Schill has led the university since 2022.
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Following more than a year of scrutiny from Republicans over how Northwestern University handled pro-Palestinian campus protests last year as well as a months-long federal funding freeze, President Michael Schill plans to step down.
Schill, who has been president since 2022, announced his departure Thursday.
“Over the past three years, it has been my profound honor to serve as president of Northwestern University,” Schill wrote in a message to the campus community. “In that time, our community has made significant progress while simultaneously facing extraordinary challenges. Together, we have made decisions that strengthened the institution and helped safeguard its future.”
Schill’s exit marks an end to a tumultuous tenure at Northwestern.
The wealthy private institution in Illinois has weathered attacks from congressional Republicans over a deal Schill struck with pro-Palestinian campus protesters who set up an encampment on university grounds. Congress hauled Schill in for a hearing on antisemitism in May 2024 over his agreement with the protesters. Schill agreed to provide more insight and input into university investment decisions, amid demands to divest from companies attached to the Israeli war effort. He also promised more support for Palestinian students and faculty, among other concessions.
(However, Northwestern has not provided the level of endowment transparency it promised.)
The president defended the deal before Congress. Schill, who appeared alongside the leaders of Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles, was the main target for congressional Republicans, but he stood his ground—batting away hypothetical questions and refusing to discuss the conduct of individual faculty members.
Still, accusations that Northwestern mishandled antisemitism have continued to dog Schill since, and the Trump administration launched an investigation into alleged civil rights violations and later froze $790 million in federal research funding at the university, which led to deep job cuts this summer.
Schill and other Northwestern leaders said in July that they were working to restore the research funding and were “hopeful it will happen soon.”
Faculty members and other critics also raised concerns about actions taken by Northwestern under his leadership. Steven Thrasher, a journalism professor involved in pro-Palestinian protests on campus, alleged in March that Northwestern denied him tenure for his activism.
Schill also navigated turmoil in athletics when a whistleblower alleged in late 2002 that hazing was allowed to run unchecked in the football program. Schill briefly suspended and later fired Northwestern football coach Pat Fitzgerald and a subordinate. The coach sued Northwestern for wrongful termination in 2023; the two parties reached an undisclosed settlement last month.
“As I reflect on the progress we have made and what lies ahead, I believe now is the right time for new leadership to guide Northwestern into its next chapter,” Schill said Wednesday.
Schill will remain in his role until an interim president steps into the job.
Schill’s pending exit now means only one of seven campus leaders who were called to testify in congressional hearings on campus antisemitism in late 2023 and 2024 still has her job. Leaders at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, UCLA, Rutgers and now Northwestern stepped down within a year of the hearings. (Then–UCLA chancellor Gene Block was already set to retire.) Only Sally Kornbluth at Massachusetts Institute of Technology remains in her job.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican, who emerged as one of the more aggressive inquisitors in prior campus antisemitism hearings, celebrated the news on social media.
“LONG overdue!” she wrote on X. “@NorthwesternUni President Michael Schill finally resigned today after he failed protect Jewish students, caved to the demands of the antisemitic, pro-Hamas mob on Northwestern’s campus, and failed to hold students who perpetuate antisemitic attacks accountable at an Education and the Workforce Committee hearing.”
The White House also welcomed Schill’s resignation in an emailed statement.
“The Trump Administration looks forward to working with the new leadership, and we hope they seize this opportunity to Make Northwestern Great Again,” spokesperson Liz Huston wrote.
