House Investigation
House Investigation
“I’m appalled by the condescension and contempt you’ve shown for the committee and towards your own Jewish students today…You’ve refused to answer basic questions on topics... you’ve given misleading answers that contradict the words of the agreement you signed.” - US Rep. Virginia Foxx at the Hearing’s Conclusion
Call for Change in Leadership: Committee grills Schill and concludes with a call for new leadership. "I think that if the university does not move to change its leadership, then it will be endorsing institutionalization and normalization of antisemitism on campus.” Read More
Dodging Questions: Schill Punts on Questions About Middle East Affiliation. “I’m not going to engage in yes or no.” - President Schill’s response to Rep. Owens question about whether it would be a "good idea" for his school to "partner with a government that harbors terrorist Hamas and Iranian operatives who fund terrorists." Read More
Zero Consequences: When asked if students were being held accountable for their actions on campus, Schill confirms that, indeed, no students have been disciplined yet with respect to antisemitic incidents on NU’s campus. “We will investigate any claim of discrimination or harassment.” Read More
Dubious Example: Schill is infamous for being the first to negotiate with the encampment protesters. “Northwestern received the most attention, as it was one of the first schools to come to such an agreement, but President Michael Schill said the school did not cave to any major demands.” Read More
Schill expected to continue appointing antisemites to antisemitism task force: "Why did you believe it was appropriate to appoint faculty members who have defended and made excuses for anti-Semitism and oppose the committee's purported mission of combating anti-Semitism?" Read More
Questionnable Partners
NU-Q: NU’s Qatar campus raises issues about the benefit to NU of appearing to sanction an autocratic regime. “Qatar benefits a great deal from the NU and Medill name brands. In the past decade, Qatar has engaged in a series of reputation laundering tactics designed to endear itself to Western countries and wash over its human rights abuses.” Read More
Al Jazeera: NU alumni demand an end to Medill’s relationship with Qatar. “NU-Q’s training-based ‘collaboration’ with Al Jazeera may violate U.S. law because the latter is seen by the United States as a foreign agent and is complicit in spreading Hamas propaganda.” Read More
Qatar has sent $690 million to Northwestern: "The oil-rich Gulf state, which has sheltered senior Hamas leaders even after the terrorist organization’s October 7 attack against Israel, has donated nearly $690 million to Northwestern since 2007, a new report from nonprofit watchdog Open the Books shows.” Read More
Thrasher Shoutouts
Death to the Facts: Medill Prof. Thrasher Continues to Disgrace NU. “It’s beyond belief that a supposedly reputable journalism school could have Thrasher or any proponent of advocacy journalism among its faculty.” Read More
Justifying Hamas: Associate NU Prof. Thrasher relies on his background of LGBTQ issues and racism expertise to amplify antisemitic voices. “A review of Thrasher’s social media accounts found that stretching back to October of last year, when Hamas launched an attack against Israel, Thrasher espoused anti-Israel rhetoric appearing to defend Hamas.” Read More
Social Justice (?!) Prof: Using his position at NU to peddle pro-Hamas talking points. “Staff like Professor Steven Thrasher continue to peddle hateful antisemitic canards,” Congressman Carlos Gimenez told Fox News. “This professor has employed hateful rhetoric, invoked antisemitic tropes, and fostered a hostile environment that endangers Jewish students on campus.” Read More
Elite (??) Education at NU
The Encampment: A hotbed for antisemitism and groupthink. “What I noticed most keenly when I spoke to protesters was their simplistic framing of the conflict. One side, the Palestinian side, was inherently good by virtue of their oppression. The other, the Israeli side, was inherently bad by virtue of their comparative power — and therefore unable to claim victimhood for any atrocity they experienced, no matter how cruel.” Read More
So Much for Diversity of Thought on Campus: Jewish students on campus are being socially isolated by their peers, coaches and instructors. “Ms. Wu told him that she respected him as a Frisbee player, but that his pro-Israel attitude was wrong, and that it could be an obstacle in the future as he sought to make friends and get a job.” Read More
Viral Social Media Posts
President Schill made no effort to consult with Jewish students and faculty before disgracefully signing an agreement with the pro-Hamas mob that rewards vicious hate and bigotry. View post
Well, that did not go well for Northwestern…View post
The moment when Northwestern President Michael Schill refuses to say whether he would negotiate with a KKK group intimidating black students. View post
There are so many unnerving aspects to these “negotiations” and the “settlement” between the pro-Hamas demonstrators and Northwestern. View post
Schill is a f%&$ joke. View post
Schill fails to protect Jewish students. He must go. View post
Comments from the NU Community of Jewish Alumni, Students & Families
Schill explicitly stated public safety is his top priority. Yet, repeatedly he stated NUPD was not an option. As an NU parent of a current student, I find this incredibly alarming. He is basically saying that NUPD is incapable. How can any student be safe at any time? So basically the next time something happens on campus NUPD cannot be relied upon.
