Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities are the first targets of the new Department of Education

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U.S. Department of Education headquarters building in Washington, DC.
The Department of Education is taking its first major action under the new administration to combat antisemitism, launching investigations into alleged antisemitic discrimination at Columbia University; the University of California, Berkeley; Portland State University; Northwestern University and University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
The Department of Education under the Biden administration pursued antisemitism cases after complaints had been filed by students and organizations representing them. These new cases, however, are being launched proactively, giving the Department of Education broader investigative latitude.
“Too many universities have tolerated widespread antisemitic harassment and the illegal encampments that paralyzed campus life last year, driving Jewish life and religious expression underground,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of education for civil rights, said in a statement. “The Biden Administration’s toothless resolution agreements did shamefully little to hold those institutions accountable.”
Trainor said the announcements serve to put “universities, colleges, and K-12 schools on notice: this administration will not tolerate continued institutional indifference to the wellbeing of Jewish students on American campuses, nor will it stand by idly if universities fail to combat Jew hatred and the unlawful harassment and violence it animates.”
In a press release, the Department of Education described the new investigations as a response to the Trump administration’s executive order last week on combating antisemitism, and said they would “build upon the foundational work” done by the House Education and the Workforce Committee since the Oct. 7 attack.
In a letter to the interim president of Columbia University obtained by Jewish Insider, Trainor noted that the university has been accused of a “longstanding pattern of tolerating antisemitic harassment, intimidation, and acts of violence” and of failing to implement disciplinary policies. He noted that Columbia faculty allegedly had “extensive” involvement in campus encampments and the break-in at the school’s Hamilton Hall.
A Columbia spokesperson said in a statement that the school is reviewing the letter and that the school “strongly condemns antisemitism and all forms of discrimination,” adding that “calling for, promoting, or glorifying violence or terror has no place at our University.”
“Since assuming her role in August, Interim President Armstrong and her leadership team have taken decisive actions to address issues of antisemitism, including by strengthening and clarifying our disciplinary processes,” the spokesperson said. “Under the University’s new leadership, we have established a centralized Office of Institutional Equity to address all reports of discrimination and harassment, appointed a new Rules Administrator, and strengthened the capabilities of our Public Safety Office. We look forward to ongoing work with the new federal administration to combat antisemitism and ensure the safety and wellbeing of our students, faculty, and staff.”
Kenneth Marcus, the founder of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and a former assistant secretary of education for civil rights in the first Trump administration, told JI that the investigations are “a big deal … every bit as important as the executive orders.”
He said he repeatedly pressured the Department of Education under the Biden administration to open such proactive cases, to no avail.
“There’s a world of difference between simply waiting for complaints to pile up versus proactively announcing initiatives,” Marcus explained. “They’re viewed very differently within the higher education community and also among OCR investigators. When the secretary of education decides to highlight an issue by developing a proactive initiative, it sends a clear message that the department is prioritizing the matter.”
He said that opening a proactive investigation also gives the department more latitude to pursue its case “in any way that it thinks is appropriate,” instead of relying on the sometimes-incomplete information presented by individual complainants.
He added that administration’s choice of schools to investigate signals it will be scrutinizing both elite institutions with highly publicized antisemitism issues and less prominent ones such as Portland State and the University of Minnesota.
“This is a way of making sure that every university president realizes that if they don’t clean up their act, they could be next,” Marcus said.
Prior to the announcement, the Department of Education had open investigations into alleged antisemitism at the University of Minnesota, as well as alleged anti-Palestinian discrimination at Columbia, Portland State and Northwestern. It previously dismissed an antisemitism case at Berkeley, deferring to pending litigation on the subject in federal court.
Marcus said he anticipates the administration will open more proactive investigations, as well as potentially seek to renegotiate some of the “controversial” settlement agreements the Biden administration inked to close antisemitism cases before the end of its term.
The announcements of new investigations come even as Trump administration officials are reportedly considering pathways to shrink or eliminate the Department of Education entirely.
He said the Department of Justice may also get more involved in campus antisemitism — it has the ability to join pending lawsuits against schools, can file its own complaints against schools, can go to court to enforce existing settlements with schools and can get more involved in a law enforcement capacity on campuses.
In a possible sign that the Department of Justice does plan to be more aggressive, the Department of Justice announced on Monday that it was launching an interagency task force, to include the Department of Education, which would focus on campus antisemitism.
The Education and Workforce Committee chair accused the school of obstructing the committee’s campus antisemitism investigation

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Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) speaks at a hearing called "Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos" before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2024 in Washington, DC.
In a scathing new letter to the leadership of Northwestern University on Friday, House Education and Workforce Committee chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) threatened to subpoena the school. Foxx also accused President Michael Schill of providing false testimony in a committee hearing last month.
Foxx’s letter alleges that, “rather than being cooperative and transparent, Northwestern has obstructed the Committee’s investigation of” antisemitism and Schill “refused to answer questions,” “made statements at odds with the public record” and “demonstrated an overall attitude of contempt” for the committee.
The letter accuses Northwestern of failing to comply with a previous request for documents on the school’s handling of antisemitism and anti-Israel demonstrations. Foxx said in the letter that she’s prepared to subpoena the school for documents and testimony, and that the committee will hold the school’s full Board of Trustees responsible for following her requests.
