What is Northwestern’s mandatory bias training? What were the most notable aspects of Henry Bienen’s first presidency? How is Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine fighting for ALS research through the Chicago River Swim? The Daily answers these questions and recaps other top stories from the last week.
TERESA AYALA LEON: On today’s episode:
A controversial bias training mandated for all Northwestern University students.
The first Chicago River Swim in nearly 100 years.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: And a look into Interim President Henry Bienen’s first presidency.
TERESA AYALA LEON: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Teresa Ayala Leon.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: And I’m Edward Simon Cruz. This is The Weekly, a breakdown of the top headlines from the past week.
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TERESA AYALA LEON: Our first guest today is Campus Editor Nineth Kanieski Koso. Nineth has been covering a controversial bias training mandated for all students at Northwestern since March. Nineth, thank you so much for joining us today.
NINETH KANIESKI KOSO: Thank you.
TERESA AYALA LEON: Could you maybe please talk a bit more about the content of the email sent by the University and the content of the bias training as well?
NINETH KANIESKI KOSO: So, the bias training was first sent to all students in an email on February 20. It is called “Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Bias.” It features videos discussing University policies, changes to the Student Code of Conduct, anti-semitism and also another video discussing biases against Muslim, Arab and Palestinian communities.
As soon as the training was released, it was met by both approval and backlash from different students. While some said it was a good representation of what to know about, in particular, anti-semitism and others saying that it was clearly biased towards one direction. The anti-semitism module in particular brought scrutiny from students because it included comparisons between David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan and pro-Palestinian protesters, stating all of those quotes were anti-semitic, which members of Northwestern chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace said that was deeply offensive to them.
The module also included a hand drawn map that loosely depicted Israel’s borders. A Palestinian student who spoke to The Daily about the map in March said that the map felt like Palestine was drawn as part of Israel.
TERESA AYALA LEON: Over the summer, the University also sent emails to students who had not completed the training. Could you talk more about the potential consequences these students could face?
NINETH KANIESKI KOSO: So in those emails, the University said if you do not complete the bias training, then they will put a registration hold on your account. So, for every student who has not completed the bias training, they currently have a registration hold, which means they cannot add or change any classes for Fall Quarter and cannot register for classes for Winter Quarter.
And so, while some students still are boycotting the training and have yet to complete it, for these students, if they still have not completed it by the fifth week of classes, then the University will update their status to be unregistered. Meaning that for the future, for Fall Quarter, the deadline is October 16th, and for winter, it’s February 2nd, the University removes student status, so then students will no longer have access to financial aid on campus, housing or student visas if they are international.
TERESA AYALA LEON: Nineth Kanieski Koso, thank you so much for your time here.
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EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Our next guest today is Print Managing Editor Audrey Pachuta. She recapped the first presidency of Henry Bienen, who is now serving as Northwestern’s interim president following the resignation of Michael Schill. And he was appointed as president in 1994 and served in the role from 1995 to 2009.
So one of the big things you noticed about his first presidency was that he made some changes from his predecessor, Arnold Weber. What did those changes look like?
AUDREY PACHUTA: That’s something that stuck out to me right away as I was looking through some of The Daily’s archival coverage. President Bienen comes in, and in initial interviews that The Daily did with him, he talks about how he thought very favorably of Arnold Weber’s presidency, and he wanted to carry his policies and continue to fill the position in a similar way to his predecessor. And very quickly, he realized that some students disagreed with that, even though Weber was largely looked at in a favorable light.
So shortly after Bienen says this, students start to speak out against it. The Daily releases an editorial calling for Bienen to replace, not replicate, Arnold Weber. From there, you see him kind of step back from this initial signing on to all of Weber’s policies. He kind of walks that back a little bit. He comes onto campus. He starts getting student feedback.
He sits down with representatives from the Associated Student Government. He starts having town halls. He routinely held breakfast in Norris Student Center, inviting any students who wanted to RSVP and come to chat with him. And you kind of see him take some of these policies that were popular under Weber and make them his own.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: One particularly notable instance of trying to listen to students dissatisfied with him, a group of student activists launched a hunger strike, demanding the creation of an Asian American Studies program and department. What was that like?
AUDREY PACHUTA: He starts serving as president on January 1, 1995 and by April of that year, student activists start this hunger strike. It was based on the fact that the Asian American Advisory Board had collected over 1,200 signatures calling for Bienen to hire a full-time, tenured director for the proposed department by May 7, 1996 and then they wanted two other professors for that department by the fall.
And so Bienen didn’t sign on to this idea. And in protest of that, students begin a hunger strike that takes place at The Rock. And while there were less than 20 students who were actually starving themselves, many others gathered in collaboration with those students. So there were a couple instances where hundreds of students would gather with signs and chants outside of administrative buildings.
And there was one day they stood outside, and Bienen never came outside to address them. And he says that he wants to talk with students: He doesn’t want to respond to chants. So this is something that Bienen, initially, is very against. He’s respectful of the student’s right to protest, of course, but as far as the means that they are protesting, he’s worried about their health.
