Pinned
May 23, 2024, 12:07 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman,Anemona Hartocollis and Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Here’s the latest on the hearing.
House Republicans are targeting three university leaders in a contentious House hearing on Thursday, asserting that they should be “ashamed” over their handling of students and faculty who had set up encampments over the last few weeks.
For much of the morning, the committee members zeroed in on Michael Schill, the president of Northwestern University. Representative Elise Stefanik, who has acted as chief prosecutor during the hearings, asked Mr. Schill about an accusation that a Jewish student was assaulted and another about a Jewish student being spat on. She asked how long the investigations into these cases will last.
“We believe, at Northwestern, in due process,” Mr. Schill, who often shot back at the committee members, responded. Later, under questioning from Representative Burgess Owens, he retorted, “I really am offended by you telling me what my views are.”
Two of the universities, Northwestern and Rutgers, cut deals to end the encampments on their campuses — a decision that brought harsh criticism from Republicans.
The third school, the University of California, Los Angeles, has faced criticism from across the political spectrum for failing to prevent a violent clash in which pro-Israel counterprotesters violently attacked the demonstrators. Representative Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina, faulted the chancellor of U.C.L.A., where 243 arrests have been made, for clearing the pro-Palestinian encampment “only after a violent riot erupted.”
Here are the details:
Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers, defended coming to an agreement with pro-Palestinian demonstrators. “They were not, as some have characterized them, terrorists,” he said. “They were our students.” And Mr. Schill said the agreement to end the encampment at Northwestern had lowered tensions, giving students “the ability to feel safe on campus.”
Gene D. Block, the chancellor of U.C.L.A., acknowledged that he had made mistakes in dealing with an encampment there, which was removed only after an attack by pro-Israel counterprotesters. The attack lasted for several hours before the police intervened, and none of the attackers were arrested. But Mr. Block said that U.C.L.A. has taken decisive action in recent weeks to keep people on campus safe.
Several Democrats accused Republicans, who control the committee, of trying to score political points and ignoring acts of antisemitism in their own party. “It baffles me that some people are opposed to antisemitism when it’s politically convenient, instead of wherever it rears its ugly head,” said Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Democrat of Oregon.
The leaders of Northwestern, Rutgers and U.C.L.A. followed other higher education leaders who testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce and came away facing intensified criticism and spreading protests. Nearly 3,000 pro-Palestinian protesters have been arrested since April 18, when more than 100 were taken into custody at Columbia after school leaders promised a crackdown to Congress.
Ms. Stefanik again provided some of the most fiery moments, as she did at a December hearing when the leaders of Harvard, Penn and M.I.T. gave evasive, legalistic answers. Criticism of their performance helped lead to the resignations of Claudine Gay from Harvard and Elizabeth McGill from Penn.
May 23, 2024, 12:23 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Rep. Ilhan Omar, one of the three Muslim members of Congress, is asking questions about the “appalling” images from U.C.L.A., when counterprotesters attacked the encampment. She mentions how rats were released into the encampment. “Instead you stood by for hours,” she said. “They attacked students you were responsible for.”
May 23, 2024, 12:22 p.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Now questioning the university leaders is Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, whose own 21-year-old daughter joined a pro-Palestinian protest at Columbia (and was suspended from her college, Barnard, for doing so).
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 12:20 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Representative Ilhan Omar has defended pro-Palestinian students.
Image
Ever since Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was sworn into Congress in 2019, she has been a lightning rod.
A Democrat and one of three Muslim members of Congress, Ms. Omar has been outspoken on police reform, racial justice and Israel, and has often drawn criticism for her left-leaning stances from Republicans and Democrats alike.
As a member of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, she was among the representatives who questioned Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, during a hearing on accusations of antisemitism on that campus in April.
Ms. Omar asked Dr. Shafik why students had been evicted and suspended for their participation in a pro-Palestinian event and asked about an alleged chemical attack on protesters.
The next day, Dr. Shafik asked the police to clear an encampment on campus, and Ms. Omar’s daughter, Isra Hirsi, was among the protesters who were arrested and suspended. Ms. Hirsi is a student at Barnard College, and an organizer with the coalition that established the encampment.
After the Columbia protest encampment was rebuilt on another lawn, Ms. Omar visited to show solidarity. When she was asked about Jewish students who have faced antisemitism on campus, she sparked a controversy after remarking that all Jewish students should be kept safe, “whether they’re pro-genocide or anti-genocide.”
Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, called her language “detestable,” but Ms. Omar stood firm. She pointed to reports about anti-Arab slogans yelled at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, writing in a social post: “This is the pro-genocide I was talking about, can you condemn this like I have condemned antisemitism and bigotry of all kind?”
May 23, 2024, 12:09 p.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
It’s surprising how little attention U.C.L.A. has gotten so far in this hearing, given the violence that took place there. Many students were seriously injured at U.C.L.A., including when pro-Israel counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment and the next day, when the police arrested more than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters. Still, many of the questions about student safety have been directed toward Northwestern and Rutgers.
Image
May 23, 2024, 12:08 p.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
U.C.L.A. has been criticized for letting violence break out on campus, and a tent encampment still remains on one Rutgers campus. But Republicans have so far been most focused on President Schill of Northwestern, saying that his decision come to an agreement was a capitulation to antisemitic activity on campus. “In my view, you are the easiest case we have dealt with, ” said Representative Kevin Kiley. The Rutgers agreement, which was similar, is getting much less attention. And Chancellor Block is defusing questions by saying he’s either not familiar with specific incidents or saying they are under investigation.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 11:58 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Representative Kevin Kiley, Republican of California, shows a video from last month of protesters at U.C.L.A. blocking a pro-Israel, Jewish student from walking near the encampment. Kiley asks each university leader if “blocking students from entering campus based on their race, religion or ethnicity” is an expellable offense at their universities. They all respond by saying, essentially, that it could be depending on the circ*mstances.
May 23, 2024, 11:56 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Northwestern University President Michael Schill said the school is in the process of revising its conduct code, but provided no details on how it would change. Mr. Schill called freedom of speech and academic freedom “core values” at Northwestern, but he added that they do “not allow discrimination, harassment or intimidation.”
May 23, 2024, 11:53 a.m. ET
Jeremy W. Peters
With his probing questions, this freshman Republican has stood out in the hearings.
Image
Much of the spotlight has been on Representative Elise Stefanik during recent congressional hearings on antisemitism, but there is another Republican who has stood out for his probing of witnesses.
That’s Kevin Kiley, a 39-year-old freshman whose district comprises a 450-mile swath of California, from the mountains of Lake Tahoe to the flats of Death Valley.
A former high school English teacher, Mr. Kiley was elected to his seat in 2022. Before that, he served in the California Legislature, where he was a fierce critic of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. He leveraged his opposition to the governor and ran against him during an ill-fated attempt to recall him in 2021.
Mr. Kiley positioned himself as a moderate. He said he did not support Donald J. Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries, but instead John Kasich, the former Ohio governor.
In an interview with The New York Times before the recall election, Mr. Kiley said he was connecting with voters across the political spectrum for his focus on quality-of-life issues: housing affordability, homelessness, crime and underperforming schools. “There’s certainly a coalition out there that is seeking a new direction for the state,” he said.
He came in sixth place.
During the antisemitism hearings, Mr. Kiley has distinguished himself for his tough questioning of administrators. He has said he believes schools and universities have responded inadequately to threats reported by Jewish students.
At a hearing with public school district leaders on May 8, he pressed the superintendent in Berkeley, Calif., on whether the district had fired any employees for antisemitic conduct. She declined to answer.
And at a December hearing that precipitated the ousters of two Ivy League presidents, Mr. Kiley declared, “We need fundamental cultural change for the university campuses.”
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 11:46 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Representative Good also brings up several examples of anti-Israel advocacy on Rutgers campus. He gets Holloway to say that Rutgers should not be funding anti-Israel advocacy. However, Holloway also says he has no plans to close a center whose director takes a strong anti-Israel stance, implying it is a matter of free speech.
May 23, 2024, 11:44 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Rutgers’ president, Jonathan Holloway, refuses to answer when asked if Israel’s government is genocidal. “Sir, I don’t have an opinion on Israel’s — in terms of that phrase,” he says in response to Representative Bob Good, Republican of Virginia. He says he does believe Israel has “a right to exist and protect itself.”
May 23, 2024, 11:41 a.m. ET
Anemona Hartocollis
The committee is revealing a fondness for visual aids. Representative Elise Stefanik held up a placard with a big bold F on it to illustrate her point about how the Antidefamation League had graded Northwestern on its campus antisemitism report card. A sign in the form of a giant $600 million check from “QATAR related sources” to Northwestern illustrated another line of questioning.