“Northwestern’s capitulation to its antisemitic encampment and its impeding of the Committee’s oversight are unbecoming of a leading university,” Foxx said. “It is inappropriate to expect taxpayers to continue providing federal funding while Northwestern appears to be in violation of its obligations to its Jewish students, faculty, and staff under Title VI and defies the Committee’s oversight.”
The letter accuses Schill of obstructing the committee by refusing to answer specific questions about specific students and faculty and their conduct. It also said that he provided testimony that contradicts the text of the agreement he struck with anti-Israel demonstrators.
According to the letter, Northwestern produced just 13 pages of non-public documents pertaining to its top-priority requests, all of which were general records of Board of Trustees meetings without specific details.
Overall, Foxx alleged that 78% of the provided documents were not relevant to its requests and that 46% were already public, as well as that Northwestern provided no non-public communications about the anti-Israel encampment.
Foxx said that Northwestern’s lawyers also had pointed to Schill’s “purported willingness to answer questions as an ostensible excuse” for not providing requested documents or a briefing by Northwestern administrators on the encampment agreement.
The letter gave Northwestern 10 days, until June 17, to provide a series of documents and communications relating to the encampment, antisemitism, Board meetings, antisemitism advisory committee meetings and donations from Qatar, or face a subpoena.
The committee previously subpoenaed Harvard University for documents, and has accused Harvard of defying that subpoena, but has not taken further public action to enforce the subpoena or impose penalties.
The letter comes days after Foxx and the leaders of the House Ways and Means; Energy and Commerce; Judiciary; Oversight; and Science, Space and Technology committees wrote to the leaders of Northwestern, Barnard, Columbia, University of California, Berkeley, University of California Los Angeles, Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Pennsylvania, Rutgers and Cornell as part of a House-wide campus antisemitism investigation.
In the letters, the committee leaders vowed to conduct oversight of the use of federal funds on each campus, and outlined the various specific areas of federal law and funding that each committee is examining.
‘Maybe there’ll be some changes in the schools we’ve highlighted. But even there, I don’t expect a lot,’ Foxx said

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Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) speaks at a hearing called "Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos" before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said she has low expectations, even after a series of high-profile hearings with university presidents on antisemitism on college campuses, that university leaders will make significant changes to their responses to antisemitism on campus.
Asked what might happen on college campuses if the executive branch changes hands after the November election, Foxx, who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, largely predicted that the status quo will continue.
“I’m a little skeptical of whether the presidents of many of these institutions will take any different kinds of action than what they’re taking now,” she said, speaking on Monday at the American Enterprise Institute. “I think they’ll rant and rave, I think they’ll scream things like ‘academic freedom,’ I think they’ll say, ‘But look over here at these other kinds of things.’”
“I’d like to believe that as a result of what we’ve done already, you’re going to see major changes on campus,” Foxx continued. “I’d like to see that happen. Maybe there’ll be some changes in the schools we’ve highlighted. But even there, I don’t expect a lot.”
Foxx said one of the “most frustrating” revelations from the hearings was that there is an unclear structure of accountability and responsibility within campus administrations for responding to incidents of antisemitism.
But she said she’s hopeful that at the very least, schools will work to implement better conduct codes, as Northwestern University’s president said his school would at a recent hearing. She said she wants to see clearer “lines of responsibility” and punishments for faculty, staff and students involved in antisemitic activity.
She said that the issue of tax-exempt status for colleges is largely outside of her committee’s jurisdiction but that it’s being examined by Congress.
She said she’s also had discussions with former President Donald Trump during which they’ve shared the belief that the federal government should not be involved in education “at all.”
It’s not clear what that approach might mean for federal enforcement of anti-discrimination provisions in education.
The Education Committee chair dismissed calls from Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona and House Democrats for additional funding for the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, arguing that, particularly in the case of Harvard, the committee had already done the department’s work for it.
“This should have been at the top of their list, they should have gotten to it immediately,” Foxx said, referring to enforcement action by the department against Harvard.
According to Cardona, each investigator in the office has been handling 50 cases, given the surge in discrimination complaints since Oct. 7.
Foxx, highlighting the committee’s report on Harvard’s antisemitism task force, largely decried such advisory boards as lacking substance, claiming schools rarely actually respond to such committees’ recommendations.
Schill claimed he made a deal with an anti-Israel encampment in the interest of protecting Jewish students

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(L-R) Mr. Michael Schill, President, Northwestern University, Dr. Jonathan Holloway, President, Rutgers University and Mr. Frederick Lawrence testify at a hearing called "Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos" before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on Capitol Hill on May 23, 2024, in Washington, D.C.
Northwestern University President Michael Schill found himself on the defensive on Thursday throughout a House Education and Workforce Committee hearing on campus antisemitism, repeatedly providing nonspecific answers, in some cases refusing to answer specific questions and occasionally becoming combative.
Schill said that he had made a deal with an anti-Israel encampment — which he acknowledged was dangerous and engaged in antisemitic activity — in the interest of protecting Jewish students. By the end of the hearing, he faced calls from Republicans for his resignation or ouster.