I’m afraid nothing will change with Schill as president. The only thing that came to light during the hearing is rather than thinking Schill is simply weak, I now think he’s obnoxious and defiant.
If Schill wants to make a big statement and show he is serious about combatting antisemitism, getting rid of Thrasher would be the way to do it.
Perjury!! Schill actually told Congress that he didn’t know about NU’s relationship with Al Jazeera?! What was he thinking, because saying you don't know about this relationship at the university you are in charge of makes you look like a fool AND a liar. I have already called my congressman (who is on the committee) with ample evidence that he knew and lied!
Unanswered Alum Letter sent to Schill, Dean Whitaker and Prof. Thrasher, reprinted here with permission
Professor Thrasher:
Northwestern's motto is "Quaecumque Sunt Vera" - "Whatsoever Things Are True." For Medill students, this is more than just a motto, of course. It's a guiding professional principle.
In your alignment with pro-Hamas protestors who violated time/place/manner guidelines on campus; harassed Jewish students simply for their faith; equated Zionism (merely support for a Jewish state) with apartheid and colonialism; accused Israel of war crimes allegedly committed in defense of an unprovoked massacre (by an enemy that hides among helpless civilians and is fundamentally committed to the total annihilation of Israel and "infidels" around the world); and perhaps most disturbingly, refused to engage those with differing perspectives as you'd otherwise expect in a community of advanced knowledge-seekers -- you have disgraced the principles of good journalism and real scholarship that Medill teaches.
You've disgraced the principles on which a Northwestern education is based.
And you should be removed from the faculty as a result.
Professor, have you ever actually BEEN to Gaza? Or the West Bank? Or Israel? I'm guessing you haven't.
I have.
I've reported from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. I took part in interviews with Netanyahu and other leaders from every walk of life across a wide political spectrum of Israeli society. I also spoke with the late chief Palestinian peace negotiator in his villa in Jericho, and with refugees in their camps.
As my perspective is better informed than yours, let's start where I think we'd both agree: Gaza is a hellhole.
But here's the thing - the Gazans I spoke with didn't blame Israel for their misery. They blamed Hamas, which represses dissent, brutalizes and kills all who dare to oppose it, keeps its own people impoverished and subservient to the regime -- and uses them as human shields as part of a decades-old strategy to globally and perpetually demonize Israel, the only Jewish state in the world, and the only true democracy in the Middle East.
The Gazans who spoke with me in darkened rooms, lest they be seen in public talking this way with an American journalist, longed for peace and the prosperity and social advancement that would come with a robust economic and cultural engagement with Israel.
The vast majority of Israelis want that, too.
The protestors with whom you stand keep talking about Israel's occupation of Gaza. Israel hasn't been in Gaza since 2005. And when they withdrew, they left thriving agricultural businesses which Hamas immediately destroyed after taking power from the more moderate Palestinian Authority in an "election" no western democracy would consider fair or democratic.
From AUTHENTIC humanitarians, of course you'd expect widespread protest about all that. But the people with whom you stand aren't authentic humanitarians, so NO protest about that or any other outrages anywhere else in the world. No marches against true genocides ongoing anywhere else on earth. No campus shutdowns for human rights abuses ongoing for centuries across the globe.
