Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

7 at Northwestern resign over deal to dismantle encampment

Members of an advisory committee to combat antisemitism say they were not consulted

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.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.