Image
May 23, 2024, 11:34 a.m. ET
Jenna Russell
As three college leaders faced Congress, hundreds of students walked out of Harvard University’s commencement ceremony. Thirteen student protesters were not allowed to graduate after a vote Wednesday by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s governing body. Protesting students yelled, “Let them walk!"
May 23, 2024, 11:34 a.m. ET
Jenna Russell
The walkout was a jarring reminder of continuing unrest on the Cambridge campus and at other schools around the country.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 11:29 a.m. ET
Anemona Hartocollis
“I really am offended by you telling me what my views are,” President Schill exclaims as Representative Owens cuts him off by saying, “the answer is yes,” a technique perfected by New York’s Elise Stefanik.
Image
May 23, 2024, 11:28 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
So far, Northwestern’s president, Michael Schill, has faced by far the most critical questioning. Republican members of Congress appear frustrated that the university came to any kind of agreement with the pro-Palestinian protesters. Schill has stood firm, however, refusing to discuss individual students and professors and stressing the importance of protecting Jewish students.
May 23, 2024, 11:28 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
He also seems committed to a strategy of not letting the politicians take him down a path he does not want to go down. For example, he said twice that he would not “engage in hypotheticals” when Representative Burgess Owens, Republican of Utah, asked him if he would have had the same patience with Ku Klux Klan protesters on campus.
May 23, 2024, 11:24 a.m. ET
Robert Chiarito
At Northwestern, a group of about 20 students and community members were watching the hearings on a television powered by a generator inside a tent in the school’s Deering Meadow.
May 23, 2024, 11:19 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Northwestern was among the first schools to reach an agreement with pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
Image
After demonstrators set up an encampment in late April on Northwestern’s central lawn, Michael Schill, the university’s president, huddled with top aides to assess their options.
Leaving the encampment risked allowing a divisive protest movement to escalate and disrupt classes, Mr. Schill said in an interview. He said he “strongly considered” following the lead of other college presidents who asked the police to dismantle encampments and arrest protesters who were violating school policies.
But Mr. Schill said he concluded that calling in the police would create a “game of Whac-a-Mole” at other universities, where tensions soared following arrests. So he summoned protest leaders for negotiations that led to an agreement — and a backlash.
Northwestern’s agreement included a promise to be more transparent about the university’s finances and to give students a say in how the school invests its money. Pro-Palestinian activists saw it as a first step to get the school to sever financial ties with companies that are profiting from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, although university leaders did not commit to furthering that goal.
Northwestern also promised to establish positions for two Palestinian scholars affected by the conflict and to provide full scholarships for five Palestinian students.
Days later, Brown University and the University of Minnesota struck similar deals with protesters on their campuses, bringing an end to their encampments.
But Mr. Schill faced significant backlash from Jewish organizations on campus and beyond. Several members of a committee Mr. Schill established last year to prevent antisemitism resigned in protest, and the local chapter of Hillel, a Jewish student group, called the deal a concession to groups that had spread “virulent and intimidating antisemitism on campus.”
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 11:16 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, asks Northwestern President Michael Schill about a journalism professor, Steven Thrasher, who backed pro-Palestinian demonstrations. Mr. Schill declined to comment on individual faculty members.
May 23, 2024, 11:18 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Representative Banks also seizes the opportunity to ask about sports: “Have you had any conversations over the last year about leaving the Big Ten conference?” He goes on to ask about Schill’s firing of a football coach over claims of hazing and sexual abuse on the football team, and uses that incident to accuse Schill of hypocrisy, saying he defers to “due process” in the case of disciplining protesters, but not in the firing of a football coach.
May 23, 2024, 11:10 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Rep. Elise Stefanik asserted that no Jewish students were consulted as part of the negotiations to end the encampment at Northwestern. In fact, Jewish students were involved in the talks.
May 23, 2024, 11:06 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York returns to grill Schill, Northwestern's president, over a promise to host two Palestinian faculty members and to award scholarships to five Palestinian students. Mr. Schill said the university will also support Israeli scholars.
May 23, 2024, 11:10 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
She gets him to admit that Jewish or Israeli students were not consulted before the agreement with protesters was made. “It would have been impractical to do that,” he tells her, talking over her as her time runs out.
