That did not take long. Northwestern Interim President Henry Bienen announced its settlement in an email to the community on the Friday night of Thanksgiving weekend (when, Heidi Kitrosser said, you relay “news of which you’re really, really proud,” especially for those Jews you are so keen to protect). The agreement is here.
The agreement (as all of these have) includes the standard “No provision of this Agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, admission decisions, Northwestern’s curriculum, or the content of academic speech and research.” This allowed Bienen to say in his email that the agreement is consistent with “institutional values” and that “Northwestern runs Northwestern. Period.”
So let us count the ways in which Northwestern continues to run Northwestern:
• The medical school will no longer provide hormonal or surgical gender-affirming care for minors. (Bienen did not explain how that relates to NU’s purported antisemitism). [Limits the content of academic research]
• Limits on campus protests, including a flat ban on overnight protests. Regardless if the university believes some overnight protests are ok.1 Oh, and NU cannot revise its policies for campus protests without DOJ consent. [Limits the content of academic speech]
• Mask prohibition. [Ditto]
• “Merit-based admission policies,” as defined by DOJ (going well beyond what SFFA prohibits) and excluding use of “personal statements, diversity narratives, or any applicant reference to racial identity.” [Limits admission decisions]
• Provide the government with a breakdown of admissions data according to race and ethnicity. So the government monitors who the school admits, surely to allow it to claim a breach of the deal when NU continues to admit too many Black and Brown students. [Ditto, at least eventually]
• Continued special treatment for Jewish students, including a special advisory counsel and a campus-climate survey. NU also must continue antisemitism training, using some questionable materials that sparked controversy. Speaking as a Jewish member of the community, I do not want these things and believe they are counter-productive.
• All hiring based on qualifications and no diversity considerations, again with monitoring. [Limits faculty and university hiring]
• Throws trans women under the bus in terms of housing, sports, and facilities. [I guess NU’s institutional values do not cover certain students]
• Limits on international students, including a requirement that it “develop training materials to socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to free inquiry and open debate.” [Limits admissions; limits academic speech; requires ideological indoctrination, which is kind of antithetical to academic freedom].
Pause on this one. This whole mess began because students took to the streets to protest and to speak out on a cause. One can disagree with the message and how it was expressed, but it was an expressive movement. But “that is not “free inquiry and open debate” in Trump World means sitting quietly while a fascist gives a lecture. They do not regard any other form of expression–especially loud protests with slogans on messages with which they disagree–as protected.
• DOJ can decide at any time and any place that NU is out of compliance. And it will. And this whole thing starts over again. (The saving grace is that the deal expires in 3 years, at the end of the Trump Administration).
In other words, NU runs NU comma, with many caveats. So many caveats that it becomes difficult to take Bienen seriously as an institutional leader when he insists that the university retains control over things that matter. It has surrendered a great deal of control, while submitting to federal monitoring of everything the university does. But it appears from several reports that the Board reinstalled for this single purpose.
None of these settlements has been legally justified. Stopping the funds was unlawful. None of these schools violated Title VI, certainly not in a way justifying the loss of funds. And if they had, the government must follow procedures and provide process before cutting off funding. The administration cannot–as it did with NU–unilaterally and suddenly stop providing the money.
The timing of Northwestern’s capitulation is politically outrageous. The administration is weak and spiraling. Two district courts–one in a suit by Harvard, one in a suit over the UC system–had determined that the administration had acted unlawfully in stopping funds. (Around the time NU was caving, outlets reported that most of the money had resumed flowing to Harvard). The administration had shifted to voluntary “compacts,” recognizing that unilateral seizure of money could not prevail in court. Bienen and NU ignored all of that, surrendering to get what they are lawfully entitled to and giving the administration a partisan victory.
The question going forward is if and how NU feels the consequences of this. Do alumni donations dry up? (It will not miss the small amounts I give, but surely I am not alone in my anger). Do students stop applying?2 Do faculty leave and do they have trouble hiring new faculty? Do other academics nail it in academic reputation scores on the next US News? Do we have to wait for Bienen to leave?
Finally, on a personal note: As a double alum, I was crushed when I received that note. I love Northwestern. It has been an essential part of my life for almost 40 years. I enjoyed showing it off to Reuben when we visited a few years ago. I enjoyed singing its praises to some of his HS friends who wanted to go there. I am sad to lose that source of pride.
- Fun hypo: One NU tradition involves painting “The Rock,” then guarding it overnight so no one paints over it. So if students paint The Rock with a message of political protest and guard it overnight, have they violated the agreement? ↩︎
- Someone pointed out that two of the cavers–Northwestern and Columbia–have two of the best journalism schools. ↩︎