Nope, because your "comrades" on Deering Meadow are anti-Israel, anti-democratic, anti-Zionist antisemites. Most of these kids -- and clearly, some faculty, too - have no idea what the slogans they are chanting mean. Many couldn't find Gaza on a map in an open-book test. Most have no real knowledge of the history of the region -- because our institutions of higher education are more concerned about "feel-good" optics and extremist politics than they are about resolving emotion-fueled differences of opinion through open, well-informed and rigorous analysis and debate.
The kind Jewish NU students and faculty have tried to have with protestors who won't even engage them on the subject.
It's the kind of critical thinking places like Medill and NU USED to teach. And contrary to your view, Professor, that there's no use for "objectivity" in journalism anymore, I posit that good "advocacy journalism" is built on good "objective journalism." One can take an objective look at an issue, a crisis, anything really. See a spectrum of right and wrong, and advocate against what clearly is wrong, and for what clearly is right at the end of that process. Great journalism has always done that.
Woodward and Bernstein frame this process as the search for the "best available version of the truth." You've no use for that process - your view of journalism today appears to be " right and wrong are self-evident and products of perception, so let's just get right to picking the heroes and villains, facts be damned."
(Never mind that perception can be clouded or even completely misinformed by sustained, well-crafted and constant propaganda.)
I see from your Northwestern CV that you are active in Black and gay rights organizations. So you know about the historical allyship between Jews and African-Americans and between Jews and the LGBTQ+ community.
My childhood rabbi marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. And so did many others. Jewish Freedom Riders -- kids around the age of the students you teach now -- were murdered for their activism in the civil rights movement. So many others were beaten and terrorized along with those for whom they were advocating. Jews are among the most vocal supporters of the principles of today's Black Lives Matter movement. And they remain among the most strident LGBTQ+ allies, leading the fight to codify protections for that community.
Because for Jews, a denial of human rights to any one of us is a denial of human rights for all of us.
And why do Jews feel that way? Because Jews have been the single most oppressed people throughout the history of the world. This is why Northwestern's Jewish students joined protests against the Nazis in Skokie in the late '70s-- and sought the removal of your NU colleague, Dr. Arthur Butz, after he published sham research that proclaimed the Holocaust the "Hoax of the Twentieth Century." Despite having his so-called "scholarship" reviled widely by academics and the public alike, he remains on the Northwestern payroll to this day. (I know Dean Whitaker remembers all of this. He and I were both on campus during this unsettling time as members of the Medill Class of '80.)
Consider: Of all the nations in the Middle East, there is only one where people of color and members of the LGBTQ+ community enjoy full and equal rights: Israel.
Think critically on that, Professor. Think critically on that as so many of our Black and LGBTQ+ brothers and sisters stand silent -- or even opposed -- to the Jewish community now in this existential struggle playing out in the Middle East.
Think critically on that, Professor, as you throw your lot in with the ignorant hordes who speak loftily about "oppressors and the oppressed" without knowing anything at all about those they so label. Impressionable young people who feel more than they think. Who support the radical butchers who murdered and brutalized 364 young people -- people their age -- as they danced at a peace festival. And who massacred a total of 1200 people, mostly unarmed civilians, in the single worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust.
Extremist militants against whom YOU say Israel has no right to defend itself, because, you know, the civilians -- among whom they hide like cowards. Never mind the extraordinary steps the Israeli military takes to protect them -- unheard of in the history of warfare. Never mind the hard truth that however horrific the loss of innocent life in war is, the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in this conflict is drastically lower than in many of the conflicts in which the US and other nations -- including many African nations -- have been engaged.
Nothing Hamas does is "resistance," Professor. It's unprovoked, pre-meditated slaughter. It's REAL genocide. All Hamas is "resisting," in truth, are efforts to eradicate it and its terroristic ideology from the face of the planet.
Know where in the Middle East you could live the life you have now, here? The answer: Only Israel, where more than 20% of the population comprises people of color. And where hundreds of thousands live their authentic lives in a vibrant and protected LGBTQ+ community.
Know where in the Middle East you'd be deprived of the life you live now? The answer: EVERYWHERE else BUT Israel.
Then tell me where and with whom you stand. And who the REAL oppressed and oppressors are.
Shame on you. Shame on Medill. Shame on Northwestern.
Howard Price
BSJ ‘80