He declined to answer various specific questions about incidents on campus, including whether Jewish students were assaulted, harassed, stalked or spat on, citing ongoing investigations; when those investigations might be completed; whether it was acceptable for faculty to obstruct police officers; and whether he would have made a similar deal with an encampment of Ku Klux Klan members.
Asked whether it’s acceptable for students or faculty to express support for terrorism, Schill responded, “are you saying, OK meaning, is it something that I would do?… Our professors and our faculty have all of the rights of free speech.”
He said that there have so far been no students suspended or expelled in connection with antisemitic activity but that investigations are ongoing and that some staff had been fired.
The Northwestern president, who is Jewish, indicated he’s proud of the university’s deal with protesters, which has been widely condemned in the Jewish community, describing it as a “hard decision” with a “good result.”
“The danger posed grew every day it stayed up,” he said. “Every day brought new reports of intimidation and harassment,” as well as “antisemitic behavior that was making our Jewish students feel unsafe.”
He said that he saw three options for dealing with the encampment: allowing it to remain indefinitely, which was not an option; sending in police and staff to make arrests, which he said was impractical because of a lack of personnel and “too high a risk to our students, staff and police officers”; or negotiating with demonstrators.
He downplayed the nature of the concessions the university had made to the demonstrators, claiming that many of the agreements made had already been in the works before the encampment or were connected to preexisting programs. He claimed the university had not actually conceded to any of the demonstrators’ demands.
Pressed on details, Schill downplayed the deal as “just a framework of an agreement that was reached with the students at 4 o’clock in the morning” and at one point told committee members to consult Northwestern’s website for specifics.
And he said that “nothing in the agreement… specifically addressed the interests of Jewish students, other than getting rid of that encampment.” He claimed that the deal “gave them the ability to feel safe on campus.”
Local and national Jewish groups have said that the deal instead normalized and rewarded those engaging in hateful activity, without any support for the Jewish community.
Schill acknowledged that no Jewish or Israeli students, nor the university’s antisemitism task force, nor the full university Board of Trustees, were consulted before he made the agreement, claiming that would have been “impractical.” But a professor who is an outspoken promoter of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement was consulted.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee chair, argued that Schill’s deal had created a poor precedent for other university chairs, in effect encouraging them to also make concessions.
“President Schill’s testimony today clarified his leadership imperils Jewish students and that he has failed at virtually every turn to take antisemitism on Northwestern University’s campus seriously,” the Anti-Defamation League Midwest said in a statement.
Northwestern’s antisemitism task force collapsed, with the resignations of seven members, after Schill’s agreement, though he said the school plans to implement a new task force.
Lawmakers highlighted a series of concerns about the initial task force, including the fact that it had no members who were experts on antisemitism, and some who were openly anti-Israel and supported antisemitic slogans.
Schill responded that the task force’s focus was intended to be broader than antisemitism, a mission he concluded was “impossible.” He also claimed the members had resigned in part because the task force was “unable to reach a consensus on what antisemitism was.”
The Northwestern president downplayed the significance of the hundreds of millions in funding Northwestern has received from the Qatar Foundation, saying that all of that funding went to support the Northwestern campus in Qatar.
He said he was unaware until recently that Northwestern’s journalism school had partnered with the Qatari state-run media outlet Al Jazeera, that he was “concerned” about it and would review the partnership.
Schill appeared at the hearing alongside Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway and University of California, Los Angeles Chancellor Gene Block; Schill took the brunt of the questioning, but the other two presidents also came under the committee’s microscope.
Holloway, who also struck a deal with protesters, offered a similar justification as Schill, characterizing his decision as a quick and proactive move to prevent disruptions to exams.
“We made a choice. That choice was to engage our students in dialogue as a first option, instead of police action,” he said. “If ever there was a time to dialogue and focus on civil discourse, it is now… It was made clear that we were going to allow the encampment and consider it a speech act in the spirit of First Amendment free expression” unless it disrupted university business.
Holloway was also pressed on Rutgers’ Center for Security, Race and Rights, whose leader and featured speakers praised Hamas and spread Oct. 7 denialism; the center also hosted a speaker convicted of providing material support for terrorism.
Holloway described the activity as “wildly offensive” and said “there is very little I find easy about the center. I personally disagree deeply with a lot of the ideas that come from that center.” But he said that there are many events on campus of which he is not aware and that he has no plans to shutter the center.
He was also pressed on Rutgers’ relationship with Birzeit University in the West Bank; the school has glorified terrorists, Hamas won a recent student election, several students were arrested for planning terrorist attacks and Jews are banned from the campus.
Holloway said Rutgers “partner[s] with institutions all around the world” and said he was unaware of the details about the university and would look into the issue further.
Holloway said that four students have been suspended and 19 others received other forms of discipline.
Block, unlike the other two presidents, did not make a deal and ultimately called in police assistance to clear the encampment after a violent clash between encampment members and counterprotesters.
He struck a somewhat different tone than the other presidents, acknowledging that the school had mishandled the situation and acted too slowly.
“With the benefit of hindsight, we should have been prepared to immediately remove the encampment if and when the safety of our community was put at risk,” he said.
Yet, as Block was testifying to the committee, demonstrators reestablished an encampment on UCLA’s campus.
