Northwestern University president Michael Schill appeared in front of the House Education and Workforce Committee Thursday — alongside Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway, University of California, Los Angeles chancellor Gene Block, and Phi Beta Kappa Society leader and former Brandeis University president Frederick Lawrence — in a hearing devoted in large part to concessions he made to student encampment organizers, including the establishment of full-ride scholarships for Palestinian students and faculty positions for Palestinian academics. In testimony that left Jewish Northwestern parents disappointed and alumni perplexed, Schill alternately defended his decisions, contradicted himself, and refused to answer certain questions from the committee.
At the beginning of the hearing, committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) asked the witnesses how many students their university had suspended or expelled and how many faculty and staff had been terminated over antisemitic harassment since October 7. Schill replied that, to the best of his knowledge, “no student has been expelled or suspended,” but that the university has opened investigations into student conduct and “there have been terminations of staff.”
When asked to identify staff members who have been terminated, Schill refused to answer in what would become a pattern over the course of the hearing. Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.) asked Schill about the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate,” which Schill announced in November. Upon the creation of the committee, 163 Northwestern faculty and staff members signed a letter denouncing its existence, writing that they were “seriously dismayed and concerned by the email [Schill] sent on Nov. 13, ‘Announcing new committee on antisemitism and hate.'”
“Your letter . . . inflicts the exact harm it claims to prevent through its glaring imbalance. It deprioritizes and diminishes many students’ experiences, ideas and concerns regarding what leading scholars and human rights organizations are describing as genocidal violence in Gaza,” the faculty and staff wrote. “The letter makes unjustified assumptions about which students, staff, and faculty are the targets of hate. And, it implies that criticism of the government of Israel is antisemitic.”
The writers of the letter then turned to the phrase “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” the implementation of which would necessitate the forced removal of Jews from the land of Israel between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, describing it as having “a long and complicated history” and arguing that “its interpretation deserves, and is receiving, sustained and ongoing inquiry and debate.”
Three professors who signed the letter — associate professor of pediatrics Reema Habiby, anthropology professor Robert Launay, and Middle Eastern studies professor Jessica Winegar — were announced months later as members of the antisemitism task force. Another member, an undergraduate student named Mahdi Haseeb, is a leader of the university’s Middle Eastern and North African Student Association, which issued a statement shortly after October 7 saying its members “resoundingly support Palestinian resistance” and described Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.”
Walberg asked Schill why the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” disbanded after seven members resigned in protest, given that Schill had pointed to the creation of the committee as proof he was working to counter antisemitism on his campus.
As National Review reported earlier in May, those seven members announced their resignations in a letter to Schill in which they said they no longer felt he was operating in good faith.
“We are unable to continue to serve Northwestern University as members of the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and hate at this crucial moment with antisemitism so present at Northwestern in public view for the past week,” they wrote. “As members of the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate, we were not consulted by the University’s leadership and had no role in the agreement reached between the University and the protesters on Deering Meadow. In addition, our committee was unable to reach a consensus on a statement condemning the antisemitism we have witnessed.”
Martin Eichenbaum, an economics professor at Northwestern and a former member of the committee, told NR after his resignation that while “the agreement was reached during a period of widespread academic activity on campus,” he and the rest of the members “played no role in the deliberations.” He said he and the six other members who stepped down “felt that [they] were just wasting [their] time.”
“The committee couldn’t reach a consensus on a simple condemnation of antisemitism episodes. Examples include a depiction by protesters of President Schill with horns dripping with blood and a Star of David crossed out,” Eichenbaum told NR at the time. “We also couldn’t agree that chants calling for ‘intifada’ were threatening because one member pulled out an obscure reference offering an alternative interpretation of the word. Similarly, ‘from the river to the sea’ was construed as not threatening despite its obvious meaning and the fact that Jews did, in fact, find it threatening.”
Walberg then asked Schill why he believed it was “appropriate to appoint faculty members who have defended and made excuses for antisemitism and opposed the committee’s purported mission of combating antisemitism.” Schill, seemingly taking issue with what Walberg asked, said that he wanted to “address the premise of [his] question,” saying that one of the reasons why the members who resigned did so was because “they were unable to reach consensus about what antisemitism was,” with the other being that “they were not consulted with respect to the negotiation.”
