Northwestern faculty members sent a letter to NU’s Board of Trustees on Wednesday morning, with 567 faculty signatories asking for faculty representation in the search for a new University president.

The letter calls for the University to appoint at least two faculty members chosen by the Faculty Senate and two staff members chosen by the NU Staff Advisory Council to the presidential search committee. Additionally, the letter requests that the University consult the entire faculty and staff about what qualities they seek in a president through a survey and in-person meetings.

“The Board of Trustees has completely ignored us since Trump came into the White House, and that has to change,” said English Prof. Daisy Hernández, who helped with the letter. “This is such a major turning point for Northwestern University, and I think that faculty and staff need to be a part of the conversation and choosing the next president.” 

The beginning of the letter recognizes many threats to higher education, including academic freedom and free speech, noting that the University is in a “critical moment” following the Trump administration’s reduced support for research, NU’s staff layoff, the erasure of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and the diminishment of NU’s health care and tuition benefits.

The letter was drafted by Medill Prof. Jon Marshall in collaboration with seven other original signatories — art and art history Prof. Rebecca Zorach, McCormick Prof. Michael Peshkin, Asian American studies and Black studies Prof. Nitasha Sharma, Black Studies and history Prof. Martha Biondi, Pritzker Prof. Annie Buth, history Prof. Helen Tilley and Feinberg Prof. Namratha Kandula.

The final point of the letter requests that the University honor the Faculty Assembly resolution passed April 21, which asks the Board of Trustees to allow eight faculty visitors to attend Board meetings and review all records the trustees can as of fall 2025.

For Zorach, it is essential that faculty and staff are represented because choosing the new president is a “crucial decision” that the University is making in an “intense moment of crisis.” 

“We just really wanted to insist on representation in the process and a voice in the process and (bring) attention to what faculty and staff priorities might be for a new president,” Zorach said. “We don’t have a lot of communication with the Board. I feel like there’s a need to build trust with the Board.”

During the last presidential search in 2022, faculty, staff and students were all represented on the committee. However, Zorach said some faculty members are not confident the Board will follow past practices. 

In the last presidential search, committee members were nominated by members of the NU community and selected by the Chair of the Board. Zorach said she wants the Board to go one step further and accept committee members from a Faculty Senate nomination. 

“The Senate is the representative body of the faculty, and so to give the Senate that voice in selecting members of the Senate who would be on the search committee seemed appropriate as a way of bolstering the kind of representative character of the of the search process,” Zorach said.

Marshall described the Board as “a very opaque group” that has “the ultimate power of the University.” Yet, he noted that much of the NU community knows very little about why they make the decisions they do. 

Faculty, staff, students and alumni deserve to have the opportunity to share their ideas with the Board, and know more about the reasoning behind its decisions, Marshall said. 

“I think the new president will be more likely to have a successful tenure if they have the support of faculty and staff from the beginning,” Marshall said. “One way to do that is to more actively involve faculty and staff in a meaningful way in the search process.”

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