When Spanish and Portuguese Prof. Jorge Coronado heard Northwestern had struck a deal with the Trump administration to unfreeze federal funding to the University, he said he was disappointed but not surprised.
“They’ve done what they were always going to do, despite a lot of faculty mobilization against such a deal,” said Coronado.
On Nov. 28, Northwestern reached an agreement with the federal government. As a as part of the deal, the University must pay the federal government $75 million and adhere to a signed contract of stipulations.
Many faculty expressed anxiety about the stipulations of the deal, arguing that while they are relieved the deal restored funding, they have concerns over what the stipulations mean for the future of the University.
At the Faculty Assembly meeting on Oct. 15, interim President Henry Bienen told faculty that he would not make a deal that crossed certain “red lines,” specifically saying he was against a deal that “hinders the autonomy of the University.”
Coronado said the agreement made a month later crossed every red line.
“His red lines were ‘we’ll hire who we want to hire, we’ll teach what we want to teach.’ We can no longer teach what we want to teach under threat of federal investigation,” Coronado said. “He’s crossed every red line while saying that he would not cross every red line. It’s shameful.”
By signing the deal, the federal government agreed to cease federal investigations into the University and restore frozen research funding to NU, where at least $790 million has been frozen for several months.
McCormick Prof. Justin Notestein, who is the chair of chemical and biological engineering and runs a research laboratory, said he was relieved when he heard the deal had been made.
“It is good to be able to turn the corner. That is most emphatically not an endorsement of (the deal), but it is glad for one chapter to be over,” said Notestein. “I am mostly very happy that funding has been returned to the hundreds of individual researchers that wrote these grants, that fought really hard for this funding.”
Notestein emphasized that NU is not setting a new precedent of making a deal with the government, as many other Universities affected by frozen funding have already accepted government agreements to restore their funding. He said he believes the funding freeze was handled by the University as best as it could be.
When the deal was announced, McCormick Prof. Izzy Grosof said one of the first things they did was take a look at the agreement’s “transphobic elements.”
She called out discrepancies between the University-created frequently asked questions on the Office of the President website about the deal and the language of the deal itself.
The deal reads “Northwestern and its Feinberg School of Medicine shall not perform hormonal interventions and transgender surgeries … on any individual under the age of 18 years old.”
Grosof specifically highlighted the inclusion of hormonal interventions.
“In the FAQ that you might find on Northwestern’s official website, they’re only talking about surgeries, which they’re saying Northwestern has never provided, but they’re not mentioning that the agreement is much more restrictive,” Grosof said.
They explained that the broad language of “hormonal interventions” would potentially include hormone replacement therapy and puberty blockers, which they said are frequently prescribed to trans youth and emphasized that gender-affirming hormone therapy for trans adolescents is a safe and well-established practice.
As a Jewish faculty member, Grosof said she disagreed with the administration’s interpretation of what actions they consider antisemitic and condemned the termination of the Deering Meadow Agreement.
Feinberg Prof. Melissa Simon said she was shocked that the termination of transgender care for trans youth was explicitly written in the deal.
“It’s not really clear how that point in the deal arose. It seems like NU was just trying to acquiesce to whatever the Trump administration desired to get from us as a university,” Simon said. “So I was shocked by the fact that that could even be an item listed and signed off on by our interim president.”
Simon pointed to research done by NU researchers who found that gender-affirming care is important to reducing mental health disorders for youth. She said it “makes no sense” for the University to have entered a deal that is contradictory to what NU faculty have found in their research.
The week after the deal was announced, McCormick Prof. Michael Peshkin, who is involved in University under Threat, a concerned faculty group, sent an email condemning the deal to all NU faculty. The email was titled “The Deal: Bienen says NU runs NU. We say, not so fast.”
Peshkin said he worries NU’s fear of penalties from the federal government will lead to the Trump administration’s goal of upholding white supremacy by reserving high-status, high-benefit resources like an NU education.
“They are trying to move Northwestern to a whiter student body,” Peshkin said. “The Trump administration evidently plans to look at who’s admitted by race and their test scores, maybe their GPA or class rank, and go ‘looks like we have evidence here of race preference admissions.’”
After the deal was announced, NU AAUP President and political science Prof. Jaqueline Stevens sent an email to the NU administration with questions about the details of the deal, specifically regarding which grants are included under Appendices A and B in the contract of the deal.
The deal stipulates that “the United States shall provide to Northwestern the financial equivalent of the costs associated with the Terminated Grants and Contracts listed in Appendix A.”
Later in the contract, it states that the U.S will “enable Northwestern to draw down all payments consistent with the approved budgets for each grant, including but not limited to overdue payments on Non-Terminated Grants and Contracts (including but not limited to those listed in Appendix B).”
In a response email Stevens shared with The Daily, Vice President of Global Marketing and Communications Jon Yates wrote, “The Appendices you reference are a list of impacted grants. They were not included with the original agreement, but as soon as the government concludes their review of the grants and posts them, we will make them available on our website as well.”
Stevens expressed derision at this unknown feature of the deal.
“If they’re saying we don’t know yet for sure what’s in the list of impacted grants, how do they know how to value what they’re going to be obtaining in exchange for the commitments that they’re making?” Stevens said. “Northwestern is promising a lot and doesn’t have the specifics of what they’re going to obtain in return. I would flag that as a major concern.”
Other professors raised similar concerns, noting that the deal’s financial relief does little to ease fears about the political conditions attached to it.
“The deal is a political document that reflects the platform of a xenophobic nationalist federal government,” Coronado said. “The University has agreed to it, and therefore has agreed to support that platform. It’s frankly an abomination. It’s incomprehensible that any university would do this.”
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