Schill told Walberg that he plans to reconstitute the antisemitism task force and said he has faith in his ability to create a productive committee the second time around.
“I will be appointing to the task force that we’re going to create faculty, staff, administrators who I believe are committed to fighting antisemitism and as committed to fighting antisemitism as I am,” said Schill, who said almost exactly the same thing about the first iteration of the task force. When Walberg asked Schill about Winegar — who is outspoken in her support for academic boycotts against Israel, has referred to the “Zionist media,” condemned “white liberal dialogue politics,” and signed a petition defending a Palestinian terrorist who killed two Israeli college students in a bombing — as well as Haseeb and University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, whom the committee invited as a featured speaker on Islamophobia and has a history of demonization of Israel, support for terrorism, and antisemitic comments, Schill said he would “not be discussing individual faculty members” and “certainly not commenting on any student.”
Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.) began her line of questioning with the news that Northwestern University recently had its Anti-Defamation League (ADL) report card score downgraded over Schill’s agreement with protesters and that the ADL, among other Jewish organizations, called for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced.
“I have great respect for the ADL,” Schill said. “I am sad that they gave Northwestern an ‘F.'”
Stefanik then moved to the reason why the ADL lowered Northwestern’s grade, what she described as Schill’s “unilateral capitulation to the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, antisemitic encampment.” Maintaining that he did not capitulate, Schill moved to “question the premise of [Stefanik’s] question.” The New York Republican then asked Schill whether it was true that a Jewish student was assaulted at the encampment, to which Schill responded that “there are allegations that a Jewish student was assaulted” and that the university is “investigating those allegations.” Stefanik asked whether it was true that a Jewish student was harassed and stalked to the Northwestern Hillel building, to which Schill responded that “there are allegations of that sort and we are investigating them.” Stefanik asked whether it was true that a Jewish student wearing a yarmulke was spat on, to which Schill responded that “all of these are allegations that are being investigated.” Schill was then unable to provide a timetable for the completion of those investigations.
Later on, after Schill told Representative Burgess Owens (R., Utah) that he was “not going to engage in hypotheticals” when asked whether he would have made a deal with Ku Klux Klan members harassing black students, the Northwestern president said he had “just found out last week” that his university has a partnership with Al Jazeera. While that relationship has been reported on extensively since October 7 by NR and others, Schill said he was unaware and would have to “look into it.” Though Schill asserted that he had only recently learned of the partnership, he was scheduled to visit Northwestern’s Qatar campus this month before postponing the trip to discuss the university’s contract with the Qatar Foundation “with NU-Q Dean Marwan Kraidy and QF leadership.” The website for Northwestern University in Qatar includes several pages touting the school’s relationship with Al Jazeera.
Wendy Khabie, a Northwestern parent and the co-chair of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, told NR she was deeply disturbed by Schill’s testimony.
“We continue to be horrified by Northwestern’s insistence that they are doing everything they can to stop antisemitism on campus, and today’s hearing reinforces our fears,” Khabie said. “President Schill, while demonstrating his position that he should be praised for ending the encampment, completely ignores the fact that the perpetrators with whom he was negotiating should be held accountable for violating codes he established the same day tents went up. It’s astonishing that he does not see this as a capitulation.”
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a Northwestern alumnus, told NR that he thinks Schill’s tenure should end.
“Someone who doesn’t know why it’s wrong to appoint antisemites to a committee to combat antisemitism, downplays assaults of Jewish students as ‘allegations,’ and can’t say whether he would negotiate with a KKK encampment is not fit to run a small business, let alone a university,” Goldberg said. “Schill and his board chair need to exit quickly.”
Stefanik said the same to ABC News after the hearing, telling a reporter that a situation with Schill as president is “untenable” and saying she “absolutely” believes he should resign.
Foxx, though not going so far as to call for Schill’s resignation, told NR in a statement that his performance in the hearing was very concerning.
“I was appalled by President Schill’s condescending and contemptuous attitude today, as he repeatedly refused to answer Committee questions and gave multiple misleading answers about the shameful agreement he signed,” Foxx said. “This conduct is unbecoming of a university president and proves just how unserious he and his administration are about combatting antisemitism at Northwestern.”