Just four months since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, Northwestern has faced a $790 million federal funding freeze, student visa uncertainty and the federal government’s crackdown on diversity, equity and inclusion.
For the first time since October, The Daily sat down with University President Michael Schill for a wide-ranging interview. Schill reflected on topics like antisemitism on campus and the University’s strategy for navigating the evolving higher education landscape.
Schill began the interview with an opening statement to The Daily. He said the current challenges posed by the funding freeze are “existential,” calling the pause on federal research grants “extraordinarily disruptive to our nation and human life.”
However, Schill said he doesn’t subscribe to the idea that all of the Trump’s administration’s policies should be cast aside. He said the rise in antisemitism on campuses, the high cost of college and the lack of ideological diversity at universities are issues he believes must be addressed.
“While not all of us agree with the policies of the Trump administration or the ways they are going about implementing them, we do ourselves a disservice by rejecting some of the valid criticisms that have been leveled against higher education,” Schill said.
This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Daily: It’s been a little over a year since the Deering Meadow encampment and agreement. What lessons has the University learned from the encampment, and how is that being applied now?
Schill: One thing that we learned is that we didn’t have enough security at the University. I mean, that was pretty obvious from the beginning. When the encampment came, we were not able to either stop the encampment from occurring or to eliminate it once it was on the ground. So we have enhanced our security significantly, mostly from partnerships with other external law enforcement organizations.
Another lesson of the encampment (is) the encampment was the first place that I saw undeniably antisemitic behavior occurring here. (There) wasn’t a lot of it in the encampment, as far as I could see, but there was some. And that was a lesson, and it was shocking because one doesn’t imagine in a university like Northwestern with a relatively big Jewish population, but also in Chicago, in educated people, that you would ever see things like the picture of me with blood and horns or the Jewish star with an “X” on it.
The Daily: One of the investigations into NU that was announced was that of the Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. The task force announced that we were one of the few universities they were going to visit. Have you received any word of that happening?
Schill: We haven’t received any formal notification.
The Daily: Since Donald Trump has taken office, he’s attacked higher education in several areas. In terms of the policies that have been implemented, how is NU already feeling the effects of these policies, and, a bit more importantly, how will it fight back?
Schill: There’s a couple — two or three — areas that are the most immediate, and then there’s things in the future.
The federal freeze on about $789 million of research has had a very big impact on us. We’ve not been notified of that, officially. As you may know, I heard about that on a Fox News tweet, and it was subsequently confirmed through several meetings I had down in Washington.
We don’t know which grants have been frozen. Our largest funding for research is the (National Institutes of Health), and we have not been able to draw money from NIH for at least two months. And the Board (of Trustees) executive committee unanimously approved continuing funding of that research, which is a lot. It’s tens of millions of dollars a month, for a while, and then hopefully we’ll get more certainty in terms of when the freeze will end, and we’ll also end the freeze.
The impact, though, may not be immediate in those areas because the University is funding it, but it’s creating all sorts of uncertainty because we can’t keep doing it forever. There are also some types of research which have been canceled, and that research is typically in the category of what the government would call “illegal DEI” or something like that. That research, the funding will never come back or at least never come back under this administration. So, that research is having to wind down or shift, and that’s having a tremendous impact on our faculty who are doing that research, but also on our graduate students.
So then the question is, “What are we doing?” The one thing that we’re going to do is we are going to make sure that everything that we do is consistent with our values. And, you know, one of the things that I totally understand is a level of frustration within the community because it doesn’t look to the world that we’re doing anything. I’ve gone to Washington a number of times. We have lobbyists, we have lawyers, we have constant communication with other schools to try to coordinate on some of this.
Secondly, the endowment tax: We use our endowment. One of the major uses of our endowment is financial aid, and I’m sure Princeton, Harvard and those schools also do that. Taking a chunk out of the endowment as a way to punish universities is actually going to punish students, because we believe in access, and the endowment provides some of the resources to be able to do that.
