The president of Northwestern University, Michael H. Schill, announced Thursday that he would resign, ending a difficult tenure that included attacks on the school from Republicans in Congress and cuts in funding by the Trump administration that forced the university to lay off hundreds of employees.
Northwestern became a target of Trump administration officials this year after months of intense scrutiny from Republican lawmakers.
Mr. Schill faced withering questions during a Congressional hearing last year, when Republicans accused the university of not doing enough to address antisemitism during campus protests over the war in Gaza. They have argued that the school was still not aggressive enough in protecting Jewish students from harassment. Jewish groups including the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center have called for Mr. Schill to resign, faulting him for negotiating with the protesters.
In April, the federal government abruptly froze at least $790 million in federal research funding that had been planned for Northwestern, a Big Ten school with campuses in Evanston, Ill., and downtown Chicago.
The attacks on Northwestern have been part of a broader campaign by Republicans to take American universities to task, claiming that the schools mistreated Jewish students. Mr. Schill’s resignation is the latest in a series of high-profile departures from the leadership of elite institutions that have stemmed, at least in part, from a Republican pressure campaign that started in 2023, in the wake of protests over the war in Gaza.
In a message to Northwestern students, employees and alumni that was issued Thursday, Mr. Schill alluded, but only glancingly, to the troubles of the last two years. “Our community has made significant progress while simultaneously facing extraordinary challenges,” he said. “Together, we have made decisions that strengthened the institution and helped safeguard its future.”
Attacking elite colleges has become central to Mr. Trump’s agenda in his second term. The administration has frozen millions, and even billions, of dollars in federal research funds in order to push schools to adopt its preferred policies. It has broadened the reasons it states for going after schools, and expanded its focus beyond elite private universities to include public institutions like the University of Virginia, whose president, James E. Ryan, resigned earlier this year under pressure from Trump officials.
After the Trump administration froze Northwestern’s funds, the university warned that essential research was “in jeopardy,” and it has spent the last few months trying to cope with a vast loss of funding.
In July, the university said it planned to eliminate about 425 jobs. Close to half of those jobs were vacant, university leaders said, but they nonetheless acknowledged that layoffs were “a drastic step” and “the most painful measure we have had to take.”
Mr. Schill took office three years ago. He is an expert in property, real estate and housing law and policy. After a sabbatical following his resignation as president, he will continue to teach law at Northwestern.
He had faced troubles even before the recent struggle over research grants.
His handling of a hazing scandal in the Northwestern’s football program drew scrutiny. In July 2023, Northwestern suspended Pat Fitzgerald, its longtime football coach, for two weeks after an investigation found credible reports of hazing in the program.
After former players came forward with details of the alleged hazing, which were published in The Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper, Mr. Schill said he may have “erred” in his decision to merely suspend Mr. Fitzgerald. He then fired the coach.
Mr. Fitzgerald denied having any knowledge of hazing and sued the university for $130 million for wrongful termination. He settled the suit with Northwestern last month. The terms of the settlement were not disclosed, but Mr. Fitzgerald’s agent said he was “very, very satisfied” with the outcome.
In a statement after the settlement, Northwestern said, “The evidence uncovered during extensive discovery did not establish that any player reported hazing to Coach Fitzgerald or that Coach Fitzgerald condoned or directed any hazing.”
Mr. Schill notched some successes during his term. The announcement of his resignation credited him with elevating the university’s standing in U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings and with raising nearly $2.5 billion in donations.
He had only been president of Northwestern for about a year when Hamas attacked Israel, leading to the most turmoil on college campuses since the Vietnam War.
During his testimony before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in May 2024, Mr. Schill found himself on the defensive over his handling of students who set up an encampment on campus. Many critics saw the encampment as not just pro-Palestinian but also anti-Israel and anti-Jewish.
Republican members of Congress and some major Jewish groups attacked Mr. Schill for negotiating with the protesters and making what the critics thought were inappropriate concessions. In exchange for the protesters removing their tents, Northwestern agreed to provide scholarships to five Palestinian undergraduate students and visiting faculty positions to two Palestinian scholars, and to create a safe space on campus for Middle Eastern and North African Muslim students.
Mr. Schill said the negotiations were a success because they led to the peaceful dismantling of the encampment, in contrast to what happened at some other universities, like Columbia and the University of California, Los Angeles, where protests devolved into violence.
“We had to get the encampment down,” he said. At the same time, he said, he was trying to balance fighting what he called “a disturbing rise in antisemitism in America,” against the free speech rights of students.
In his congressional testimony, Mr. Schill resisted the charge of antisemitism by bringing up his own history.
“This fight could not be more personal for me,” he said in prepared remarks. “My great-grandfather was killed in a pogrom on Good Friday in Russia. Four of my grandmother’s five sisters perished in the camps in Poland and many of my father’s first cousins were similarly rounded up.”
He noted that he had pushed back against some of the protesters’ demands, like divesting university funds from Israel. But the Republican-led committee was not swayed.
“Each of you should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, Republican of North Carolina and the committee chairwoman at the time, told Mr. Schill and other university presidents at the hearing.
Mr. Schill, she continued, “should be doubly ashamed for capitulating to the antisemitic rule breakers.”
The federal pressure on Mr. Schill — and on other university presidents — has continued virtually without reprieve, and Northwestern has signaled that the damage it has suffered is likely to be lasting. Even a deal with the White House would “not be enough to reverse the actions we are taking now.”
Mr. Schill faced internal pressure as well. In an open letter in June, published in the student newspaper, 51 members of the Northwestern faculty faulted Mr. Schill for not consulting more with faculty members and for being too willing to bend to the Trump administration’s will.
“We understand that President Schill has to follow federal law,” the faculty members wrote. “We would like to caution him, however, that in the present circumstances it is often unclear what is legal and what isn’t. The law has now been weaponized to punish institutions and groups the federal government wishes to target. This is a political and constitutional crisis.”
But he also had institutional support. On Aug. 1, university trustees “connected to the Jewish community” wrote a letter to Representative Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan and the current chairman of the education committee, strongly endorsing Mr. Schill’s leadership.
“We believe there has been a marked change on campus, led by the efforts of President Schill and his team,” the letter said.
Complaints of antisemitic incidents were down “dramatically,” it said, and Northwestern had adopted the stringent definition of antisemitism used by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
Still, in an ominous signal that Mr. Schill was not off the hook with Congressional Republicans, he was called back to the House education committee for a closed-door interview a few days later, more than a year after his original testimony.
In a letter requesting that Mr. Schill return for a second grilling, Mr. Walberg said Northwestern’s reforms had not “come to satisfactory fruition.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research. Alan Blinder contributed reporting.
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
Michael S. Schmidt is an investigative reporter for The Times covering Washington. His work focuses on tracking and explaining high-profile federal investigations.
Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent for The Times, covering President Trump and his administration.
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