Block said no UCLA students have been suspended or expelled, but that more than 100 investigations into antisemitism and islamophobia are ongoing, in addition to police probes into the violence.
In another notable moment, Block pushed back on Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) attempts to downplay the severity of anti-Israel activity on campus.
Omar described the encampment as “peaceful” and protected by the First Amendment, characterized the encampment members as the ones being harassed and ultimately blamed Block for the attack on the encampment by counter protesters. She also brushed aside an incident in which a Jewish student was blocked from walking down a public pathway on campus to a class building.
“This encampment was against policy, it violated time, place, manner [restrictions],” he said, before being cut off. He also said it’s “really inappropriate” for students to be blocked from any part of campus, regardless of whether other pathways were available.
Many campus leaders are now conceding it is easier to give in to protesters than to stand firm against their rule-breaking

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Students and residents camp outside Northwestern University during a pro-Palestinian protest, expressing solidarity with Palestinians with banners in Evanston, Illinois, United States on April 27, 2024.
It’s spring in Cambridge, Mass. — graduation season — which means that large white tents have started to appear on the leafy quads throughout Harvard Square.
Until Tuesday, a different kind of tent was still visible in Harvard Yard: small camping tents housing the stragglers who remained in Harvard’s anti-Israel encampment even after final exams wrapped up several days ago. Last week, Harvard suspended student protesters who refused to abide by campus administrators’ orders to disband the encampment, blocking access to their dorms.
But now, just a week from the start of official university commencement festivities, Harvard has backtracked on its disciplinary action, ahead of the arrival next week of thousands of graduates’ family members, alumni and honorary degree recipients to the Ivy League university. University officials seemed to be saying that Harvard cannot get ready for commencement if Harvard Yard is still gated and locked, accessible only to university affiliates and the handful of people still camped out in protest of Harvard’s alleged “complicity in genocide.”
In making a deal with the protesters, Harvard interim President Alan Garber joined a growing number of leaders at elite universities who are incorporating protesters’ voices into major university investment decisions and allowing student activists to get off with few, if any, repercussions after weeks of disciplinary violations. Harvard’s dean of the faculty of arts and sciences wrote in a Tuesday email that the outcome “deepened” the university’s “commitment to dialogue and to strengthening the bonds that pull us together as a community.”
The path Garber took is now a well-trodden one — remove the threat of disciplinary consequences and allow protesters to meet with university trustees or other senior leaders to pitch them on divesting their schools’ endowments from Israeli businesses, a concession that before last month would have been unthinkable at America’s top universities.
In a matter of days it has become commonplace. Just two years ago, Harvard’s then-president, Lawrence Bacow, responded to the campus newspaper’s endorsement of a boycott of Israel by saying that “any suggestion of targeting or boycotting a particular group because of disagreements over the policies pursued by their governments is antithetical to what we stand for as a university.”
Northwestern University set the tone two weeks ago when President Michael Schill reached an agreement with anti-Israel protesters in exchange for them ending their encampment. Jewish leaders on campus found the agreement so problematic that the seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism committee — including Northwestern’s Hillel director, several faculty members and a student — stepped down in protest. Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who resigned from the committee, summed up their concerns: “It appears as though breaking the rules gets you somewhere, and trying to do things respectfully and by the books does not.”
Her observation has proven prescient as universities negotiate with anti-Israel protesters who break campus rules while they slow-walk reforms long sought by Jewish students — or even avoid meeting with Jewish community members altogether.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone signed onto a far-reaching agreement with protesters this week that calls for a cease-fire in the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, condemns “genocide” and denounces “scholasticide” in Gaza and cuts off ties between a university-affiliated environmental NGO and two government-owned Israeli water companies. Meanwhile, Hillel Milwaukee said in a statement that Mone has refused to meet with Jewish students since Oct. 7. Where universities fumbled over statements addressing the Oct. 7 attacks last fall in failed bids to satisfy everyone, many campus leaders have now conceded it is easier to give in to protesters than to stand firm against their rule-breaking. (The president of the University of Wisconsin system said he is “disappointed” by UWM’s actions.)
Princeton University and Johns Hopkins University made concessions to encampment leaders this week. At Johns Hopkins, the school pledged to undertake a “timely review” of the matter of divestment, and to conclude student conduct proceedings related to the encampment. Hopkins Justice Collective, the group that organized the protests, characterized the agreement as “a step towards Johns Hopkins’ commitment to divest from the settler colonial state of Israel.”
In a campus-wide email on Monday, Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber said all students must vacate the campus quad where they had organized an anti-Israel encampment. He offered the campus protest leaders an audience with the body that reviews petitions for divestment. Other student groups can also petition for a meeting, he wrote.
Students who were arrested during the course of the protests may have a chance to take part in a so-called “restorative justice” process, whereby the university “would work to minimize the impact of the arrest on the participating students.” If protesters take responsibility for their actions, Eisgruber wrote, the school will conclude all disciplinary processes and allow the protesters to graduate this month.
At many more universities, top administrators — including university presidents — have met with demonstrators, giving them a chance to air their concerns even when they didn’t reach an agreement. University of Chicago administrators held several days of negotiations with encampment leaders before the talks fell apart and police cleared the protesters. The George Washington University President Ellen Granberg met over the weekend with student protesters who lectured her about “structural inequality” at GW and likened the university’s code of conduct to slavery and Jim Crow-era segregation, according to a video recording of the meeting.
