7 at Northwestern resign over deal to dismantle encampment
A rally on the campus of Northwestern University to show support for on April 25, 2024 Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe May 2, 2024
Seven members of a Northwestern University committee to combat antisemitism resigned on Wednesday, two days after the university brokered an agreement with pro-Palestinian protesters that led to the voluntary dismantling of their encampment. The committee members said they should have been consulted on the deal.
“In light of the university leadership’s decision not to utilize the committee for its stated purpose, we can no longer continue to serve in this role,” the resigning members wrote in a letter obtained by The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper.
Northwestern established the committee in November — the President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate — after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack prompted Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and antisemitism on campuses began to rise. It had 16 members then according to The Daily.
The university responded in a statement that it was disappointed by the resignations. “The Committee’s charge and its work remain incredibly important to our community,” it said. “Our commitment to protecting Jewish students, faculty and staff is unwavering.”
In the past two weeks, encampments of students demanding colleges divest from Israel have sprung up across the country. Some colleges have dismantled them forcibly, and called in police, who have arrested more than 2,000 students nationwide. A few colleges, including Northwestern and Brown University, have made concessions to protesters to get them to take their tents down themselves.
As part of their agreement with the university, Northwestern protesters agreed to remove all but one of their tents and use only approved sound amplification devices. The university in return promised to revive its Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility and respond to questions about its financial holding; allow protests to continue through June 1; and to establish a house for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students.
A similar antisemitism advisory committee at Harvard University has also seen high-profile resignations. David Wolpe, one of the most prominent rabbis in the nation, resigned from its committee in December, citing, among other reasons, then university President Claudine Gay’s widely panned testimony on antisemitism before Congress. In February a Harvard Business School professor resigned as co-chair, reportedly because she was unconvinced that the university would take the committee’s recommendations seriously.
Three Jewish organizations — the Anti-Defamation League Midwest, StandWithUs and The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law — on Tuesday called for Northwestern’s president, Michael Schill, to resign over the agreement, which they called “reprehensible and dangerous.”
“For the last seven months — and longer — Jewish Northwestern students have been harassed and intimated by blatant antisemitism on campus, worsening since Oct. 7,” they wrote. “Yesterday, President Schill signed an agreement with the perpetrators of that harassment and intimidation, rewarding them for their hate.”
Among those who signed the letter of resignation at Northwestern were economics professor Efraim Benmelech, one of the committee’s co-chairs; Rabbi Michael Simon, director of the university’s Hillel; and Paula Pretlow, a university trustee.
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