Northwestern University has agreed to a controversial settlement with pro-Palestinian protesters encamped on its campus this week, including a commitment for scholarships for Palestinians, Palestinian faculty appointments, and special housing for Muslim students. The protesters will also be allowed to continue their protests while agreeing to stay in a particular area of campus. It will also put the students and supporting faculty on bodies to review any university investments and purchases, a major demand from supporters of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Previously, protesters had reportedly prevented some students and faculty from entering buildings and engaged in property damage.
The Daily Northwestern reported the details of the deal and noted
“the University has committed to provide a conduit for students to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees. It will also re-establish an Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility this fall, which will include students, faculty and staff.
…
In addition, the University committed to some support for Palestinian students and faculty in the agreement. NU will ‘support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk,’ and will provide the cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates to attend Northwestern.
…
The University also committed to providing an ‘immediate temporary space for MENA/Muslim students’ — a longtime demand from students on campus — and will provide and renovate a house for MENA/Muslims students as soon as possible. The final house is expected to come in 2026.”
It also includes a commitment of the university to intervene with employers to guarantee that students suffer no consequences for participating in protests in their jobs and internships.
Northwestern (my alma mater) has always chosen the path of least resistance when it comes to protesters, including at times surrendering core academic functions. I have been particularly critical of the loss of freedom of speech and academic integrity on campus.
Students previously succeeded in cancelling a speech by former U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Student Zachery Novicoff embodied the rising intolerance to free speech on campus. He is quoted as saying “There’s a limitation to free speech. That ends at overtly racist old white dudes.”
I criticized former Northwestern University President Morton Schapiro for his lack of support for free speech on campus. Schapiro denounced what he called “absolute” free speech positions and endorsed speech sanctions, including treating speech as a form of assault.
During his tenure, the university often seemed a mere pedestrian to mob action taken against dissenting voices. For example, we previously discussed a Sociology 201 class by Professor Beth Redbird that examined “inequality in American society with an emphasis on race, class and gender.” To that end, Redbird invited both an undocumented person and a spokesperson for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is the type of balance that is now considered verboten on campuses.
Members of MEChA de Northwestern, Black Lives Matter NU, the Immigrant Justice Project, the Asian Pacific American Coalition, NU Queer Trans Intersex People of Color and Rainbow Alliance organized to stop other students from hearing from the ICE representative. However, they could not have succeeded without the help of Northwestern administrators (including Dean of Students Todd Adams). The protesters were screaming “F**k ICE” outside of the hall. Adams and the other administrators then said that the protesters screaming profanities would be allowed into the class if they promised not to disrupt the class. Really? They were screaming profanities and seeking to stop the class but would just sit nicely as the speaker answered questions?
Of course, that did not happen. As soon as the protesters were allowed into the classroom, they prevented the ICE representative from speaking. The ICE official eventually left and Redbird canceled the class to discuss the issue with the protesters that just prevented her students from hearing an opposing view.
The comments of the Northwestern students were predictable after being told by people like Schapiro that some offensive speech should be treated as a form of assault. SESP sophomore April Navarro rejected that faculty should be allowed to invite such speakers to their classrooms for a “good, nice conversation with ICE.” She insisted such speakers needed to be silenced because they “terrorize communities” and profit from detainee labor. Here is the face of the new generation of censors being shaped by speech-intolerant academics like Schapiro:
“We’re not interested in having those types of conversations that would be like, ‘Oh, let’s listen to their side of it’ because that’s making them passive rule-followers rather than active proponents of violence. We’re not engaging in those kinds of things; it legitimizes ICE’s violence, it makes Northwestern complicit in this. There’s an unequal power balance that happens when you deal with state apparatuses.”
Last year, the Northwestern student body banned press from meetings to protect students from the harm of media coverage. The students also have previously frozen funds of conservative groups.
The Northwestern journalism faculty is little better. Steven Thrasher, the Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern, who trashed a reporter who waited for the facts before reporting on a police shooting.