May 23, 2024, 11:02 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Representative Mark Takano, Democrat of California, says the violence and arrests at U.C.L.A., which followed an attack on the pro-Palestinian encampment by pro-Israel counterprotesters, is an “unfortunate contrast” to what happened at Rutgers and Northwestern, the other two colleges whose leaders are testifying. The U.C.L.A. chancellor does not directly answer when he is asked if he could have taken a different approach, but he says the university will review its response.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:57 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Schill, of Northwestern, also said the deal that put an end to the pro-Palestinian encampment lowered tensions on campus. “It gave them the ability to feel safe on campus.”
May 23, 2024, 10:58 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Rep. Stefanik focuses her questioning on Northwestern and its agreement, but doesn’t land any clear blows. President Schill explains he consulted range of people before making the agreement.
May 23, 2024, 10:57 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
The protest at U.C.L.A. culminated in a violent attack by counterprotesters. Here’s what happened.
Image
The protest at the University of California, Los Angeles, against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza was among the most high-profile demonstrations in recent weeks, resulting in the police making more arrests than on any other campus since mid-April.
After students set up an encampment on April 25, the campus saw several tense moments that culminated in an attack on the demonstrators and more than 200 arrests of protesters who refused to leave.
As the encampment grew, pro-Israel groups gathered to counter the pro-Palestinian message, and the two sides had several heated exchanges.
There were videos showing a pro-Israel, Jewish student being blocked by protesters from entering an area around the encampment, as well as one of a pro-Israel woman who said she lost consciousness after being shoved to the ground. (It was not clear from videos of that encounter how she fell.)
The university declared the encampment illegal on April 30, and hours later, a group of people attacked the pro-Palestinian protesters. Some people in the counterprotest wore clothing with pro-Israel slogans and played the Israeli national anthem. They tore away metal barricades, shot fireworks into the encampment, and punched, kicked and hit people with makeshift weapons.
Image
Image
The police did not intervene in the melee for several hours. Eventually, officers with the Los Angeles Police Department and the California Highway Patrol got in between the two groups. The slow response is now the subject of an inquiry by a police consulting group hired by U.C.L.A.
The next night, the university called in the police to arrest protesters. None of the counterprotesters who attacked the encampment have been arrested, but the university is investigating the attack.
On May 5, the university chancellor, Gene Block, announced that he was creating a new Office of Campus Safety and naming a former Sacramento police chief to lead it. The university also temporarily reassigned its campus police chief this week.
Dr. Block has faced criticism that he allowed the encampment to flourish for too long and did not respond forcefully enough to allegations of antisemitism. Some have also said that the university did not effectively protect students from the counterprotesters’ attack and should not have sent the police to make arrests.
Dr. Block was the subject of two resolutions by the university’s academic senate that sought to rebuke him largely over his handling of the attack. The group voted against both resolutions on Friday.
May 23, 2024, 10:55 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Stefanik asked Northwestern’s president if he asked the Hillel director on campus if it was possible to hire an anti-Zionist rabbi, earning a stern rebuke. “I did not,” President Schill responded. “I absolutely did not. I would never hire anyone based upon their views of being Zionist or anti-Zionist.”
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:51 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
In fiery questioning, Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, asked Northwestern’s president about several instances of reported antisemitism, including an allegation that a Jewish student was assaulted and another about a Jewish student being spat on. She asked how long the investigations into these cases will last. “We believe, at Northwestern, in due process,” President Michael Schill responded.
May 23, 2024, 10:49 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
Representative Elise Stefanik has begun questioning the educators.
May 23, 2024, 10:47 a.m. ET
Jacey Fortin
Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Democrat of Oregon, accused Republicans of ignoring antisemitism in their own party, echoing comments she made at a hearing for primary and secondary school leaders earlier this month. “It baffles me that some people are opposed to antisemitism when it’s politically convenient,” she said, “instead of wherever it rears its ugly head.”
Video
May 23, 2024, 10:48 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
President Schill, answering Representative Bonamici, said that the encampments resulted in a huge increase in antisemitic activity on campus, including a sign with a Jewish star with a slash through it, and a picture of him with horns and blood, an antisemitic trope. He said they decided the tents had to come down, but thought bringing in police would be unsafe for all.
