ADL Calls for Resignation of Northwestern University President

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday called for Northwestern University president Michael Schill to resign from office following congressional testimony in which he admitted to knowing about rising antisemitism on campus and negotiating a favorable agreement with the students who led raucous anti-Israel protests on school property.

“President Schill’s testimony today clarified his leadership imperils Jewish students and that he has failed at every turn to take antisemitism on Northwestern University’s campus seriously,” the ADL’s midwest office said in a statement. “ADL Midwest renews its call for his immediate resignation.”

The group went on to list a number of Schill’s alleged offenses, including his revealing that no Jewish students or faculty were consulted before he conceded to the demands of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which built a pro-Hamas encampment on campus and refused to leave unless the school agreed to boycott and divest from Israel. Schill also confessed to appointing accused antisemites to a task force on antisemitism that ultimately disbanded when its members could not agree on a definition of antisemitism.

“And President Schill claimed during his testimony he still does not know who was behind the encampment, yet he somehow reached an agreement with the encampment leaders,” ADL Midwest continued. “[His] retention in the face of these failures is likely to keep Jewish students in harm’s way and impede any possibility of meaningful dialogue on campus.”

The editors of the Washington Free Beacon also called for Schill’s resignation on Thursday in an editorial which accused of him of lying to Congress and hesitating to discipline antisemitic agitators.

“There will be no change so long as Schill and his board chairman, Peter Barris, remain at the helm,” the paper said. “That is why Northwestern was the first to give in to outrageous demands, and it is an indication that the senior-most administrators at the university are not committed to ensuring a safe learning environment for Jewish students. Moral and decent people acknowledge they are entitled to that sort of environment, and so, as it happens, does federal law. A strong board, and a strong leader, will be required to change course.”

The US House Committee on Education and the Workforce interrogated the presidents of Northwestern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on Thursday during a three-hour hearing about their responses to pro-Hamas “encampments” which convulsed their campuses at the end of the school year, and, in the case of UCLA, caused a riot.

Schill faced the brunt of the committee’s questions, sparring with them over the meaning of antisemitism, his settlement with the organizers of the pro-Hamas encampment, and what constitutes discipline.

Schill, who became president of Northwestern University in 2022, has been criticized for agreeing — in exchange for SJP’s ending its encampment — to establish a scholarship for Palestinian undergraduates, contact potential employers of students who caused recent campus disruptions to insist on their being hired, and create a segregated dormitory hall that will be occupied exclusively by Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) and Muslim students. He also agreed to form a new advisory committee in which anti-Zionists students and faculty may wield an outsized voice.

He denied during Thursday’s hearing that he acceded to any of SJP’s demands, including their insistence on divesting from and boycotting Israel.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said that he did, calling his agreement with SJP — which was referred to as the “Deering Meadow Agreement” throughout the hearing —  a “unilateral capitulation.” She also accused him of failing to protect Jewish students from the violence of the anti-Zionist protesters, incidents that Schill described as “allegations.”

“Let’s talk about what has occurred on this encampment,” Stefanik said. “Isn’t it true that a Jewish Northwestern student was assaulted?”

“There are allegations that a Jewish student was assaulted. We are investigating those allegations,” Schill said.

Stefanik recounted several more incidents of alleged antisemitic violence — including one in which a Jewish student was spit on — and harassment, pressing Schill to estimate when the school will complete its investigations. She then excoriated the deal Schill negotiated with SJP, volleying a series of remarks which included her accusing him of pressuring Northwestern Hillel to hire an anti-Zionist Jew as its director.

Schill denied the allegation.

Anti-Zionist protesters at Northwestern University continued to flout the law after the “Deering Meadow Agreement.”

Earlier this month, more than a dozen Northwestern students put up 1,200 Israeli and American flags to show solidarity with the two allied countries and remember the 1,200 people murdered by Hamas terrorists in southern Israel on Oct 7. When the students returned hours later, the flags were torn and stained with red paint, left in ruins.

In a statement about the incident, Schill said Northwestern’s “commitment to free expression does not include vandalism.”

Schill defended the agreement he made with SJP in a column published in The Chicago Tribune, arguing that it precludes the possibility of boycotting Israel.

“This resolution — fragile though it might be — was possible because we chose to see our students not as a mob but as young people who are in the process of learning,” Schill wrote. “It was possible because we tried respectful dialogue rather than force. And it was possible because we sought to follow a set of principles, many of which I would argue are core to the tenets of Judaism.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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