This headline below speaks for itself. Northwestern University here in the Chicago area has shamed itself by negotiating with the People of the Encampment, winning scholarships for five Palestinian students and jobs for two Palestinian professors. This is about as big a violation of institutional neutrality that I can imagine.
From the National Review; click to read:
After five days of anti-Israel demonstrators occupying Deering Meadow on Northwestern University’s campus, Northwestern president Michael Schill and the rest of the university’s leadership decided to accede to several of the protesters’ demands.
While not committing to divesting its endowment from companies that do business in Israel and ending partnerships with Israeli institutions, the university released a list of concessions in a celebratory statement Monday afternoon in exchange for the removal of the encampment on the lawn.
Most notable among those concessions is a promise to offer full-ride scholarships to Palestinian students and guaranteed faculty jobs for Palestinian academics.
“The University will support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk (funding two faculty per year for two years; and providing full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers),” the document reads. “The University commits to fundraise to sustain this program beyond this current commitment.”
In other words, the University will have five permanent scholarships for students and two visiting Palestinian faculty in perpetuity, given that they can find a donor, which shouldn’t be hard if Qatar is around.
. . . Other concessions in the deal Schill and the rest of Northwestern’s leadership struck with the encampment occupants — one of whom assaulted a student journalist attempting to take video — include student oversight of the university’s partnerships with suppliers and the investment of its endowment.
“The University will include students in a process dedicated to implementing broad input on University dining services, including residential and retail vendors on campus,” Northwestern’s leadership wrote, as well as forming a committee on “investment responsibility” with “representation from students, faculty, and staff.”
The deal Northwestern struck with the protesters — who hung a sign showing a crossed-out Star of David on the lawn’s fence — has drawn condemnations from a variety of groups and individuals.
The Midwest division of the Anti-Defamation League — itself often criticized for a disproportionate focus on antisemitism on the Right rather than on the Islamist and social-justice-oriented Left — issued a statement on the agreement, which it called “reprehensible” and “dangerous”:
“The agreement between Northwestern University leadership and encampment organizers is reprehensible, dangerous, and a case study in failed leadership,” the group said in a statement. “For days, protesters violated campus codes of conduct and policies, intentionally fanned the flames of hate and antisemitism, and wreaked havoc on campus life. Instead of holding the perpetrators accountable, the university rewarded them. It would be unbelievable if it wasn’t true.”
The Anti-Defamation League is 100% right: this is rewarding illegal protests, which will only hearten more illegal protests. I am astounded and baffled, and Northwestern University is reprehensible. Any Jewish donors should stop giving them money, and no Jewish student should apply there.
Or perhaps the Jewish students should conduct illegal protests to get scholarship and faculty jobs for Jews! Naaah. . . . it’s not in us.
This is insanity.
And this is probably the exact kind of parenting these kids get, which is probably part of the reason they think they can do things like this.
Can you imagine how much a university without Jewish students, faculty, and patrons would suffer?
Shame.
This is shocking and disgusting. My opinion of Northwestern is in the pits.
As one of the other campus signs posted by the Jewish students said, “when they show you who they are, believe them”. NWU just showed who they are.
Okay, I admit it. I’m left handed and my brain reverses a lot of things. So from left field: the majority of Ivy League campuses in the news for getting out of hand have been led by women presidents. The fact that male presidents are finally getting recognition for their equally weak responses to unrest makes me happy. I’ve been a fan of gender parity for many decades. 🥳
This isn’t just an “equally weak response”. It’s not even capitulation. It’s joining forces. I’m stunned.
This also isn’t gender parity. By comparison, the women look good. All university presidents should be appalled by this madness.
How did such a uniformly feeble-minded and weak-kneed cadre of administrators ever get appointed to positions of power and responsibility in universities? They never seem to miss a chance to fail.
W.t.f. I also don’t see how this largess has any connection to the protests. Effectively financial and career opportunity awards because of … ? In exchange for …???
It’s extortion, Mark. The extortee isn’t supposed to come out even. Protesters in Canada blockaded railways until the poultry farms downstream started to run out of winter propane from Alberta. We sounded them out as to what they wanted. All of Canada, said the hot heads. We gave them money, power and land, and both the Crown and the railway promised no legal repercussions. They got off the tracks, although someone kept setting railway ties on fire for a few days after. The chicks didn’t freeze. Everyone was happy that nobody got hurt. Could have been worse. Maybe it will be next time.