Of course, it is not just conservative speakers that the students want to ban. In 2021, they called for the removal of the President of the Board of Trustees. Despite being a major donor and supporter of the school, J. Landis Martin was denounced as a Republican who donated money to former President Donald Trump.
The university issued a statement that “This path forward requires the immediate removal of tents on Deering Meadow, cessation of non-approved use of amplified sound and a commitment that all conduct on Deering and across campus will comply with all University rules and policies. Compliant demonstration can continue at Deering Meadow through June 1.”
The university has long lacked the fortitude to stand up to students engaging in disruptive protests.
The danger of such passivity is evident on our campuses. As Henry David Thoreau warned, “all rivers and most corrupt men follow the path of least resistance.”
Here is the Northwestern agreement.
These are professional, well funded activists manipulating mindless, gullible students and whipping them into a mob frenzy. The leaders of Hamas are billionaires who are living the extravagant life, stealing the money intended to help the Palestinian folks and hoarding it for themselves and their families.
These so called protests have little or nothing to do with injustice. They are a tool to stir up hatred, align with terrorists and revile Jews.
The extremist left are in perfect alignment with Nazis of the past in several respects; they hate Jews, they embrace violence and they despise freedom of speech.
What could possibly go wrong in an institution giving them a single inch?
NO QUARTER
Give HAMAS and the protestors NO QUARTER.
“No Quarter”
No quarter, during military conflict, implies that combatants would not be taken prisoner, but killed.
Since the Hague Convention of 1899, it is considered a war crime; it is also prohibited in customary international law and by the Rome Statute. The Hague Convention of 1907 states that “it is especially forbidden […] to declare that no quarter will be given”.
– Wikipedia
I’m not aware that the Hague or the ICC were conferred dominion over the United States of America by the U.S. Constitution.
Israel’s IDF is accused of crimes by the ICC, which is apparently Palestinian as it completely ignores the heinous acts of the Palestinians that comprise HAMAS.
China remains immutably responsible and liable for $100+ trillion in global damages for its deliberate or accidental release of “China Flu, 2019.”
And I thought we didn’t negotiate with terrorists.
If only we had some way of knowing what could happen when you accede to the demands of left-wing radicals. Oh wait, the Biden administration and the entire Democratic party are the perfect case study.
Jonathan: It looks like the student protests at Northwestern accomplished some of their goals–as reported in the Daily Northwestern. And the concessions by Northwestern were not insignificant. Of course, the devil is in the details. What does “provide a conduit for students to engage with the Investment Committee of the Board of Trustees” actually mean? Will a student get a place on the Committee? Highly unlikely.
But Northwestern’s concessions are mirrored by those at Brown University. In a statement Brown said protesters have agreed to decamp from the campus. In exchange, “the University has agreed that a group of five students will be invited to meet with a group of five members of the Corporation of Brown University while the trustees and fellows are on campus for the May corporation meeting. The meeting responds to the student’s interest to be heard on the issue of ‘divestment from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territory’ which was a core demand of their protest action. It is important to note that this topic will not be on the corporate business agenda, and there will not be a vote in divestment at the May meeting”.
The last sentence of Brown’s statement sums up the problem. Student protesters will probably not be satisfied until a divestment resolution is voted on by the “Corporation”. A reason why protests will continue because universities are heavily invested in the military-industrial complex and they won’t give that up lightly. But, at least, Brown and Northwestern are now willing to listen to students–instead of calling in the police.
Under the rubric of “free speech” I would think you would endorse the rights of student protesters. No, you think it’s wrong for university administrations to bow to demands you call the “path of least resistance”. For conservatives like you administrations should take a strong stand against peaceful student protests–arrest them and expel them is the mantra we hear from the right-wing these days. It’s probably not the position you would take if the roles were reversed. If conservative students were engaging in peaceful protest you endorse such action and decry police raids.
In 1964 Mario Savio gave a speech at Berkeley in which he said, in part: “There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious–you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus–and you’ve got to make it stop”. In 2024 that time has come again with the student protests over Israel’s genocidal war against the Palestinians. As Dylan said in the title of his famous song–“The times they are a changin”!