College administrators’ negotiations to end the protests might bring a wave of good headlines and promises of quiet at campus commencements, the largest and most high-profile event of the year for most universities. But students haven’t said what they’ll do when school is back in session next year.
By promising meetings with university investment committees, the administrators are almost certainly guaranteeing that campus angst over the war in Gaza will not die down. Brown University President Christina Paxson pledged that protest leaders can meet with the university’s governing body to discuss divestment from companies that operate in Israel — in October, a year after the Hamas attacks that killed more than 1,200 people and ignited the ongoing bloodshed in the Middle East.
Correction: This article was updated to more accurately reflect negotiations between Princeton’s president and the protesters.
Hillel vice president: ‘No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded’

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EVANSTON, ILLINOIS - APRIL 25: Protest signs hang on a fence at Northwestern University as people gather on the campus to show support for residents of Gaza on April 25, 2024 in Evanston, Ill. The university's president struck a deal with protesters acceding to several of their demands, a deal that is being slammed by Jewish leaders.
As universities around the country strike various deals with anti-Israel protesters to quell the turmoil on college campuses — including giving protesters a seat at the table regarding investment decisions — Jewish leaders fear that even these largely symbolic concessions could further poison the atmosphere for Jewish students.
Negotiating with protesters sets up a climate in which “Jewish students — who are not violating rules —- are being ignored, bullied and intimidated,” Mark Rotenberg, vice president and general counsel of Hillel International, told Jewish Insider. “People who violate university rules should not be rewarded with financial benefits and rewards for the violation of university rules,” he continued.
Shira Goodman, senior director of advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League, echoed that the series of deals struck all “ignore the needs of Jewish students increasingly at risk of harassment and intimidation, or worse, on campus.”
“It is critical to acknowledge the facts on the ground,” Goodman said. “For days and in some cases weeks, anti-Zionist protesters have openly violated school policies and codes of conduct by erecting encampments that have provided cover for students to fan the flames of antisemitism and wreak havoc on the entire campus community… The protesters’ aim and impact on many campuses has been to intimidate and alienate Jewish students for whom Zionism and a connection to Israel is a component of their Jewish identity. They must be held to account, not rewarded for their conduct.”
The nationwide “Gaza solidarity encampments” began on April 17 at Columbia University. On April 29, Northwestern University set the precedent for conceding to some of the protesters’ demands when its president, Michael Schill, reached an agreement with the activists to end their anti-Israel encampment, in which protesters camped out and engulfed campuses for weeks.
The protesters — most, but not all, of whom were students — took over buildings, blocked access to throughways, vandalized school property and chanted intimidating, antisemitic slogans while calling for an end to Israel’s war with Hamas and demanding that institutions cut ties with the Jewish state.
The deal at Northwestern complied with several of the students’ demands. These include allowing students to protest until the end of classes on June 1 so long as tents are removed, and to encourage employers not to rescind job offers for student protesters. The school will also allow students to weigh in on university investments — a major concession for students who have been demanding the university to divest from Israeli corporations.
The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to slam the strategy and call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. But a handful of schools, including University of Minnesota, Brown University, Rutgers University and University of California, Riverside followed suit — giving into the demands of encampment protesters in an effort to shut them down.
While all of the agreements center around divesting from Israel, resolutions at each school look different. At Rutgers, a proposed deal reached last Thursday includes divesting from corporations participating in or benefiting from Israel; terminating Rutgers’ partnership with Tel Aviv University; accepting at least 10 displaced students from Gaza; and displaying Palestinian flags alongside other existing international flags on campus. Eight out of the 10 demands were met, while Rutgers students, faculty and alumni continue to push for the two not yet agreed to — an official call for divestment as well as cutting ties with Tel Aviv University.
At Minnesota, meanwhile, protesters packed their tents after a 90-minute meeting with Jeff Ettinger, the school’s interim president. A tentative deal was reached, which could include divestment from companies such as Honeywell and General Dynamics, academic divestment from Israeli universities, transparency about university investments, a statement in support of Palestinian students, a statement in support of Palestinians’ right to self-determination and amnesty for students arrested while protesting (nine people were arrested on campus on April 22).
In a statement to students and faculty, Ettinger wrote that coalition representatives will be given the opportunity to address the board of regents at its May 10 meeting to discuss divestment from certain companies. Public disclosure of university investments would be made available by May 7. Ettinger also said that the administration has asked university police not to arrest or charge anyone for participating in encampment activities in the past few days, and will not pursue disciplinary action against students or employees for protesting.
Rotenberg, who was general counsel of University of Minnesota for 20 years before coming to Hillel, told JI that he is working on a statement objecting to the settlements, which will be addressed to the school’s board of regents.
“I am hopeful that this is not a trend,” Rotenberg said. “No university can exist if rules violators are rewarded with financial incentives, while students who do abide by the rules are not similarly rewarded,” he continued. “That’s an upside-down world and it cannot be acceptable for individuals who violate university regulations to be given the benefits while our students’ voices are not heard.”
