University President Michael Schill addressed the Faculty Senate at its Wednesday meeting on the potential implications of a shifting political landscape ahead of a transition of presidential power this January.
In an hourlong appearance before the senate, Schill also addressed budgetary concerns, worries from faculty about international students in the wake of the 2024 election, the Statement on Free Expression and Institutional Speech, and academic freedom for faculty.
With Republicans clinching the presidential office, the Senate and the House of Representatives this election cycle, Schill said the trend of declining support for universities, especially within the Republican Party, could be problematic for the University.
“For years, support for higher education has been declining, and the level of polarization with respect to the two parties in their support for higher education has been widening,” Schill said. “We are extremely vulnerable for these reasons.”
This declining support can be attributed to a wide variety of factors, Schill said, including a perceived notion that university faculties are disproportionately liberal, the ever-increasing costs of tuition and skepticism about the value of research.
Schill expressed concern ahead of a second administration headed by former President Donald Trump, forecasting that endowment taxes will increase, research funding will decrease and research security will become much stricter.
“We can’t approach this passively. We can’t crouch in a corner or continue business as usual. We can’t afford to be divided,” Schill said. “We’re all going to need to pull together to protect Northwestern over the next several years. I know we will, because we always have.”
In preparation for these predicted changes, Schill said he will be collaborating with other universities and organizations to implement strategies designed to limit the damage of policies and institutional changes targeting universities.
The University will also work to change the narrative around institutions of higher education, he said. To do so, Schill said he plans to emphasize the value derived from universities — for example, the fact that they educate future citizens, provide important research and create enriching culture.
“We need to hold onto our core values, because just surviving this, if we give up our values, is not going to be surviving this,” Schill said. “We need to adhere and protect and cherish academic freedom and free expression.”
Schill also touched on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce’s recent report on antisemitism on college campuses which included internal communications between Schill and other University administrators, noting that this report only made institutions of higher education more vulnerable, with many of the university leaders appearing in the hearings stepping down from their positions.
Later in the meeting, the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee, chaired by philosophy Prof. Mark Alznauer, introduced a resolution requesting a clear statement from University leadership regarding the status of the investigation into Medill Prof. Steven Thrasher, whose classes were suspended in September.
In the statement, the Senate asks University administrators to justify how the suspension of Thrasher from teaching does not violate his free speech rights. The Senate also asks that administrators detail the limits of the prerogative of school deans, department chairs and program directors to suspend faculty members from teaching.
After the motion was introduced, art history Prof. Rebecca Zorach proposed an adaptation to the language in order to add the idea of a sanction to the resolution. Zorach suggested that Thrasher’s situation more closely aligned with the definition of a sanction, rather than a suspension.
“It seems very clearly to be a sanction,” Zorach said. “It’s completely out of the ordinary for a dean to remove someone from the classroom and cancel their already scheduled classes.”
Medill Prof. Jacqueline Babb took issue with both the resolution and amendment, arguing that it was outside the purview of the Senate.
Babb worried that the resolution would set a precedent that it is the role of the Senate to resolve disputes between faculty and deans.
“I’m deeply troubled and very uncomfortable with this resolution,” Babb said. “We should be focused on clarity as it relates to class cancellations and use our handbook committee to collaborate with the administration to bring that clarity. This is not about Steven Thrasher or Dean (Charles) Whitaker.”
The motion passed, with 31 Senate members voting for the suggested change and 28 voting against it.
In response to this change, Babb proposed an amendment of her own, opting to avoid mentioning a specific faculty member in the resolution. The resolution also requests more clarity regarding what constitutes a behavior that would result in a suspension.
“We want protections and we want assurances that that cannot happen willingly to us without having some recourse,” Medill Prof. Ceci Rodgers said. “I think we need to proceed very carefully and not attach a personality to the issue. I think that would be a grave mistake and we would regret it later.”
Amid two proposed amendments, political science Prof. Ian Hurd suggested that the “competing and somewhat sympathetic goals” of Senate members were making the process of landing on a resolution more confusing.
These goals included clarifying how the process of removing a professor from teaching functions, requesting a different process and wanting to express support for Thrasher, an individual faculty member.
“It seems to me those are different goals, and muddling them together might make it harder for the Senate to speak with a single, strong voice,” Hurd said.
The Senate then voted on whether to accept Babb’s amendment, which resulted in an exact tie. Faculty Senate President Jill Wilson became the deciding vote. Upon her abstention, the amendment failed to pass.
However, a motion to refer the resolution back to the Faculty Rights and Responsibilities Committee passed. Thus, the resolution will be discussed at the next Faculty Senate meeting Jan. 15.
While Schill did not touch directly on the investigation into Thrasher, he did answer faculty questions about academic freedom for faculty.
“The one thing that we have to understand is academic freedom is not a simple concept,” Schill said. “There are limits to academic freedom. It doesn’t protect you when you’re in a classroom in chemistry, if you’re talking about something totally not chemistry. That is not your area of expertise and not what the students are there for. ”
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