Wikipedia slips up, calls Provost of Northwestern University an “antisemite”

November 3, 2024 • 8:00 am

Here’s the beginning of Wikipedia’s entry for Kathleen Hagerty, the Provost of Northwestern University here in Evanston, Illinois. It’s a screenshot, and I’ve marked it:

I don’t find any discussion about “antisemite” in the “history” section of the entry, so this description must have been in the original post created in August, 2020.

Now why would this description of Hagerty be added to her entry?  One thing I recall is that Northwestern was one of the few universities to actually bargain and strike a deal with the pro-Palestinian protestors at her school.  I find this from The Minnesota Lawyer (bolding is mine):

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has filed a federal Title VI complaint against Northwestern University on behalf of the Young America’s Foundation, which has an active chapter on the university’s campus.

The complaint documents the university’s plan to offer nearly $1.9 million in scholarship funds, faculty positions, and student-organization space to Palestinian students and staff. As a recipient of federal funds, Northwestern University is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “on the grounds of race, color, or national origin,” WILL said.

Northwestern University officials have struck a deal with pro-Palestinian protesters who set up an encampment on campus. In exchange for removal of the encampment, Northwestern agreed to provide a facility for Muslim student activities and fundraise for scholarships going to Palestinian undergraduates.

According to WILL attorney Skylar Croy, that deal violates federal law.

“You just can’t go get scholarships based on ethnicity because they rioted it and demanded it,” Croy said.

According to WILL, on April 29, 2024, University officials entered into an agreement with anti-Israel demonstrators occupying a space on campus called Deering Meadow. The officials involved in the agreement are University President Michael Schill, Provost Kathleen Hagerty, and Vice President Susan Davis.

Pursuant to the terms of the agreement, the University promised to provide the “full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern for the duration of their undergraduate careers.”

The agreement provides “funding two faculty per year for two years,” with the provision that these faculty will be “Palestinian faculty.”

Additionally, Northwestern University agreed to “provide immediate temporary space for MENA/Muslim students.” MENA is an acronym for “Middle Eastern and North African” individuals.

According to WILL, as a recipient of federal funds, the University is subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination “on the grounds of race, color, or national origin.” By providing nearly $1.9 million in scholarships, two faculty positions, and “immediate temporary space” based on an individual’s status as Palestinian or MENA, the University is intentionally discriminating against non-Palestinian or non-MENA individuals on the grounds of race, color, or national origin.

WILL noted, as the United States Supreme Court recently held in a case applying Title VI, race and national origin may never operate as a “negative” or a “stereotype.” Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard Coll., 600 U.S. 181, 218 (2023). Discrimination in favor of Palestinians or MENA individuals is, in turn, discrimination against individuals not within those categories and is therefore illegal under federal law.

Did some pro-Israel editor stick “antisemite” in there somehow to reflect this bargain? If so, it’s not in the history of the entry. I don’t find the word in the entry for Northwestern President Michael Shill, and VP Susan Davis doesn’t have a Wikipedia entry.

But I expect that, now that I’ve called attention to it, this noun will be gone by the end of the day. Still, this deal is almost certainly illegal, but that doesn’t warrant such pejorative.

h/t: Peggy

16 thoughts on “Wikipedia slips up, calls Provost of Northwestern University an “antisemite””

      1. Yes, it’s unusual for that kind of edit to stay up so long on an article about a living person. I see it has gone now.

        1. Indeed it is gone now.

          I cannot attach a screen shot but as it turns out, the edit included deleting the antisemite reference and also changing female to woman.

          How does Wikipedia respond so fast?

          Peggy

          2. Some Wikipedia editors have particular articles on their watchlist – they get an automated message when someone changes any of those articles. There are also bots that automatically flag up.suspicious edits (such as the insertion of swearing, etc.).

          3. Wikipedia didn’t respond at all. This blog post was found by a member of Wikipediocracy, a Wikipedia criticism site, who posted it on the forum. That is regularly read by Wikipedia editors, one of whom then corrected the error without acknowledging where they learned of it. This is how Wikipedia works. They let people write defamatory things on their website, it gets published and exposed to Google instantly, and if none of their editor’s notices it happened, as they usually wouldn’t for a biography like this, nothing happens. Readers usually notice, but Wikipedia has become such a closed shop over the last decade, even if they are aware they are theoretically allowed to fix the problem or alert someone to its existence, they typically can’t figure out how.

    1. My friend Peggy found it when reading the NYT article about Harvard’s response to protests that appeared today. It mentions Hagerty and so she looked Hagerty up on Wikipedia.

  3. OMG. Good to see that the entry is fixed, but surely some damage has already been done.

  4. My assumption is that the reason that Provost Hagerty is singled out is because of the recent House of Representatives report on antisemitism (https://edworkforce.house.gov/uploadedfiles/10.30.24_committee_on_education_and_the_workforce_republican_staff_report_-_antisemitism_on_college_campuses_exposed.pdf).

    That report quotes (pp. 9-14) internal emails from Northwestern, from which it emerges that Hagerty was working behind the scenes to advise the protesting students on how to pressurize the trustees on divestment from Israel, and specifically that she personally supported a plan for Northwestern to boycott the Israeli hummus brand Sabra.

    That said, obviously she should not be described as an antisemite on her Wikipedia page – even if people think that her behind-the-scenes sympathies for the protestors’ aims might be interpreted in that light, it’s much too blunt and unnuanced a word to be put up front in that way. But presumably this is why the rogue editor did it.

  5. Scholarships for Pals, eh? Well that’s nice, not at all a moral hazard. KIDS: do or simp some terrorism, stan for PFLP or Hezb, or do a murder-rape extravaganza on any nearby Jewish settlement and you’ll get a free ride at our school?
    Who’d turn that down?
    Genius.

    I could comment more, but the boss will probably, sensibly, shut my Zionist ass up.
    🙂

    D.A.
    NYC

  7. Comment by Greg Mayer

    The addition of “antisemite” was made on Friday, and it was removed on Sunday (i.e. the word was up for two days). That’s a really fast correction for so minor a figure as Kathleen Hagerty. Her Wikipedia article has been edited fewer than 50 times– not very many Wikipedia editors are paying attention to her. It may well be, as stated by a commenter above, that Jerry’s post led to the entry being corrected. Otherwise, it might have languished uncorrected for much longer.

    As regular readers of WEIT know, I believe Wikipedia has many problems, but this seems to be an instance where Wikipedia’s central premise of crowd-sourcing writing and editing seems to have worked as intended.

    GCM

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