May 23, 2024, 10:47 a.m. ET
Nicholas Fandos
Elise Stefanik has gained widespread attention in recent antisemitism hearings.
Image
Representative Elise Stefanik of New York may not be a committee chair, but perhaps no single Republican lawmaker has more forcefully clashed with elite university leaders over how they are handling antisemitism on campus.
Her line of questioning at a December hearing helped push the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania out of their jobs. Last month, she put Columbia’s president in the uncomfortable position of negotiating faculty administrative decisions from the witness stand.
If past patterns hold, Ms. Stefanik will now have a chance to question the leaders of a fresh batch of major universities.
Ms. Stefanik, 39, was already a rising star within her party before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war turbocharged concerns about antisemitic incidents in American education. A Harvard graduate herself, she is the top-ranking woman in Republican House leadership and is considered a potential presidential running mate.
But her exchanges with the leaders of Harvard and Penn attracted enormous attention and won some rare plaudits from grudging liberals. In April, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2024.
Ms. Stefanik struggled to land a clear blow in a hearing with the president of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, in April. But she still elicited some of the most memorable testimony, demanding that Dr. Shafik remove from an academic leadership position a professor who used the word “awesome” when describing Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack.
Ms. Stefanik later called for Dr. Shafik to resign anyway.
When Ms. Stefanik first won her seat in 2014, she was the youngest woman ever elected to the House. She beat a centrist Democrat, and in the early days of her career, she took on more moderate stances.
These days, she describes herself as “ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.” Democrats particularly detest her close embrace of former President Donald J. Trump and his lies about the 2020 election.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:38 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Northwestern’s president is likely to face questions on incidents dating back to 2022.
Image
A few weeks after Michael Schill took the reins of Northwestern University in September 2022, a Jewish student wrote an essay for the school newspaper lamenting the nationwide rise of antisemitism and the proliferation of the slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on campus.
Critics of the essay printed 40 copies and used them to create a large banner on campus with the slogan, which many Israelis and their supporters view as a call for the country’s extermination.
Days later, Mr. Schill, who is Jewish, said he did not have a firm view on whether the slogan was antisemitic, and he called on the university community to civilly debate tough issues.
“A university is built upon the idea that people should be free to express their views on both academic and political matters without fear of retribution,” Mr. Schill wrote in a statement in November 2022.
About a year later, after war broke out between Israel and Hamas, exacerbating tensions on campus, Mr. Schill took a harder line. In announcing the establishment of a committee to prevent antisemitism, Mr. Schill asked students to refrain from using the slogan, which he said many at Northwestern “interpret as promoting murder and genocide.”
On Thursday, members of Congress are expected to grill Mr. Schill on his handling of concerns about antisemitism on campus since 2022.
Representative Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican who chairs the Committee on Education and the Workforce, criticized Mr. Schill’s leadership in a May 10 letter. She pointed to a deal Northwestern struck with protesters in late April — in which the school promised to be more transparent about its financial holdings — and accused university leaders of tolerating abusive and discriminatory conduct for years. She demanded records about disciplinary measures the school has taken in response to antisemitic acts.
Representative Foxx also expressed interest in Northwestern’s relationship with Qatar, which hosts a campus of the university. The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is based in Qatar.
Michael Simon, the executive director of Northwestern’s chapter of Hillel, a Jewish student organization, said in an interview that tensions on campus have ebbed since the university struck the agreement with protesters. But he said that emotions remained raw.
“It does not feel that this has been a place where folks are able to live, learn, thrive, discuss, dialogue and debate without fear of intimidation and harassment,” he said.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:18 a.m. ET
Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs
Gene Block has dealt with several on-campus protests in 17 years of leading U.C.L.A.
Image
Gene D. Block, the chancellor of the University of California, Los Angeles, has been criticized from all sides, facing accusations of tolerating antisemitism on campus, failing to prevent an attack on pro-Palestinian students and then calling in the police to arrest hundreds of demonstrators.
Dr. Block, 75, a neuroscience expert, has led U.C.L.A. since 2007 following nearly three decades at the University of Virginia. He received a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and earned a Ph.D. from the University of Oregon.
After the protests at U.C.L.A., Dr. Block survived two faculty-led efforts to formally rebuke him. Last week, the university’s Academic Senate voted down a no-confidence motion and a motion to censure him. The votes were largely symbolic as he announced last summer that he would step down from his post at the end of July.