Under the rubric of “free speech” I would think you would endorse the rights of student protesters.
Free speech ends at the infringement of others students rights to attend class and access services they are contractually guaranteed.
Are such a retard you cant see rights are being denied? What are going to do about that? Are we at the point of might makes right? Government is formed to assure non violent conflicts of society. The population of students having rights denied is vastly larger than the number of Hamas supporters.
I notice one of the demands at one college, was for Muslim housing.
Once that gets populated. Students are encouraged to protest at those building and deny muslims access until the protestors demands are met.
The stupidest voting cohort in American history is fatally influenced by the neo-Marxists within these institutions. Intersectionality was designed to do exactly what you’re seeing. A Republic if we can keep it, indeed.
“It’s time to stop talkin’ and start chalkin’!”
– Chick Hearn, Lakers Sportscaster
If you want to get rid of these “protesters” on college campuses, do what they did many years ago in the shopping malls in Austin Texas to get rid of teenage gangs: pipe-in Barry Manilow recordings at the loudest volume, into the Public Address System.
I think it was called the “Mandy Effect”. Problem solved!
You’re welcome.
mespo…LOL….Love it.
OT……vintage 1971 video( film?) of Bette M’s first night singing at the gay bath houses in NYC…Barry was her piano accompanist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-eg0b59P_g
Unbelievable. Maddening. Bizarre. Pandering. Every alumni should demand their money back!
Some helpful suggestions from “The Bee”
https://babylonbee.com/news/8-ways-to-remove-protesters-from-your-campus
Sounds as though DEI / Affirmative Action is in play . . . which should eventually be stricken down due to not being ‘equitable’.
DEI, affirmative action, quotas, forced busing, discriminatory “Non-discrimination” laws, unfair “Fair housing” laws, etc., are all unconstitutional, bias, favor, and charity, and enjoy no legal basis in the Constitution.
Universities adhere to non-discrimination policies: we will not distinguish based on race, ethnicity, country of origin, gender, sexual orientation, etc. But here we have it: separate housing for Muslim students: segregation is back! Hiring of Palestinian faculty and scholarships for Palestinian students: country of origin apparently is now decisive. Why would a US university feel obliged to support faculty and students from a foreign country?
Obviously, the real problem is that University leadership has no backbone. The students learn nothing but that demonstrations and disruptive behavior gets rewarded. And then, after finishing their “education”, they enter the real world and will find out that this is not accepted anywhere else.
The university is also hopelessly naive ism it thinks it can really influence the hiring policies of future employers of their students. Nobody in his right mind is going to hire these troublemakers, except for universities of course.
Dear Prof Turley,
Peace is the path of least resistance.
War, like politics, is an education by other means. When in the course of human events higher education invests in unjust war theory, and charge $90,000yr+ tuition to learn it, it becomes necessary for students to throw off the yoke of oppression and demand a REFUND.
[Chorus]
We starve, look at one another, short of breath
Walking proudly in our winter coats
Wearing smells from laboratories
Facing a dying nation of moving paper fantasy
Listening for the new-told lie
With supreme visions of lonely tunes …
You are absolutely correct. It was unjust for Hamas to cross the border and kill unarmed civilians, and then to hide behind the skirts of their women and the diapers of their babies to avoid retribution
Red Queen ‘em.
Northwestern University seeks to modify the line from Batman for their mission statement:
You either die a hero of free speech and the other freedoms of men, or you live long enough to see yourself become the stooge that panders to tyrants.
‘Holy ‘give them a finger, they’ll take a hand, Batman.” Future events will dictate the wisdom of embracing and nurturing these Islamists who have pretty much told us they will overthrow us from within. Kruschev told Nixon “We will bury you.” Unfortunately he did not have the money or the domestic influence to do so.
Best solution in life is to always live where you’re most welcome and appreciated. It’s time to airdrop every anti-Israel voice into Gaza…where they will be most welcomed and appreciated. Do it today.
Segregating the muslim “students” MIGHT be a good idea. 😬
Segregate them straight to Iran or Saudi Arabia.
are you fu*king kidding me ??