Before the 10th day of this protest, it had gone national. So you have students at Stanford, at Princeton, at Columbia, who are replicating this same protest. It’s not even their own. They’re holding signs saying they are hunger striking in solidarity with students at Northwestern. So it’s very much spurred by the protest that was taking place on this campus. And even though Bienen was against it at first, by the beginning of May, he agrees to sit down with the student organizers of this protest and hear what they had to say, and he has student Q &A sessions that are open to all students to address them on this topic.
So, even though it took until 1999 to actually establish the Asian American Studies department, you see, very quickly, while this protest is going on, Bienen willing to hear what the students have to say. By that next year, there were 10 Asian American Studies courses. There were originally planned to be four. So he kind of practices what he preaches in this matter.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: You mentioned also Bienen’s efforts to globalize Northwestern and did that in a pretty significant way toward the end of his presidency when it opened a campus in Qatar. What was Bienen’s role in the opening of that big new campus?
AUDREY PACHUTA: So pretty late in his presidency, he travels to Qatar to meet with some colleagues who had already had campuses there. There were five schools at the time that already had campuses there. And he frames this trip, he’s very open about it, as just meeting with some colleagues. He goes there to test the waters of what it would be like for Northwestern to establish a campus in Doha, and he just thinks it is a really important chance for some cross cultural collaboration.
And so over the final years of his presidency, and he actually extended his presidency longer than he had hoped to in order to see this project through, to ensure that Northwestern would open a campus in Qatar that would be for journalism and communications. Though it’s a little controversial these days, that campus does still exist and operate, so that’s part of his legacy that is still a big part of the conversation as he takes office again.
EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: Audrey, thank you very much.
AUDREY PACHUTA: Thank you.
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TERESA AYALA LEON: Next, I spoke to reporter Jack Greenspan about the Chicago River Swim for ALS research at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Jack, thank you for being here.
JACK GREENSPAN: Yeah, it’s great to be here.
TERESA AYALA LEON: So could you give a breakdown of the event and what it achieved?
JACK GREENSPAN: Yeah, so the Chicago River Swim was the first organized swimming event in the Chicago River in almost 100 years. So, 98 years, it’s been such a long time because the river hasn’t been clean enough for it to be safe for people to swim. But they’ve been doing a lot of testing and research over the years, and this was the first time where the river had no signs of being unsafe to swim. And it was a huge charity event, and all the proceeds went to support ALS research at the Feinberg School of Medicine, and they were able to raise $100,000 from the event, and it all went to the Ozdinler Lab in the downtown Chicago campus.
TERESA AYALA LEON: How did this event come together, and what was the planning process behind it?
JACK GREENSPAN: So I got to talk to Doug McConnell, who organized the event, and he has a foundation called A Long Swim, which is also the same acronym as ALS. And so he organizes swimming events like swimming charity events pretty regularly to help raise money for ALS research. But this was the biggest and most complicated event he’s put together. It was actually supposed to happen in 2024, and they had to move it to Lake Michigan at the last minute because they did more testing, and the city took away their permit to use the Chicago River. They’ve been trying to do this for multiple years, and this is the first year it actually became a reality. So it definitely took a lot of planning. He told me there was 300 staff members just helping with the event. There were people helping with the media operations. There were a ton of professional lifeguards that were there to keep everyone safe. It was definitely like an event that required many, many hands to get it to happen.
TERESA AYALA LEON: And what reactions and emotions did swimmers and attendees express?
JACK GREENSPAN: Everyone was just so happy to be there. The swimmers, a lot of them had kind of been training for this, or maybe they were swimmers in high school, or did triathlons or Ironman competitions. So these were all people with a lot of experience in open water swimming, at least most of them. And so what I got from it, after talking to one of the swimmers, was he told me it’s just so interesting to be swimming while looking at the buildings, because you don’t get to swim in a river in the middle of one of the biggest cities in the country very often.
Everyone was just having such a good time. There was a DJ playing music while people were swimming. The winner of the race was actually a former professional swimmer, and so she has kind of been doing this type of thing her whole life, and she seemed really happy to be supporting the ALS research as well.
TERESA AYALA LEON: Jack Greenspan, thank you so much for joining me.
JACK GREENSPAN: Thank you.
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TERESA AYALA LEON: Here are the other top headlines from the week:
Northwestern research to be funded through 2025 amid federal freeze, Bienen promises
Flock contract termination talks persist after cameras reinstalled, city orders cease-and-desist
Rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie to headline A&O Blowout
Northwestern holds off late UCLA push for 17-14 win
Expectations vs. reality: Class of 2029 early decision admits reflect on first weeks at Northwestern
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EDWARD SIMON CRUZ: From The Daily Northwestern, I’m Edward Simon Cruz.
TERESA AYALA LEON: And I’m Teresa Ayala Leon.
Thank you for listening to another episode of The Weekly. This episode was reported by Teresa Ayala Leon, Edward Simon Cruz, Audrey Pachuta, Nineth Kanieski Koso and Jack Greenspan and produced by Teresa Ayala Leon and Finian Hazen.
The Audio Editor is Finian Hazen. The Multimedia Managing Editors are Sydney Gaw, Christina Lin and Sarah Serota. The Editor in Chief is Emily Lichty.
Our theme music is “Night Owl” by Broke For Free, used under a Creative Commons Attribution License and provided by the Free Music Archive.
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