More than 115 Jewish faculty and staff at Northwestern University signed a letter to the House Committee on Education and Workforce over concerns about how Chairman Tim Walberg (R-MI) is characterizing the university’s alleged “climate of antisemitism” on its campus.
The letter suggests Walberg’s characterization is overblown. However, conduct decried as antisemitic has prompted at least two notable Title VI civil rights complaints against the school, with both the Biden and Trump administrations launching investigations into Northwestern as a result.
“The statement, attached to this letter, rejects the Secretary of Education’s depiction of ‘relentless antisemitic eruptions that have severely disrupted campus life for more than a year,’ and Chairman Walberg’s claim of a ‘disturbing climate of antisemitism’ on our campus,” the letter stated. “As we write, the federal government’s ‘unwarranted threats to our university… in the name of Jews is deeply offensive to us. We believe it should stop.”
Schill called to address ‘disturbing climate of antisemitism’
The letter came after Walberg requested for Northwestern president Michael Schill to give an interview before the committee to address the “disturbing climate of antisemitism at Northwestern as well as the University’s apparent failure to protect Jewish students.”
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.”
In December 2024, the AMCHA Initiative released a new barometer ranking anti-Israel “faculty abuse,” first exclusively reported on by the Washington Examiner, which gave Northwestern a 5/5 abuse rating, ranking it 21st out of 735 schools.
The committee chairman said that as far as he was aware, perpetrators of antisemitic harassment have only been given “warnings and disciplinary probations, both of which are largely insignificant.”
In 2024, there were at least two separate complaints filed against Northwestern University with the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights over antisemitic activity and the schools’s response to it.
First complaint cites pro-Hamas conduct
Campus Reform editor-in-chief Zachary Marschall filed a complaint with OCR in January 2024, noting at least four instances of alleged antisemitism, claiming that Northwestern took “no action to protect” Jewish students.
Just five days after the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas brutally killed, raped, and tortured over 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023, maiming and kidnapping many others, Northwestern’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter held a vigil at Deering Library to “commemorate the lives lost in Gaza.” The library was “lit up to represent the colors of the Palestinian flag.”
Northwestern’s Asian American Studies Program faculty defended Hamas as a “political group” and called on the school to denounce anti-Hamas speech on campus. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist group that is responsible for many terrorist attacks, even before the Oct. 7 massacre.
On Oct. 25, more than 150 students participated in a walkout demanding that the University divest from organizations tied to Israel. Similar campaigns have been shown to alienate Jewish students, the majority of whom feel a strong connection to the Jewish nation. The students held signs that read “End Israeli apartheid now.”
Fake versions of the university’s newspaper were also circulated on campus, including false data from the Hamas-run Palestinian Ministry of Health, and accused Northwestern of being “complicit in genocide of Palestinians.” The Hamas-provided data claimed far more civilians, including women and children, were killed than is accurate. Their numbers have been shown to be “falsified,” with American and Israeli estimates of the civilian-to-combatant ratio being historically low.
Second complaint cites Deering Meadow agreement
On May 1, 2024, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty filed a civil rights complaint after Northwestern University entered into an agreement with anti-Israel members of the Deering Meadow encampment in which the school agreed to offer “full cost of attendance for
five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their
undergraduate careers” and also “fund two [Palestinian] faculty per year for two years.”
The concessions made by Northwestern University, referred to as the “Deering Meadow agreement,” are ultimately what prompted Congress to call Schill to testify last May, after Northwestern Jewish students wrote a former letter to the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce requesting a formal investigation.
“We would like to make you aware of our own observations of what has taken place on our campus since October 7, 2023,” the students wrote to the committee’s leadership. “Northwestern has bypassed its obligations and has signaled to Jewish students and the Department of Education that it is not serious about protecting its Jewish population from harassment, discrimination, and of their targeting based on their shared Jewish ancestry or Israeli national origin.”
The Deering Meadow agreement also put Schill in the scope of more than a dozen leading Jewish organizations, who called for his “immediate removal” in May, 2024 following calls for the university president to resign on his own volition.
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. Following the Oct. 7 attack, physical assaults against Jewish students increased by 2500% and violent threats increased by 900%.
Walberg told the Washington Examiner that the House Committee on Education and the Workforce plans to follow up on this testimony during the interview.
“It has been one year since Northwestern’s radical campus encampment, and it is still unclear whether the university has satisfactorily disciplined anyone for the violence and harassment faced by Jewish students,” Walberg said. “It is imperative that our nation’s Jewish students are able to learn free from discrimination and our committee will continue to advocate on their behalf.”
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. These 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.
ANTI-ISRAEL JEWISH GROUP DENOUNCED OVER TIES TO TERRORISM
“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.
The Trump administration froze $790 million in federal funding for Northwestern last month as it investigates how the university addresses antisemitism on campus.