And then of course we have immigration, as I mentioned earlier. We’ve had some immigration issues, not many, but who knows what the future is going to bring. We believe that international students bring a lot to the University. Talent is not distributed by nation. Incredibly bright people who we want here … come from every corner of the world. And if we close ourselves off to that, we are closing ourselves to knowledge, expertise and ultimately to the ability of the United States to be competitive in the world. Higher education is our most successful export to the world, and we need to recognize that.
The Daily: You mentioned that it is costing the University tens of millions per month to cover the cost of the research that’s been frozen. Where is that money coming from? Would the University ever consider drawing from the endowment to cover the effects of the funding freeze?
Schill: It’s not absolutely clear where the money is coming from. Obviously, we have a budget. The budget is not designed to run a huge profit, and so if you run a deficit in a particular year, there’s probably only two places that you can go: one is to the liquid part of the endowment, or secondly to debt. Neither one are great options, but I’m not sure there’s a third option. I’ve been a leader of an institution like this for 20 years — I haven’t heard anybody that said, “Oh, you know, I’d like to make a gift to fund a deficit.” So, it’ll probably come from one of those two sources.
The Daily: In February, the University responded quickly to President Trump’s executive order seeking to ban federally funded DEI initiatives, programs and institutions. NU schools and offices then quickly removed mentions of DEI from their websites. Have the services provided by these offices changed at all, and will they continue to operate in the future?
Schill: I can’t speak to individual changes in offices. First, let’s state the principles: We’re going to comply with the federal law. I’m a lawyer, I believe that you follow the law. I want everyone to follow the law — so we will follow the law.
Secondly, the provost and I both said this, that bringing people together of different backgrounds and different beliefs makes us a great university. We are working hard to make every student here succeed, and different students from different backgrounds will need different things.
So all of that said, we’re working with the Office of Community Enrichment to bring all of our websites into compliance with what we think is the law. And law doesn’t stay static, but we’re trying to bring everything into compliance.
The Daily: In April, NU responded to antisemitic graffiti outside Kresge Hall and University Hall. We’re wondering if you have identified a suspect or any suspects in the investigation and if you have any updates about the incident.
Schill: So, immediately upon discovering the hateful graffiti and the damage to our property, we brought in law enforcement, and we are working vigorously with NUPD, the state and the federal government to identify the perpetrators. If and when we identify who it was, and if they were students, they will be expelled from the University, unless they come forward voluntarily and turn themselves in.
The Daily: Does the University administration view the resolutions of NU’s Faculty Senate and Faculty Assembly, such as the “Big Ten Mutual Defense Compact” and the AAUP’s resolutions, as binding?
Schill: No, they’re not binding — they’re advisory. There is no doubt in the University bylaws and statutes that they’re advisory.
I value faculty opinion tremendously. I view myself as a faculty member first and an administrator second. So, I believe in faculty governance, and I believe that the reason why higher education has been so successful over so long has been that we don’t just make top-down decisions. … And the fact that it was only 10% of our faculty doesn’t mean that those views are views that you ignore, but they go into the mix along with the 90% of faculty that didn’t take the time to go to the meeting, as well as the Board of Trustees and our student and our alumni community. We’re like a village.
The Daily: What is the University’s strategy on protecting our international students? Do you see a potential future where, like Harvard, NU will be told it can’t accept international students?
Schill: We’re working as hard as we can not to have that happen for the reasons I gave earlier about the value of international students to us. I want to say this must be a frightening time when you don’t know whether, if you leave the country, you’re going to be able to get back in. You don’t know whether you’re going to be able to get another visa to stay here for another year. I very much sympathize with them (and) care about them.
Obviously, one of the main things we can do to support them is to advocate against policies that shut us off from the rest of the world. When you take that position, you also have a responsibility to make sure that the people that you are admitting to come to the United States, to come to school at universities, are people who are not going to break the law, and are people who are going to act appropriately in accord with our Constitution and laws.
So, none of this is one way streets, right? And it’s easy for these discussions to turn into one way streets. And that is the pathology of our politics right now, is we talk at each other, instead of trying to understand what our legitimate interests are and then seeing if there’s a way to accommodate those interests. And that’s why we started last year, and we’re hopefully going to expand tremendously, the Center for Enlightened Disagreement, which is a part of the University that works with students and does research on how we can bridge these differences. I’m very, very excited about that initiative.
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