Northwestern University President Michael Schill is set to once again appear before a congressional committee looking into the school’s efforts to combat antisemitism on campus, a university spokesperson said.
Schill will sit for a “transcribed interview” with the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on August 5, the spokesperson said. Crain’s Chicago Business first reported the story.
The spokesperson said the school was confident the steps it has taken — including updating the student code of conduct and instituting mandatory yearly antisemitism training for faculty and students — have changed the campus.
“Reports of antisemitism on campus this academic year were down significantly, and we are confident that our actions have made Northwestern a safer and more welcoming place for everyone, including our Jewish students,” the spokesperson said in a statement to the Sun-Times on Monday night.
Last year the committee called Schill and other university presidents to testify about pro-Palestinian encampments created by students protesting Palestinians being killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza, though Schill, in particular, faced questions on the university’s agreement with student protesters that brought the encampments at the Evanston campus down.
In February, the Department of Education launched an investigation into the university for alleged Title VI violations against Jewish students. Three months later, it announced another investigation into the school for alleged civil rights violations against Jewish students.
Amid the investigations, the Trump administration froze $790 million in federal funding, and more than 100 labs across the university received stop-work notices disrupting vital research.
On Monday, the committee accused Harvard University of violating federal civil rights law in “failing to protect Jewish students” after a similar investigation had been announced.
“Any institution that receives federal funding must adhere to federal law, period,” said committee Chairman Tim Walberg, R-Mich., in a statement. “Many clear failures were overlooked by the Biden-Harris administration.”
The president of Georgetown University and the chancellors of City University of New York and University of California Berkeley are set to sit in front of the same committee July 9.
Schill’s appearance is set just five months after the same committee announced a separate investigation into the school, saying “there are indications that Northwestern has used its taxpayer-supported institutional resources” to “engage in progressive-left political advocacy.”
As part of this investigation, the committee is asking for the budgets and funders for the school’s more than 20 legal clinics. It’s also asking for the personnel file of professor Sheila Bedi, director of Northwestern’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, which works on “redressing over-policing and mass imprisonment.”