Rotenberg expressed ire over universities’ lack of consulting with Jewish faculty or students ahead of making the agreements. At Northwestern, seven Jewish members of the university’s antisemitism advisory committee stepped down from the body last Wednesday, citing Schill’s failure to combat antisemitism while quickly accepting the demands of anti-Israel protesters on campus.
“Any meeting with the board of regents at University of Minnesota that relates to these issues, must include Jewish voices — voices of the overwhelming majority of the Jewish community who identify with and support Israel,” Rotenberg said.
“There are many ways to enforce university time, place and manner regulation that do not involve rewarding violators,” he continued, applauding the University of Connecticut, University of Florida and Columbia University for shutting down encampments while “eliminating the dangers of disruption and violence, without rewarding the violators.” At Columbia, for example, officers in riot gear removed demonstrators who had seized Hamilton Hall and suspended students who refused to dismantle their encampment.
Not all efforts to strike deals have been successful. At University of Chicago, for instance, negotiations to remove encampment tents from the campus central quad were suspended on Sunday, after protesters reached a stalemate with the university president, Paul Alivisatos.
“The Jewish community is right to be outraged,” Miriam Elman, executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, told JI. “You don’t capitulate to groups that are in violation of reasonable restrictions by giving into demands. That is not moral leadership… the right statements are not negotiations with rule violators, but rather say that free expression is a core value but you have to abide by university policy in doing that,” she continued, noting that she has observed a “trend with private universities being more able to weather the storm, as well as just doing better than some of the public universities.”
Like Rotenberg, Elman singled out Minnesota for its “disheartening” snub of Jews.
“Their statement [on encampments] had nothing to say to the Jewish community,” Elman said. “Nothing condemning the rank antisemitism on display, in rhetoric and calls for violence against Israeli citizens. How can you not even in one paragraph of your statement condemn how antisemitism has infused these protests?”
In a statement to JI, Jacob Baime, CEO of the Israel on Campus Coalition, called on university administrators to “clear the encampments, equally enforce existing policies, and protect Jewish students and their friends and allies,” without capitulating to “supporters of Hamas.”
Experts said that it’s too early to know whether or not the concessions offered are merely symbolic — Brown, for example, plans to wait until October for its corporate board to vote on a proposal to divest from Israeli interests, as per its negotiation with protesters. But already, according to the ADL’s Goodman, administrations that have made deals “[incentivized] further rules violations and disruption and normalized antisemitism on campus.”
Goodman cautioned that as universities try to restore order during finals and graduations, more may strike similar deals. “Administrators may see this as an acceptable solution to resolve the current situation on their own campus… It will also be interesting to see how they determine whether protestors who committed no further code of conduct violations comply and what happens if they do not comply.”
Rotenberg warned, “The Jewish community has ample reason to fear when people take the law into their own hands and who, after being warned, decide to violate the norms of their community and then get rewarded for doing so.” Going down that path, he said, is “marching down the road to authoritarianism.”
Northwestern senior Lily Cohen: ‘It appears as though breaking the rules gets you somewhere, and trying to do things respectfully and by the books does not’

Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images
Students and residents camp outside Northwestern University during a pro-Palestinian protest, expressing solidarity with Palestinians with banners in Evanston, Illinois, United States on April 27, 2024.
Seven Jewish members of Northwestern University’s antisemitism advisory committee who stepped down from the body on Wednesday blasted university President Michael Schill for his failure to combat antisemitism while at the same time quickly acceding to the demands of anti-Israel protesters on campus.
Announced in November, the committee’s members were named in January. The body has not yet put forth any public recommendations, nor has Schill adopted any policies from the committee. The seven members who resigned criticized Schill for the agreement he reached on Monday with the anti-Israel protesters who had built an encampment on campus and for not consulting members of the antisemitism committee during the negotiations.
“It appears as though breaking the rules gets you somewhere, and trying to do things respectfully and by the books does not,” Lily Cohen, a Northwestern senior who stepped down from the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate on Wednesday, told Jewish Insider. “I am hoping that this is really the last straw that President Schill needs to see in order to really do something. But I can’t say that I have a whole lot of confidence that he will, because it feels like it feels like if he wanted to do something, he’s been given plenty of opportunities to do it.”
The university is “disappointed” that some members of the committee chose to step down, Hilary Hurd Anyaso, Northwestern’s assistant vice president for communications, told JI in a statement. “Our commitment to protecting Jewish students, faculty and staff is unwavering. The University has no tolerance for antisemitic or anti-Muslim behavior.”
The home page of Northwestern’s main website still features a banner declaring “Combating Antisemitism,” with a link to the announcement of the task force members. But the committee members who resigned said university leaders never took its charge seriously.
“Students at Northwestern must be able to walk through campus without hearing hate-filled speech or experiencing harassment for their religious or political identities and commitments,” Northwestern Hillel Executive Director Michael Simon said in an email to the campus Jewish community announcing his resignation from the committee. “I accepted my appointment to the Committee last fall with the expectation that we would make a good-faith effort toward achieving these goals. Over time, it has become apparent that the Committee is not able to do so.”
Dr. Philip Greenland, a professor of cardiology at Northwestern’s medical school and an Orthodox Jew, turned on his phone on Tuesday evening after Passover ended and saw more than 400 unread emails in his inbox and a message from Efraim Benmelech, the committee’s co-chair, asking to meet at 9:15 p.m.