Over nearly 17 years of leading U.C.L.A., he has dealt with several protests on campus, including during the reckoning over racism that followed the killing of George Floyd in 2020. At the time, he responded with a series of commitments, including creating a resource center dedicated to Black students and increasing academic positions with a focus on “Black life and racial equity issues.”
In the wake of the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, Dr. Block wrote to the campus community to condemn the attack, calling it “a grievous act of malice and hate” perpetrated by a “terror organization.” He also acknowledged the scale of Israel’s response, saying its military campaign had led to “a significant loss of Palestinian lives and the troubling displacement of large numbers of innocent individuals.”
He pledged that the university would “stand firmly in support of our community members’ First Amendment rights to free expression,” but urged people to also have compassion.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:09 a.m. ET
Sharon Otterman
At Rutgers, Holloway has faced scrutiny for several unpopular moves.
Image
When Jonathan Holloway, a scholar of African American history, was appointed as the 21st president of Rutgers in 2020, he said one of his goals was to foster “a beloved community,” a university culture defined by tolerance, diversity and the spirited exchange of opinions and ideas.
“If ever there is a time when people need to be authentically listened to, it’s now,” he told Rutgers Magazine shortly after taking office. “So, it’s important to me to be graceful. To grant grace.”
His goal has been tested ever since.
Even before the war in Gaza brought upheaval to college campuses, Dr. Holloway was under scrutiny for several unpopular moves. Thousands of instructors went on strike to demand better pay, leading Dr. Holloway to threaten a court order to force them back to work. He also approved a tuition increase and removed a popular administrator, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported.
Last September, in a symbolic move, the Rutgers University Senate voted no confidence in his leadership following the months of tumult. The Rutgers Senate is a democratically elected group of faculty, staff and students; it does not, however, have the power to remove the president.
This spring, Dr. Holloway decided to strike a deal with pro-Palestinian demonstrators to end their four-day encampment at the university’s New Brunswick campus. Some charged that he had rewarded demonstrators after they disrupted campus life and chanted anti-Israel slogans that some view as antisemitic.
Dr. Holloway has defended the agreement, even though he acknowledged that “some of the statements that I have heard are disgraceful and have no place at a university.”
“The result of our actions was a peaceful return to the normal course of business,” he told the school’s Board of Governors on May 6.
Before becoming Rutgers’s first Black president, Dr. Holloway was provost of Northwestern University and a professor of history at Yale for nearly two decades. At Yale, he also served as dean of Yale College.
President Holloway’s scholarly work focuses on African American history after the civil war, and he has published several books. One of his Yale courses on African American history is available online.
Advertisem*nt
SKIP ADVERTIsem*nT
May 23, 2024, 10:04 a.m. ET
Ernesto Londoño
Michael Schill has already dealt with several crises at Northwestern.
Image
Michael Schill became the president of Northwestern University in the fall of 2022, following an unusually quick search after the scholar Rebecca M. Blank, who was first tapped for the role, was diagnosed with cancer.
His tenure so far has been marked by crises.
Just months into the job, the university received a complaint about a pattern of hazing in its football team. After reviewing the findings of an investigation into the allegations, Mr. Schill announced last July that Pat Fitzgerald, the team’s head coach, would be suspended without pay for three weeks.
Days later, The Daily Northwestern, the campus newspaper, reported that Mr. Fitzgerald may have been aware of hazing practices, which included simulated sex acts. Mr. Schill fired the coach, and later apologized for the hazing in an essay published in The Chicago Tribune.
Mr. Schill joined Northwestern after leading the University of Oregon for seven years. Early in his career, he worked as a clerk for a federal judge and as a real estate lawyer. His scholarly work has focused on property and housing policy.
At Northwestern, Mr. Schill has made safeguarding free speech and academic freedom a top priority. In February, he established an advisory committee focusing on these issues, asserting that they are critical to the mission of the university and to “solving the world’s problems.”
But the outbreak of violence in Israel and Gaza presented a new challenge, and as pro-Palestinian protests intensified on campus, Mr. Schill’s commitment to free speech was tested.
Mr. Schill refrained from calling the police to dismantle an encampment, and became the first university president to strike a deal with student organizers, who were urging the school to sever financial ties with companies profiting from Israel’s military campaign. That deal drew criticism from Representative Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina and head of the committee he is testifying in front of on Thursday.
