Walberg Questions Evanston Mayor Over Northwestern Protests

Rep. Tim Walberg, chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, wants to have a briefing with the mayor of Evanston, Ill., regarding his decision not to help dismantle a pro-Palestinian encampment at Northwestern University in April 2024.

Walberg, a Republican, requested the briefing in a Jan. 28 letter to Mayor Daniel Biss, which included 13 pages of communications among then–Northwestern president Michael Schill and university trustees as well as between Schill and Biss.

At multiple points, Schill discusses his intention to arrest protesters but adds that there aren’t enough campus police officers to do so. Later, Schill says that a trustee, Michael Sacks, believed the mayor wouldn’t provide additional police support and would “tell folks to shore up his progressive credentials.” In a record of a different conversation, Sacks wrote, “I know Biss well. If the wind blows in the wrong way he will throw you under the bus. No hesitation.” 

Schill previously told the House committee that Biss declined to provide Evanston police officers to clear the encampments despite a mutual aid agreement between the city and Northwestern.

“He said, ‘You know, you can me sue me if you want,’” Schill said, according to a transcript released by the House committee.

Walberg accused Biss, a Democrat who is running for Congress, of failing to protect Jewish students at Northwestern. The requested briefing will “aid the Committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination, are needed,” according to the letter.

Biss defended his decision not to intervene at a press conference Thursday, according to The Daily Northwestern, and said it was not politically motivated. He did, however, call Walberg’s letter “a dishonest political attack.”

“But we are here today because that attack is an effort to go at the right to peacefully protest. This is an effort to use the very real danger of antisemitism to advance a political agenda,” Biss said, as reported by the student newspaper. “I will say that, personally, as a Jewish person, as a grandson of Holocaust survivors, I find it deeply, deeply offensive.”