“After the discussion, the seven people who had joined together on this call agreed that they would each independently resign from the committee,” said Greenland, who chose to step down after learning how Schill had disregarded the antisemitism committee when he negotiated with the protestors — particularly because antisemitism had been so apparent among the protesters, which Schill acknowledged in a Tuesday video.
“My rationale was, ‘You asked us to be on this committee. We’ve been investing our time in this committee. It seems to have a purpose that you say exists. And then at the critical moment, you decide you don’t need us. You don’t need to talk to us. You go off on your own, and you make your own decision,’” said Greenland. “He might have minimized physical confrontation with the protesters, but he didn’t make the campus safer, in my opinion, for Jewish students.”
Some Jewish students who walked past the encampment were told that Zionists were not welcome there, said Cohen. A flier with a picture of Schill, who is Jewish, with horns appeared at the encampment, along with a poster showing a star of David crossed out with an X. The antisemitism committee attempted to write a statement condemning the antisemitism exhibited at the encampment but was unable to agree on what to say.
“If the committee that was created to prevent antisemitism cannot even decide on whether or not to speak up about antisemitism, I have no faith in its ability to protect Jewish students or to take any substantive action to change the environment for Jewish students on campus,” Cohen added.
When Schill named members to the antisemitism committee in January, he also announced that its scope would be broader than just antisemitism and would also encompass “other forms of hate including Islamophobia.” That approach raised eyebrows among some Jewish Northwestern affiliates. “If you really want to fix the problem, why conflate it with other issues that are going to prolong trying to find a solution to it?” Mike Teplitsky, a Northwestern alum and the president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern, told JI in March.
“There were definitely Jewish students, alumni, parents, etc., when the committee was announced who immediately wrote it off, said it’s too little, too late, it’s performative, whatever. And I was very adamant that we have to give it a chance and see,” said Cohen. “I felt like maybe it was, really, a good faith effort to take a step in the right direction. So I waited and I saw, and I think the committee ended up proving the skeptics at the beginning right.”
The other committee members who stepped down were Efraim Benmelech, one of the committee’s two co-chairs and a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg business school; University trustee Paula Pretlow; Martin Eichenbaum, an economics professor; and Daniel Greene, a history professor.
Three Northwestern students sued the university on Wednesday, alleging that it had committed a “breach of contract” by not shutting down the encampment sooner, contrary to campus policies, and by letting a hateful environment flourish among the protestors.
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL), who is a Northwestern graduate and represents the Chicago suburbs, told JI the deal that Northwestern struck with members of the encampment was “reprehensible” and “unfortunate.” Schneider said he had discussed his concerns about the deal with Schill directly.
Schneider said he was told that Northwestern would not cut business ties with Israeli businesses, but the school’s public statement doesn’t reflect that. “The president hasn’t clearly articulated the principles under which Northwestern is operating,” Schneider said. “You need to be very clear and he has so far remained silent. I hope that changes.”
The Illinois congressman said he’s fully supportive of the idea, which came as part of the deal, of creating a Muslim house or other space on campus, adding that he’d happily write a check to support such a center. But Schneider objected to the decision to call this Muslim-centric space the Middle East North Africa (MENA) House. Such a name excludes all of the other religious groups that have lived in the region for thousands of years, Schneider said, and “effectively validate[s] this false premise, dangerous premise of the anti-Israel protesters that Jews are settler colonialists who have no right to be in this region and Israel has no right to exist.”

Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images
Students and residents camp outside Northwestern University during a pro-Palestinian protest, expressing solidarity with Palestinians with banners in Evanston, Illinois, United States on April 27, 2024.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we look at how administrators are addressing protests, encampments and clashes on campus, and report on today’s expected vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Sheryl Sandberg, Ofir Akunis and Amy Schumer.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Israel today for meetings with top officials, including President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Blinken’s visit to Israel follows a two-day trip through the region that included meetings in Jordan and Saudi Arabia aimed at discussing cease-fire negotiations and a day-after plan for Gaza. The trip comes as Israel prepares for a Rafah operation, following Netanyahu’s comments earlier this week that such a move was imminent, “with or without a deal” to reach a cease-fire and free the remaining hostages. More on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s comments about a potential Rafah invasion below.
“Bringing the hostages home is at the heart of everything we’re trying to do,” Blinken tweeted earlier today. “We will not rest until every hostage — woman, man, young, old, civilian, soldier — is back with their families, where they belong.”
Thousands of miles away from high-level diplomatic conversations aimed at ending a monthslong war, American college administrators are conducting their own negotiations — with anti-Israel student protesters — in an effort to restore calm on campuses across the country in the waning weeks of the spring semester.
With final exams and commencements around the corner, this time of year is usually one of packed libraries, graduation celebrations and senioritis. Not so this year on a number of campuses, where student protesters from Columbia to Northwestern to the University of North Carolina to UCLA continued to sow chaos on campus, in some cases moving from the encampments they constructed last month to take over university buildings, as they did with the takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. In other cases students commandeered university property, as students at UNC did when they took down an American flag and hung a Palestinian flag in its place.
