The university will also pay the United States government $75 million to restore the nearly $1 billion frozen over anti-Semitism and racial discrimination
Northwestern University on Friday agreed to terminate its deal with pro-Hamas protesters and pay the United States government $75 million to restore the nearly $1 billion in federal funds frozen over its response to anti-Semitism and racial discrimination on campus.
The university vowed to reverse the policies implemented under its “Deering Meadow Agreement” that disgraced former Northwestern president Michael Schill struck with pro-Hamas encampment organizers. The terms of that deal included recruiting two Palestinian professors and providing five full-ride scholarships to students from Gaza, as well as building special housing for Middle Eastern, North African, and Muslim students.
In response to a request for comment, a university spokesman pointed the Washington Free Beacon to a statement from interim Northwestern president Henry Bienen, who said that the settlement ends “a deeply painful and disruptive period in our university’s history.”
“As an imperative to the negotiation of this agreement, we had several hard red lines we refused to cross: We would not relinquish any control over whom we hire, whom we admit as students, what our faculty teach or how our faculty teach,” Bienen stated.
The news comes several months after Columbia University agreed to pay the federal government $200 million to end a series of investigations, beginning a wave of settlements that has since included Brown University, Cornell University, and the University of Virginia. While negotiations with Harvard University have taken significantly longer, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said last week that a settlement is on the horizon.
The first Palestinian professor hired as part of Schill’s deal with the activists, which Northwestern has since scrubbed from its website, was Mkhaimar Abusada, an academic who serves on the boards of two purported human rights organizations—the Independent Commission for Human Rights and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights—that maintain close ties to terrorists. The former has praised Hamas and met with the terror group’s leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, while the latter is led by a Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine member and has other terrorists on its payroll.
Northwestern’s settlement with the federal government permanently closes all pending investigations and compliance reviews from the Departments of Education and Health and Human Services over the university’s adherence to anti-discrimination laws. It also ends any ongoing Department of Justice probes into Northwestern’s use of race as a factor in admissions. The university will create a committee within its board to ensure that it adheres to the terms of its agreement with the government, issuing quarterly reports to prove its compliance.
Another clause in the deal states that the school will “develop training material to socialize international students to the norms of a campus dedicated to inquiry and open debate” and review its “international admissions practices and policies.”
Bienen, who served as Northwestern’s president from 1995 to 2009 before stepping into his former role upon Schill’s resignation, initially established the university’s controversial relationship with Qatar, signing a contract with the Hamas-allied Gulf state that prohibits students and faculty in Doha from criticizing the country’s regime.
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