The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is requesting Northwestern University President Michael Schill to conduct a transcribed interview on the university’s response to campus antisemitism.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI) requested Schill’s presence in a letter seeking to address the “disturbing climate of antisemitism at Northwestern as well as the University’s apparent failure to protect Jewish students.”

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A Northwestern University spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that the school is reviewing the committee’s request.

“This investigation, including your transcribed interview, will inform the Committee’s consideration of whether there is a need for legislative reforms to protect Jewish students on college campuses, including potential changes to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,”  Walberg wrote in the letter. “It is imperative that our nation’s Jewish students are able to learn free from discrimination and harassment.”

The letter to Schill comes just weeks after two buildings on campus were vandalized with “hateful” antisemitic graffiti and flyers during Passover.

Walberg said Schill and the university have failed to provide the committee with documentation of students and faculty members who were “meaningfully disciplined in response to the repeated incidents of antisemitism at Northwestern, including the harassment and violence against Jewish students at Northwestern’s 2024 encampment.”

“Northwestern’s chapter of the anti-Zionist group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) recently hailed the fact that “so far we have only seen a very small range of disciplinary notices,” Walberg wrote. “Students charged up to this point have only been given warnings and disciplinary probations, both of which are largely insignificant.”

In a statement to the Washington Examiner, a Northwestern spokesperson said, “There is no place for antisemitism at Northwestern and the steps we have taken since last summer have dramatically improved the safety of our Jewish students.”

The spokesperson cited a recent progress report on the school’s efforts to combat antisemitism and listed several steps it has taken along those lines. They include strengthening the school’s student code of conduct and other policies over the summer, enforcing them during the fall and spring semesters, creating mandatory annual antisemitism trainings for students and employees, and adapting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism into the school’s conduct process.

“These steps have had an impact – there has been a significant decrease in reports of discrimination or harassment based on antisemitism or shared Jewish ancestry in the current academic year,” the spokesperson said.

In May 2024, Schill joined other prestigious university presidents in giving testimony before Congress regarding the influx of antisemitic incidents on campus, in the wake of anti-Israel encampments on Deering Meadow at Northwestern and at schools across the country.

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More than a dozen Jewish organizations demanded Schill’s “immediate removal” after the school made an April 29, 2024, agreement, making a number of concessions to the demonstrators. The “Deering Meadow agreement” received extensive scrutiny during his congressional testimony.

The Washington Examiner reached out to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce for comment.