At UCLA, overnight protests turned violent, with clashes between pro- and anti-Israel student demonstrators breaking out in the area around the encampment. At Columbia, police with riot shields arrested dozens of protesters in Hamilton Hall, effectively bringing an end to the protesters’ siege of the administrative building. Overnight, the campus encampment was cleared after two weeks.
Administrators from Evanston, Ill., to New York to Chapel Hill, N.C., have varied in their approaches to the demonstrators and their demands. Read below for more on the concessions that administrations have made to campus protesters below.
Following Columbia protesters’ takeover of Hamilton Hall earlier this week, White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates released a statement condemning antisemitism and the extreme tactics of the students.
“President Biden has stood against repugnant, antisemitic smears and violent rhetoric his entire life. He condemns the use of the term ‘intifada,’ as he has the other tragic and dangerous hate speech displayed in recent days,” Bates told JI. “President Biden respects the right to free expression, but protests must be peaceful and lawful. Forcibly taking over buildings is not peaceful — it is wrong. And hate speech and hate symbols have no place in America.”
Bates did not say whether Biden planned to speak about the issue publicly, or to meet with Jewish students. In a proclamation announcing Jewish American Heritage Month, which begins today, Biden addressed the situation on many campuses.
“Here at home, too many Jews live with deep pain and fear from the ferocious surge of antisemitism — in our communities; at schools, places of worship, and colleges; and across social media. These acts are despicable and echo the worst chapters of human history,” Biden said in the proclamation.
Meanwhile, a new Harvard/Harris poll found that 80% of Americans support Israel in its war against Hamas; that number drops to 57% among the 18-24 year-olds surveyed. Those numbers are perhaps best reflected in a statement released by College Democrats of America on Wednesday, showing support for the encampments and anti-Israel protesters.
Today in Washington, Jewish students from Northwestern will meet with legislators to discuss their experiences on campus in recent days, ahead of a House vote on the Antisemitism Awareness Act. More on the legislation from JI’s Marc Rod below.
The events on campus are raising concerns among congressional lawmakers. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday called on Columbia administrators to “bring order to their Manhattan campus” and compared the behavior of Columbia’s student protesters to the “brand of aggressive lawlessness” shown by “the student Nazis of Weimar Germany.”
A day prior, a group of 21 pro-Israel House Democrats sent a letter blasting Columbia and accusing administrators of failing to break up the campus’ anti-Israel encampment. The legislators alleged that failing to do so constitutes a violation of Jewish students’ civil rights. The letter, led by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Dan Goldman (D-NY), describes the encampment as “the breeding ground for antisemitic attacks on Jewish students, including hate speech, harassment, intimidation, and even threats of violence.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) is preparing a measure to censure Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for her comments last week referring to Jewish students as either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide”; the Minnesota congresswoman made the comments while visiting Columbia University.
House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) invited the heads of Yale, UCLA and the University of Michigan to speak at a hearing later this month focused on “Calling for Accountability: Stopping Antisemitic College Chaos.”
Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans’ campaign arms are planning to use footage that has emerged in recent days in ads targeting vulnerable Democrats who have not condemned the protests. Among those the NRSC and NRCC plan to target: Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Bob Casey (D-PA) and Jon Tester (D-MT), as well as Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who is mounting a Senate bid in Michigan.
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said yesterday at a Senate hearing that “what is happening on our campuses is abhorrent.”
“Hate has no place on our campuses and I’m very concerned with the reports of antisemitism,” Cardona said. He added that “unsafe, violent” protests and attacks on students are not protected by the First Amendment.
Cardona said that support for Hamas, the “from the river to the sea” slogan and calls for Jews to go back to Poland or be killed are “absolutely not” acceptable. He told lawmakers the department needs additional funding and investigators for its Office of Civil Rights to respond to the spike in incidents and investigations.
northwestern negotiations
Jewish leaders slam Northwestern agreement with anti-Israel protesters

After an anti-Israel encampment was erected at Northwestern University last week, the school’s president on Monday reached an agreement with protesters to end the encampment — acceding to several of their demands in the process, which drew strong condemnation from many in the Chicago and national Jewish communities, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Message received: In a letter to university President Michael Schill, the Jewish United Fund — Chicago’s Jewish federation, which also oversees Northwestern Hillel — excoriated the administrator for embracing “those who flagrantly disrupted Northwestern academics and flouted those policies. The overwhelming majority of your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni feel betrayed. They trusted an institution you lead and considered it home. You have violated that trust,” the letter said. “You certainly heard and acted generously towards those with loud, at times hateful voices. The lack of any reassuring message to our community has also been heard loud and clear.”
Resignation call: The Anti-Defamation League, StandWithUs and the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law joined together to call for Schill’s resignation after the agreement was announced. “For days, protestors openly mocked and violated Northwestern’s codes of conduct and policies by erecting an encampment in which they fanned the flames of antisemitism and wreaked havoc on the entire university community,” the groups said in a statement. “Rather than hold them accountable – as he pledged he would – President Schill gave them a seat at the table and normalized their hatred against Jewish students.”
Notes from New England: Brown University administrators reached an agreement with encampment organizers to put the issue of divesting from Israel up for a vote when its largest governing body, the Corporation, meets in October.