Instead of celebrating Thanksgiving by counting among his blessings Northwestern’s laudable commitment to “whatsoever things are true,” Interim University President Henry Bienen signed an ignominious settlement with Trump’s imperial administration.

Drenched in hypocrisy, self-delusion, bribery and cowardice, the agreement represents a shameful capitulation to Trump’s year-long campaign to crush the independence of American colleges and universities. Bienen agreed to willingly fund — to the tune of $75 million — and voluntarily advance Trump’s authoritarian project.

In doing so, Bienen became a co-conspirator in transforming a prestigious 174-year-old private university — from which I graduated in 1966 — into a compliant enforcer of Trump’s repressive measures.

The agreement makes a mockery of academic freedom, threatens freedom of speech and assembly, contorts independent scientific research and medical teaching, impinges on internal business planning and invites various agencies of the federal government to interfere with a range of University decision-making, which no self-respecting university should ever tolerate of its own free will.

Bienen did all this without the consent of his own faculty. Worse yet, he did it knowing that on Oct. 15, the NU Faculty Assembly approved a resolution by an overwhelming vote of 595 in favor, four against and eight abstentions, rejecting Trump’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” that offered universities a preferential funding treatment plan in return for specific policy changes, including bans on diversity, equity and inclusion.

“This Faculty Assembly opposes any capitulation on the part of Northwestern University to these or similar demands that undermine constitutional rights, democratic principles, faculty governance, institutional autonomy, and academic freedom,” the resolution read, according to The Daily.

In a self-congratulatory video that accompanied his surrender, Bienen bragged that “Northwestern runs Northwestern.” But sadly, a review of the agreement reveals that Bienen’s boast is demonstrably false. To begin with, under the deceptive heading, “Student Conduct and Addressing Antisemitism,” Bienen agreed to “terminate the ‘Deering Meadow Agreement’ of April 29, 2024, and reverse all the policies that had been implemented or are being implemented in adherence to it.”

The Deering Meadow Agreement had been signed by former NU President Michael Schill, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and Vice President for Student Affairs Susan Davis, as well as representatives of the Northwestern Divestment Coalition, which helped organize the pro-Palestinian campus protests.

In exchange for the students’ agreement to end the encampment, the Deering Meadow Agreement provided the cost for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend NU; promised the rennovation of a house for Middle Eastern and North African students and Muslim students; declared that acts not only of “antisemitism,” but also “anti-Muslim/Arab racism, and hate” will not be tolerated; engaged “students in a process dedicated to ensuring additional support” for not only Jewish but Muslim students as well within the offices of Student Affairs and Religious and Spiritual Life; and, in response to the students’ demand that NU divest from “institutions and companies that support and maintain apartheid, occupation and the oppression of the Palestinian people,” provide a conduit for students to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees and to re-establish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility, which would include students, faculty and staff.

All of these important, carefully negotiated promises have now been totally repudiated. While the new settlement agreement is filled with commitments to Jewish students, it is silent on the grievances of Palestinian, Muslim and Arab students and their allies (many of whom are themselves Jewish) alongside the deprivations of their rights, which these students have suffered on the NU campus.

These are not the only ways in which Bienen has abdicated NU’s control over its own affairs. Under the settlement, NU and the Feinberg School of Medicine have promised not to perform hormonal intervention and gender-affirming surgeries on any individual under the age of 18.

Furthermore, to conform to Trump’s Jan. 21, 2025 Executive Order banning DEI for federal agencies and recipients of federal grants, NU has agreed to remove its requirement for “diversity statements” and not to consider race in the hiring, promotion, tenure and other employment practices, despite the fact that prior to Trump’s EO, existing law did not prohibit such practices; do a “comprehensive review” of its admission policies for international students, including asking international students questions “designed to elicit their reasons for wishing to study at Northwestern and in the United States;” scrutinize its business model to determine whether it is necessary to decrease “financial reliance on foreign student admissions or partnerships with foreign entities” and for three years, it will not revise or modify its harassment, discrimination, demonstration, protest and display policies, as outlined in the Student Code of Conduct and Student Handbook, without the consent of the Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice. So much for “Northwestern runs Northwestern.”

Overshadowing all of these serious concessions, NU has agreed not only to regularly report its “compliance” to the federal government, but also establish procedures for members of the community to report allegations of noncompliance with the agreement. In other words, Bienen has placed NU under the constant scrutiny of the federal government on a scale that no other American college and university is subjected to, except for other institutions that have already capitulated to Trump.

What is so tragic about Bienen’s supplication is that none of it was necessary. Bienen claims that suing the federal government would cost too much money and would have taken years.  First of all, if he can pay Trump $75 million in ransom, he would have spent far less in legal fees to challenge Trump in court. And as Harvard University has successfully shown, it would have taken only months, not years.

On Sept. 7, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in Boston ruled that the Trump administration violated the U.S. Constitution and federal law when it froze approximately $2.2 billion in federal grants to punish Harvard for its handling of antisemitism on campus. She vacated and set aside the freeze on all research grants that Trump had imposed. “We must fight against antisemitism,” Burroughs explained in her comprehensive 84-page decision. “But we equally need to protect our rights, including our right to free speech, and neither goal should nor needs to be sacrificed on the altar of the other.”

“In fact, a review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that [the Trump administration] used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities, and did so in a way that runs afoul of the [Administrative Procedures Act], the First Amendment and Title VI,” Burroughs wrote.

She called the Trump administration’s actions part of a “government-initiated onslaught” against the school that was “much more about promoting a governmental orthodoxy in violation of the First Amendment than about anything else, including fighting antisemitism.” It is the job of the courts, she wrote, “to safeguard academic freedom and freedom of speech as required by the Constitution, and to ensure that important research is not improperly subjected to arbitrary and procedurally infirm grant terminations, even if doing so risks the wrath of a government committed to its agenda no matter the cost.”

Bienen could have used the example of Harvard’s lawsuit and the direct legal precedent it won to resist Trump’s intimidation. But, he lacked the courage to do so. He failed to heed the resolution of his own faculty. He ignored the warning from the American Political Science Association last June that accused Trump of dangerously curtailing academic freedom.

The APSA cited Trump both for using “specious claims of illegality to attempt to freeze, cancel or discontinue federal research grants and other programs,” and for jeopardizing “the independence of institutions of higher education by making sweeping cancellations of federal contracts and grants unless colleges and universities concede to an expanding list of arbitrary demands.” This “multi-level interference is an unacceptable infringement of academic freedom and may cause irreparable damage to the scientific and educational enterprise of the United States.”

NU has now exposed itself to lawsuits for breach of contract and the violation of the legal and constitutional rights of its students and faculty. And, more broadly, under the craven leadership of Henry Bienen, it has exposed itself to the censure of everyone who cherishes the independence of our colleges and universities and who understands that a democracy cannot stand when those entrusted with the responsibility to defend it instead collude in its collapse.

Stephen Rohde is an alumnus of the College of Arts and Sciences, class of 1966. He is also a graduate of Columbia Law School, the author of the book “American Words of Freedom: The Words That Define Our Nation and Freedom of Assembly,” co-author of “Foundations of Freedom,” published by the Constitutional Rights Foundation, and host of the podcast “Speaking Freely: Exploring the First Amendment with Stephen Rohde.” He can be contacted at [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.