Northwestern University administrators announced Monday afternoon that they had reached an agreement with student organizers to end the Gaza solidarity encampment, just over 100 hours after the sustained demonstration began Thursday morning.
The university’s announcement was jointly signed by President Michael Schill, Provost Kathleen Hagerty and Vice President for Student Affairs Susan Davis. In it the administrators wrote that the negotiated agreement “represents a sustainable and de-escalated path forward” from the encampment, at which protesters demanded the university divest from and end any partnerships with Israel in line with other student encampments popping up at universities around the country.
“This agreement was forged by the hard work of students and faculty working closely with members of the administration to help ensure that the violence and escalation we have seen elsewhere does not happen here at Northwestern,” the administrators’ statement reads.
Organizers announced the agreement to the encampment shortly after 2:45 p.m., according to live reporting from The Daily Northwestern, 104 hours after students and faculty first took to the meadow around 6:45 a.m. on Thursday.
“We have been working tirelessly to bring you this statement we are very proud of and hope you guys can be very proud of this milestone we made,” an organizer said to the crowd.
University promises
Most significant to the coalition’s original demands under the “People’s Resolution” are two promises relating to how Northwestern invests its multibillion-dollar endowment.
The university is promising to answer questions from “any internal stakeholder,” such as students and faculty, on specific investments it holds at the time or in the prior financial quarter, “to the best of its knowledge and to the extent legally possible.” Currently, where and how the university invests its endowment is not available information for the campus community or the general public.
Northwestern also agreed to reestablish the Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility in the fall 2024 quarter with membership from students, faculty and staff to “provide a conduit to engagement” with the Board of Trustees’ Investment Committee. The committee was originally established in 2017 to make recommendations to the board’s committee based on community proposals, but stopped meeting at an unknown point after June 2021.
The agreement also commits the university to:
- Publicly condemn the doxing of any campus community member and advising employers against rescinding job offers to protesting students. (Doxing is the public disclosure of the identity and other personal details of someone, especially as a form of online harassment.)
- Fund two visiting Palestinian faculty and cover the cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduate students.
- Establish a permanent house for the Middle East North African/Muslim student community by 2026, and providing an immediate temporary space in the meantime.
- Add additional support for Jewish and Muslim students through the Religious & Spiritual Life office. Jewish encampment organizers have sought a rabbi who is not associated with NU Hillel, which they called “notoriously Zionist.”
- Allow input on the university’s residential and retail vendors for dining services.
The agreement does not address the People’s Resolution’s demand on the university to actually divest from the defense industry and from investments associated with Israel, or the demand to end its academic partnerships with the nation, like the Israel Innovation Project.
In a two-part statement posted to Instagram, the NU Divestment Coalition celebrated these commitments and others as “the floor for our progress going forward, not the ceiling.”
“The agreement represents a commitment towards disclosure, which is a vital precondition for pushing towards divestment,” the coalition’s statement reads. “It does not put an end to our work to continue applying pressure on the administration or the Board of Trustees in the coming months and years.”
Encampment functionally ends
In return for these commitments, the agreement stipulates that the encampment must “immediately and continuously” come into compliance with the university’s student demonstration policies, including new restrictions added in the “interim addendum” policy announced after the encampment began. These requirements include:
- Removing all tents, except for a single aid tent.
- Ceasing unpermitted use of sound amplification devices.
- Limiting entry to the demonstration site to Northwestern students, faculty and staff through Wildcard ID checks.
- Allowing other reserved events on Deering Meadow to take place uninterrupted.
- Ending the demonstration when spring quarter classes end on June 1.
Although the demonstration is currently allowed to continue, meeting these requirements functionally ends the students’ continuous encampment and occupation of Deering Meadow.
“For any demonstrators refusing to comply with the agreed-upon path forward, the University will take action to protect the safety of the community and enforce University rules and policies,” the university’s statement reads. “These steps will include the suspension of non-compliant students and a requirement that non-affiliated individuals leave campus.”
In their Instagram statement, the divestment coalition stated they considered taking the agreement and ending the encampment “the best course of action” given their “specific circumstances” at Northwestern.
“We consider this to be a prime moment to take stock, recharge, plan, and build power,” the statement read. “But we have much work ahead of us and we will not stop now.”
Students began taking down tents and other parts of the encampment after the organizers were finished speaking. By 8:15 p.m. there were around a dozen tents and more than 50 people remaining on the meadow, according to The Daily Northwestern.
Editor’s note: Northwestern sophomore Sofia Sorochinskaia contributed to this story.
Not a word about responses from constituencies other than the administration and the protesters? C’mon, Roundtable, the JUF made it easy for you by issuing a statement and the Hillel is just a half-block from the “encampment”. At the very least, the encampment’s characterization of the Hillel as “notoriously Zionist” demands a rebuttal quote. It’s just good journalism. Do your job.
I applaud the spirit of the agreement, which defuses the immediate tensions and keeps Evanston out of the spotlight shining on campus violence elsewhere.
Perhaps there’s a lesson here:
Negotiating for peace works; 75 years of calls for the extermination of Israel does not.
Northwestern should fund two faculty positions and pay for five student tuitions for Jewish people from Israel in order to give balance and to be fair and equitable.
Folding their tents in exchange for some scholarships, two adjunct faculty positions, seats on an advisory committee and input on student services food vendors. That’s some solidarity there.
You print the slur that the Hillel rabbi is “notoriously Zionist,” but would not use my letter accurately pointing out in a nom-inflammatory fashion that the rabbi participating in the First Presbyterian event is anti-Zionist.
As journalists, you should investigate how much money came into Northwestern donated by Arab countries, especially from Qatar, a country that has practically bought numerous universities in the United States, and that explains a lot of why many people accuse Israel of misrepresenting reality. On many campuses there are demonstrations that are not only anti-Israeli, but also openly anti-Semitic, taking up the most common libels of the Middle Ages. What is the inexplicable establishment of a Northwestern campus, with a journalism school in Doha, all about? It is strange that this should happen in an absolutist country, where no one can express themselves freely