Members of a Northwestern
University student group pushing for the abolition of the University Police Department
are vowing to continue their efforts despite a letter from University President
Morton Schapiro criticizing some of the protesters’ actions.
With the group “NU
Community, Not Cops” playing a lead role, students have marched or demonstrated
for about a week and a half, said Karina Karbo, one of the student leaders.
On Oct. 20. Northwestern and
Evanston police blocked off Sheridan Road from Chicago Avenue east to the lake
as about 75 protesters sat in the middle of the street.
“We are out here to sort of
participate as a community our quarterly community dialogue with the administrators,” Ms. Karbo explained.
She said a Zoom link had
been established for students to listen in to a question-and-answer session
with Northwestern administrators about the group’s concerns.
A “NU Community, Not Cops”-led
event drew a gathering estimated at 300 persons Saturday night, with
protesters gathering in front of Foster-Walker complex and ending outside of
Mr. Schapiro’s house calling for the abolition of the
Northwestern University Police Department.
Ms. Karbo said student
demands for the University Police Department to be defunded date back to May
and June when the group submitted a petition that had more than 8,000
signatures.
“And basically the general
consensus is that they [the University] should defund and disband the NUPD
and reinvest that money back into Black and Brown students at Northwestern,”
she said. “And generally, we've been met with nothing concrete, nothing
actionable, just dialog of which nothing came out of.”
That was until yesterday, she
said, “in which we received a long email from our president, which didn't
really address any of the concerns that we're trying to bring up.”
President Schapiro’s letter
In his letter issued Oct.19,
President Schapiro noted that the University recognized “the many injustices
faced by Black and other marginalized groups.
“We also acknowledge that
the policing and criminal justice system in our country is too often stacked
against those same communities,” he said.
“Your concerns are valid and
necessary, and we encourage and, in fact, rely on your active engagement with
us to make your school and our society equitable and safe for everyone,” he
said addressing the student protesters.
The University encourages
“members of our community to find meaningful ways to get involved and advocate
for causes they believe in – and to do so safely and peacefully,” he said.
But while the University
protects the right to peaceful protest, the school does “not condone breaking
the law,” the president stressed.
“What started as peaceful
protests have recently grown into expressions that have been anything but
peaceful or productive,” Mr. Schapiro charged.
“Crowds blocked the streets
of downtown Evanston and nearby residential areas, disrupting businesses and
local families, defacing property and violating laws and University standards.
Some of the instigators appear not to be Northwestern students at all, but
rather outside activists,” he wrote.
Further, he suggested in his
letter, that events in recent days seem to indicate an intent by organizers to
escalate matters, and to provoke NUPD into retaliation.
“I condemn, in the strongest
possible terms, the overstepping of the protesters. They have no right to
menace members of our academic and surrounding communities,” he said.
Beyond free speech
“When students and other
participants are vandalizing property, lighting fires and spray-painting
phrases such as “kill the pigs,” we have moved well past legitimate forms of
free speech,” Mr. Schapiro contended.
“I want to offer a personal
illustration of the pain these protesters have caused. Many gathered outside my
home this weekend into the early hours of the morning, chanting “f--- you
Morty” and “piggy Morty.” The latter comes dangerously close to a longstanding
trope against observant Jews like myself. Whether it was done out of ignorance
or out of anti-Semitism, it is completely unacceptable, and I ask them to
consider how their parents and siblings would feel if a group came to their
homes in the middle of the night to wake up their families with such vile and
personal attacks.
“To those protesters and
their supporters who justify such actions, I ask you to take a long hard look
in the mirror and realize that this isn’t actually ‘speaking truth to power’ or
furthering your cause. It is an abomination and you should be ashamed of
yourselves.”
Faculty members respond
Mr. Schapiro’s letter
triggered strong reactions of its own, including a response from the faculty
and affiliates of the University’s Department of African American Studies.
Recounting a number of
inequities that have not been addressed, the faculty letter, citing reporting
by the Daily Northwestern, the student newspaper, pointed to “the
disproportionate policing of Black students.”
“Whereas Black students
comprise roughly 6 percent of the student population, 22-40% of NUPD
field-initiated stops over the past two years have been of Black people.
“Given these realities,”
faculty members wrote, “it is difficult to conceive of the level of ignorance,
narcissism, or disingenuousness that would have to be present for you to personalize
students referencing ‘pigs’ as an antisemitic slur, rather than to understand
these students’ anger as a product of nightmarish experiences that you – as an
adult who in fact wields a great deal of power – bear substantial
responsibility to address,” the faculty letter said.
NU Community, not Cops
in its release, called it “absurd for Morton Schapiro to suggest that
protestors were invoking an anti-Semitic trope derived from the European Middle
Ages and not the word ‘pig’ as it refers to the racist United States
police. Regardless of our intent, we apologize to our Jewish community, to
individuals both inside and outside of the campaign who may have been harmed by
language utilized at the protest.”
The group said it did not
apologize for its overriding concerns and indicated it would continue its
efforts.
“We continue to stand in
solidarity with Palestinian liberation by our shared virtue of abolition. As we
have been saying for months, we envision a world without state-sanctioned
violence: from Evanston to Lagos to Bethlehem, cops have got to go.”