For the first time since student protests erupted on campus calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and University divestment from Israel during Spring Quarter, Northwestern President Michael Schill sat down with The Daily for a wide-ranging interview. He reflected on his handling of April’s encampment on Deering Meadow and discussed the University’s path forward.
Now two years into his tenure, Schill also addressed progress on the commitments made in the encampment agreement, his perception of current campus climate for students, recent free speech policies and navigating admissions in the post-affirmative action landscape.
This interview has been edited lightly for clarity and brevity.
The Daily: The University recently released preliminary data demonstrating that the Class of 2028 is the most diverse class ever admitted to Northwestern. How did admissions continue promoting racial and socioeconomic diversity while complying with the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling?
Schill: I’m really delighted with the class and the composition of the class. If you go back a year and a half, I think a lot of us were very concerned about what would happen to diversity on campus. At an educational institution like ours, diversity is incredibly important, because we want to bring people together who are different from each other, so we can learn from each other.
So what we did was we doubled down. Race was out of consideration with regard to the selection of the students, and we abided by the Supreme Court ruling. But we had the good fortune of having strong relationships with pipeline organizations and community-based organizations such as Posse or Questbridge, and we made good use of those in basically building our pool of diverse candidates.
The Daily: Students, staff and faculty have continued to criticize the University’s response to the Deering Meadow encampment since May, with several external groups calling for your resignation following your testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Looking back on the previous academic year, do you have any regrets about the University’s response to student activism?
Schill: We could always do things better, but I think we did the right thing, and that’s what we set out to do. We are an institution of learning, and we don’t come out ahead by bringing in police and ruining students’ lives. At the same time, there do have to be consequences, and one of the things that we learned as a result of the encampment on Deering was that our rules were insufficient for us to be able to make sure that people who broke them had consequences. We didn’t have any time, place and manner rules. Our code of conduct was just insufficient.
So what we saw coming out of that year was that we needed to fix some of this, and we spent all summer working on that. But when I look back at what the school did, I look at our peer schools, and I look at Columbia, I look at Harvard, I look at any number of schools that we would consider in our group, in the top 10 universities in the country, and I’m pretty proud where we ended up.
The Daily: What progress has the University made on the commitments laid out in the April “Agreement on Deering Meadow”?
Schill: We have Israeli students. We have Palestinian students. Obviously we agreed to do these things at the very end of the school year, so it was difficult to get everything implemented this year. There’s temporary space for our (Middle Eastern and North African) students in Norris. We said we would do work on a house in a couple years when Jacobs is done. So obviously, that’s not being done. The (Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility) is being worked on. The Board of Trustees talked about this at this past meeting, and we anticipate rolling it out by the end of the calendar year.
The Daily: Given that several candidates seeking seats on Evanston City Council in the upcoming election have positioned themselves in opposition to the Rebuild Ryan Field project, how do you foresee Northwestern’s relationship with the city changing?
Schill: I don’t think we’ve ever had a closer relationship with the city of Evanston. I do think that the process to approve Ryan Stadium was a difficult one, but I think we’re already implementing our Community Benefits Agreement, which is $10 million (per year) over 15 years. We tripled our Good Neighbor Fund. We are on pace with 35% minority and women hiring in Ryan Field. We are talking with the city about an enormous array of things.
I think what’s important is to recognize that we don’t succeed as a University unless Evanston succeeds. If Evanston turns out to be a bad place for students to live, you’re not going to come here. You’re going to go elsewhere. So we need Evanston to succeed, and Evanston deeply needs us to succeed.
The Daily: Do you have any plans to reinstate the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate?
Schill No. They’d already done a lot of work and a lot of outreach, and so we debriefed a number of members on the committee, and that’s what went into the work this summer. I don’t anticipate that we’ll be creating another committee like that.
The Daily: Do you feel like campus is safe and comfortable for Jewish students?
Schill: I think that I would like to believe the answer is yes to both of those. I know the answer is yes, that it is safe. It’s my belief, based upon talking with Jewish students, that they feel physically safe. They don’t fear for their physical well-being. It’s not 100%, but I think predominantly people feel safe. Whether they feel comfortable, my guess is a number of people don’t feel comfortable.
If you were a Jewish student exiting Harris (Hall) or University Hall on Monday (Oct. 7), listening to some of what was being said and not able to get away from it because they were on the sidewalk, you have to walk through, you have to engage with it. That’s not comfortable. What I would hope, and what I would strive for, is that we get to the place where we engage with each other in a way that is human, and in a way that isn’t slogans, and in a way that isn’t full of hate but is trying to understand each other.
I do think the vast majority of our students want that, and I think the vast majority of students believe that, and I think that we just need to isolate the people who believe in hate. Some of that is, if they break the rules, we will enforce the rules. If they intimidate people, if they harass people, we will enforce the rules and potentially remove them from our community. But it’s also the students’ obligation to use your own moral suasion and to say, ‘This isn’t right.’ People who care about each other, who are part of an academic community, don’t behave this way.
The Daily: In a similar vein, do you feel like campus is safe and comfortable for Middle Eastern and North African students, especially Palestinian students?
Schill: I believe it’s safe. There have been some incidents. But is it comfortable? Many of the students who I’ve met with, who are students either from the Middle East or Muslim students, would probably say the same thing, that it’s uncomfortable. And some of them would say that the surroundings are uncomfortable. Much of what has happened is happening off campus, as opposed to on campus, in terms of Islamophobic statements or anti-Palestinian statements, and that’s unacceptable to us too. We’ve talked, obviously, with the police, and as you’ve probably seen, they’ve increased their patrols.
It’s not just the Jewish kids, it’s every student here deserves to feel they shouldn’t be in a cocoon where they’re not challenged. Students should feel challenged, and they should sometimes feel challenged by uncomfortable ideas, but they shouldn’t be threatened, where they can’t do their best work. But their hearts (are) beating from being afraid that they’re going to hear something that’s going to enrage them or scare them.
I truly believe that Northwestern, while we’ve had some incidents that I’m not proud of, has generally behaved well over the past year, and what we need to do is further up our game.
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