The president of Northwestern University in Illinois, Michael Schill, announced last week that he was stepping down amid a Trump administration investigation, New York Post reports. After a new president is appointed, Schill plans to return to a teaching position in the Pritzker Law School at Northwestern.
The Trump administrations froze $790 million in federal funds to Northwestern as they investigate into Title VI violations and claims of antisemitism discrimination.
Northwestern is just one of many colleges whose president has resigned due in part to criticism of how they handled antisemitism protests on their campus. Newsweek listed four universities – Cornell, Harvard, Columbia, and Pennsylvania – that saw these resignations last year during times of campus unrest.
Culture and education writer for Breakthrough Ideas, Laurie Higgins, thinks Schill's resignation was appropriate.
"It should happen. He did not manage this well, the growing antisemitism on Northwestern's campus. He did not handle it well. He did not handle it in the way a strong leader should handle things," says Higgins.
Schill has twice testified before Congress on anti-Semitism, according to Campus Reform. While he said that the university will do what it must to combat antisemitism, he also said that is would be “impractical” to consider Jewish students during talks to end on-campus encampment from pro-Palestine demonstrators.
The result of Schill giving into the protestors demands lead to the resignation seven members of the advisory committee and a lawsuit from three Northwestern students for failure to protect Jewish students.
Higgins says Schill, who is himself Jewish, fumbled the pro-Palestinian protests on campus.
“Jewish students have been saying for a long time that the growing presence of pro-Palestinian students on campus is the cause of the antisemitism. If this had been black students on the receiving end of what Jewish students have received, this would not have gone on. They would've shut it down in a minute,” states Higgins.
