‘The Committee has not seen your commitments to discipline, enforcement, and security come to satisfactory fruition,’ Chairman Tim Walberg wrote
The House Committee on Education and the Workforce is turning up the heat on Northwestern University president Michael Schill, demanding he sit down for a transcribed interview to discuss what the school has—or hasn’t—done to address campus anti-Semitism.
In an April 28 letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, committee chairman Rep. Tim Walberg accused Schill of failing to fulfill promises he made during a congressional hearing last year to combat anti-Semitism with tougher discipline, enhanced security, and a revised student code of conduct. The Michigan Republican flagged incidents discussed at the time as well as more recent examples of anti-Semitism at Northwestern.
“The Committee seeks to understand both this disturbing climate of antisemitism at Northwestern as well as the University’s apparent failure to protect Jewish students, and therefore seeks to conduct a transcribed interview with you,” Walberg wrote. “Since your testimony at the Committee’s May 23, 2024 hearing, despite Northwestern’s claims to the contrary, the Committee has not seen your commitments to discipline, enforcement, and security come to satisfactory fruition.”
Walberg pointed to a number of incidents discussed during the hearing, such as one Jewish student getting spat on while wearing a yarmulke and another being told, “Go back to Germany and get gassed.” Schill admitted at the time that no students had been expelled or suspended for anti-Semitic conduct since Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack. Walberg said his committee hasn’t seen evidence that Northwestern has strengthened its disciplinary policies.
“It remains unclear whether any students or faculty have been meaningfully disciplined,” he wrote.
Testimony from Schill during an interview “regarding antisemitism at Northwestern, and the steps that the university has and has not taken to address antisemitism, will assist the Committee in determining both whether there is a need for legislative reforms to combat antisemitic discrimination and harassment and what shape such potential reforms should take,” Walberg wrote.
The letter comes at a precarious time for Northwestern. Earlier this month, the Trump administration froze $790 million in federal funding to the university amid a civil rights investigation into alleged anti-Semitism and racial discrimination on campus. Like Harvard, which saw $2.2 billion frozen on April 14, Northwestern retained a high-profile, MAGA-linked lobbying firm to navigate the scrutiny.
A Northwestern spokesman said the university is reviewing the committee’s letter, adding that it has taken steps to curb anti-Semitism.
“There is no place for antisemitism at Northwestern and the steps we have taken since last summer have dramatically improved the safety of our Jewish students,” the spokesman said. “As detailed in a recent progress report on Northwestern’s efforts to combat antisemitism, the University strengthened its Student Code of Conduct and other University-wide policies over the summer and has enforced these policies during this academic year. We have also instituted and begun mandatory yearly antisemitism trainings for faculty, staff and students and have adapted the IHRA definition of antisemitism into our conduct process.”
“These steps have had an impact—there has been a significant decrease in reports of discrimination or harassment based on antisemitism or shared Jewish ancestry in the current academic year,” the spokesman added.
Included among Northwestern’s efforts is a newly implemented mandatory anti-discrimination training. But Walberg, pointing to Free Beacon reporting, noted that the training relies on unverified data from the Council on American-Islamic Relations that inflate Islamophobic attacks, giving the false impression that those attacks vastly outpace anti-Semitic hate crimes.
And significant anti-Semitic incidents have continued to plague Northwestern’s campus.
Two weeks ago, during Passover, anti-Semitic vandals used red paint to write “Death to Israel” and draw Hamas triangles on a campus building that houses the school’s Holocaust center. Earlier in the month, Northwestern’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter hosted an anarchist training session, at which it cited propaganda from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group urging students to “build and Intifada” and “destroy amerika.” Walberg pointed to both incidents.
The Education Committee’s demand for Schill’s testimony is part of a broader investigation into anti-Semitism on college campuses, including at Columbia and Harvard universities. Schill has until May 5 to respond to the chairman’s letter.
