Racial Preferences at Northwestern University?

Last November, Northwestern president Michael Schill gave an hourlong address at a meeting of the faculty senate, reportedly with more than 100 professors in attendance. The focus of his speech was the recent presidential election, held nine days prior, which returned Donald Trump to the White House. The rain was pouring and the mood ominous: the Orange Man was back in power.

“This is scary,” Schill reportedly told the professors. America faced a “crisis” that could plunge the university into the most difficult period in its 174-year history.

In the days following the election, Schill had reportedly been poring over academic histories of the McCarthy era and the Red Scare, believing that President Trump might conduct an anti-Communist-style siege of elite universities. According to a source at the meeting, Schill, a lawyer by training, tried to maintain a reasonable demeanor. But all hell broke loose when he turned the microphone over to the faculty.

The United States had entered a “fascist situation,” Lesie Harris, a historian who specializes in slavery, feminism, and sexuality, reportedly declared. Not to be outdone, Helen Tilley, a professor who studies decolonization, allegedly became hysterical and shouted that Trump would usher in an era reminiscent of “1930s Germany” and strip Americans of their rights. Both sentiments were reportedly affirmed by the gathering.

“It’s like they’re from a different planet,” said our source, speaking to City Journal on condition of anonymity. “These people have never had a real job, they get all this government money, and they sit in their little offices all day in their alternative universes.”

When reached by City Journal, Harris initially confirmed her comments and said she stood by them. However, Harris later backtracked, saying she could not confirm her attendance at the meeting as it does not appear in her calendar. Tilley denied being at the meeting when reached for comment. Our source, who took written notes during the meeting, insists that both Harris and Tilley were present and spoke.

Though the faculty had apparently succumbed to a persecution fantasy in response to Trump’s reelection, Schill did, in fact, have reason to worry. According to a lawsuit, he had overseen a policy of brazen racial discrimination, in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act.

Schill presided over a “diversity and inclusion” bureaucracy at Northwestern, which sought to entrench an identity-based hierarchy on campus. In 2023, the university began soliciting statements about applicants’ “background, identity or community” as part of its admissions process, shortly after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in admissions. The university’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Minority Health and Wellbeing, now rebranded as the Impact Institute, hosted a training program that banned heterosexual whites from participation. Similarly, the university incorporated race and identity criteria into many of its scholarships, such as the African American History and Culture Scholarship and the Dean Hansell LGBT Advocates Scholarship.

At Northwestern’s law school, discrimination seems to be official policy. According to a lawsuit filed last year, “left-wing faculty and administrators have been thumbing their noses at federal anti-discrimination statutes and openly discriminating on account of race and sex when appointing professors.” The plaintiff, a nonprofit organization that opposes identity-based preferences in academia, alleges that between 2021 and 2024, the university extended only three of 21 tenure-track offers to white male candidates, and that former dean Daniel Rodriguez sought to conceal communications about faculty hiring, which would have revealed intentional discrimination. Northwestern and Schill did not respond to requests for comment.

Schill has positioned himself as a liberal hero. In 2023, when the Supreme Court was poised to ban affirmative action in admissions, he promised to flout any attempt to roll back racial favoritism. “Let me be unequivocal,” he proclaimed. “Northwestern’s commitment to student diversity will remain no matter what the Supreme Court decides.”

The irony is that, for all their talk about Trump’s fascism, it’s universities like Northwestern that appear to have turned identity-based hierarchy into official policy. If the allegations against them are true, they should be penalized accordingly.

Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images