Of course, you only do this if you are sincerely afraid of protesters who have you over a barrel. What was Northwestern afraid of? I mean, five days! Canada held out for several weeks before we capitulated.
It’s a grift.
Demand stuff that wouldn’t help Palestinians and/or that universities have no power to grant. Settle for what you really want.
These aren’t true arm’s-length negotiations. The universities are on the protesters’ side.
This is beyond belief; so it’s not just the Right in Congress that lacks a spine re standing up to DJT, but the Academic Left has – sadly – its share of invertebrates…
Can you imagine the outrage if at a DJT rally there was some group “who hung a sign showing a crossed-out Star of David on the lawn’s fence”? It would be on every news station for days! We’d see nonstop stories talking about the hate and harm, interviews with R’s asking them to disavow it, and warnings against voting the orange man into office. But when it’s done by this group, it’s rewarded!
A complete outrage. I hope that the university’s benefactors cut bait and stop giving. I don’t know if this is the case with any current donors, but anyone donating a significant amount to Northwestern—or any university for that matter—ought to have a clawback agreement in their contract. This is a moral outrage can never be forgiven.
This is quite equivalent to rewarding Hamas with a state for its vile attack on Israel.
I got into a little tete a tete with a pro-hamas person on instagram the other day. When I said that her jargon was antisemitic, she blew it off and replied “😂😂😂 the whole world is antisemitic at this point.” I pressed further. “You poor thing how do u exist in such a scary world for Jewish people 🙁 ugh all that worrying about your safety must be so hard! have u been abke to eat and sleep and work okay? sending love and light to you ❤️”
We are in a time when it is socially acceptable to be a bigot, so long as your bigotry is of an approved group. There’s no shame or introspection. The groupthink absolves them of that. It’s like living next door to fundamentalists and their megachurches, and this is their version of witchcraft.
Did you ever feel physically unsafe near a megachurch? Seriously asking. They aren’t really a thing here.
I’m not a witch.
Ah. Well then.
As you were.
Hoist the flag of Capitulation!
Neutrality be buggard!
Amazing, isn’t it? Students indoctrinated by the far-left academics into extreme Israel hatred demand more of the same type of “academics” and get rewarded by pusillanimous administrators. One can already expect that next year there will be more of the same at Northwestern, no doubt with the participation of “Palestinian voices” they hired.
Also, the same administrators who would never concede to demands by conservative students to hire right-wingers eagerly concede to have anti-Zionist (read anti-Jewish) voices “represented” in their big tent in the name of academic neutrality.
I kinda understood when schools gave some scholarships out during the BLM thing, as you could argue that Black students were underrepresented. I didn’t agree, but there seemed to be some logic there.
I do not understand the logic behind this at all. Hate Jews, get free college? Obviously the administration agrees with the messaging so much that they are willing to use university resources to provide rich rewards for this behavior. Are we in 1930’s Germany?
At least this will give a clear path forward for the other universities dealing with these encampments.
Expect it to spread. Unless it dies out over summer break.
I got into a little tete a tete with a pro-hamas person on instagram the other day. When I said that her jargon was antisemitic, she blew it off and replied “😂😂😂 the whole world is antisemitic at this point.” I pressed further. “You poor thing how do u exist in such a scary world for Jewish people 🙁 ugh all that worrying about your safety must be so hard! have u been abke to eat and sleep and work okay? sending love and light to you ❤️” We are in a time when it is socially acceptable to be a bigot, so long as your bigotry is of an approved group. There’s no shame or introspection. The groupthink absolves them of that. It’s like living next door to fundamentalists and their megachurches, and this is their version of witchcraft.
Very disturbing.
Well, that’s inviting trouble. Professorships and scholarships for MAGA-related studies if that bunch turn up with a bunch of tents and with secured funding from the Donald?
I learned the word “anomie” in a required Introductory Sociology course at the start of my college life in 1967. And now at the end of my life, almost 60 years later I am living immersed in it. I am as stunned as everyone else and cannot even begin to explain to Malgorzata how this country became this way.
Boycott this university!