Trump’s Agreement with Northwestern Is a Warning to Higher Education

Originally published by Washington Examiner

Given the nonstop pace of the Trump administration news cycle, it would be easy to assume that all has gone quiet on the university front. Early enforcement actions to address rampant antisemitism at Columbia University and Harvard University dominated the headlines for months and offered university leaders a stark choice: accept a tough but fair civil rights settlement or risk institutional ruin.

Many college presidents and trustees were nonplussed by this opening salvo, figuring, reasonably enough, that there was safety in numbers.

With more than 60 colleges flagged for serious antisemitism concerns after Oct. 7, there simply wasn’t the bandwidth to reach civil rights settlements with scores of universities in the midst of negotiating trade deals with dozens of foreign nations. And when Education Secretary Linda McMahon and President Donald Trump extended an olive branch to universities in the form of a compact for academic excellence, not a single university took them up on it.

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