemitic incidents on its campus seriously, with three members of its antisemitism task force having signed an open letter criticizing the formation of that very committee and one being a leader of a campus organization that said its members “resoundingly support Palestinian resistance” immediately after October 7.
NR has contacted Northwestern for comment multiple times over the course of the past week, and like Jewish parents concerned for their children’s safety, has not heard back once.