Northwestern President To Testify Before Congress About Antisemitism On Campus

EVANSTON, IL — The president of Northwestern University will testify before Congress on May 23 at a hearing called "Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos."

University President Michael Schill will be joined in Washington, D.C., for the full committee hearing by the presidents of Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles, according to the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“Over the last several days, the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers have made shocking concessions to the unlawful antisemitic encampments on their campuses,” U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-North Carolina) announced Monday.

“They have surrendered to antisemitic radicals in despicable displays of cowardice. As a result of these gravely concerning actions, the Committee believes it’s necessary to reevaluate the scope of the May 23 hearing and bring in the presidents of Northwestern and Rutgers — along with UCLA — to testify before the Committee.”

Foxx previously invited Yale President Peter Salovey, University of Michigan President Santa Ono and UCLA Chancellor Gene Block to testify.

“The Committee has a clear message for mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders: Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of your duty to your Jewish students," the committee chair said in a statement last week.

On Monday, Foxx said Salovey and Ono would be called for "transcribed interviews at a later date or risk deposition and subpoena."

The Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce previously questioned the leaders of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over allegations of on-campus antisemitism.

Following that Dec. 5, 2023, hearing, Penn President Liz Magill and Harvard President Claudine Gay both resigned.

Schill has faced calls to resign from Jewish organizations following his administration's announcement of an agreement with organizers of an on-campus tent encampment established for five days last month in solidarity with the Gaza Strip.

While Northwestern's president said the deal with demonstrators reduced the risk of the kind of escalating conflicts that have occurred at other colleges, Israel's top Midwest diplomat, Yinam Cohen, said the "appeasement agreement" had rewarded the "pro-terror, anti-Israel, and anti-America aggressors on campus."

The name of the group that represented encampment occupants, the NU Divestment Coalition, is a reference to withdrawing investments from Israel, a tenent of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions, or BDS, movement.

In 2015, Illinois became the first state in the country to take action against anti-Israel boycotts, unanimously passing a bill to divest its state pension funds from any company that participates in the BDS movement, which has been criticized as antisemitic by the Anti-Defamation League.

Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and the chairs for six committees with jurisdiction over universities announced a wide-ranging probe into on-campus protests of the Israel-Hamas, promising to hold university leaders "accountable for their failure to protect Jewish students on campus" and to use "all the tools available."

Lily Cohen, a Northwestern undergraduate student, told the Associated Press that it seemed like most of the protestors were OK with allowing Jewish students to feel unwelcome.

“It felt very daunting to counterprotest,” said Cohen, who is Jewish.

One of the Jewish students taking part in the encampment, undergraduate Paz Baum, told the AP the only antisemitism she witnessed came from the counterprotestors, mostly older adults, who confronted the encampment on April 28 and targeted her for antisemitic slurs while she held a sign that said, "Jews for a cease-fire."

As of Monday, pro-Palestinian encampments remained on the campuses of two private colleges in Chicago.

An encampment at the University of Chicago's Hyde Park campus was established April 29 — the same day the organizers of the Evanston encampment agreed to remove all but one of their tents — was still there more than a week later. And an encampment erected the following day by the DePaul Divestment Coalition on DePaul University's Lincoln Park campus remained in place seven days later.

Earlier: Northwestern President Faces Resignation Calls, Class Action Lawsuit From Jewish Students