Extortion and Appeasement at Northwestern

This week, the AAUP issued an important new report, “Extorted Compliance: A Threat to Institutional Autonomy, Academic Freedom, and Shared Governance,” which details the “unprec­edented, destructive, and sustained attack” on higher education.

There is so much government repression happening that even this extensive report cannot include all of it and I cannot begin to summarize it.

The report devotes significant attention to the Northwestern University administration’s capitulation to the Trump administration despite overwhelming opposition from faculty and students and concludes by quoting the Concerned Faculty Group at Northwestern: “Principled leadership must defend academic freedom, protect political dis­sent and resist participating in federal efforts to chill speech, punish protest and weaponize antisemitism for political ends.”

One additional part of the Northwestern story, though, is the suppression against journalism professor Steven Thrasher, which were detailed in a lawsuit he filed earlier this month against both Northwestern and governmental officials who demanded his dismissal.

I’m a member of the Illinois AAUP Committee A and helped to write two letters to Northwestern criticizing the violation of Thrasher’s rights when he was suspended and again when he was denied his terminal year of teaching for daring to criticize the university’s decision

In his lawsuit, Thrasher argues that he was suspended from teaching because he spoke at a campus protest criticizing Israel’s attacks on Gaza and physically defended students at the encampment from being arrested.

Northwestern’s then-president, Michael Schill, testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce on April 23, 2024. At the hearing, Rep. James Banks, an Indiana Republican, denounced Thrasher by name and declared, “Unbelievable, unbelievable, President Schill … That those faculty members would continue to have a job.” Then Banks linked Thrasher to a direct threat to Northwestern’s funding: “You are responsible for Stephen [sic] Thrasher’s activities, which is really crazy … 4 billion dollars have gone to your university. We should not give you another taxpayer dollar for the joke your university has become.”

After this hearing, Northwestern began its campaign of retaliation against Thrasher. In an extraordinary abuse of its power, the Northwestern administration ordered its police department to arrest Thrasher and other protesters, three months after the event. Although the charges were quickly dismissed by the Cook County State’s Attorney, they were intended to intimidate campus protesters, appease Republican politicians and provide an excuse to fire Thrasher.

Then Northwestern suspended Thrasher from teaching, claiming that at a protest he “made statements about standards of journalism that are antithetical to our profession and values as a University, including but not limited to [his] declaration in Deering Meadow that [Dr. Thrasher] do[es] not teach students to be ‘objective.’”

It’s beyond shocking that Northwestern would suspend a professor from teaching for daring to question the crackpot delusion known as “journalistic objectivity.” The idea that journalists can or should be objective has long been discredited by numerous critics. No, journalists are not immune from bias. No, the job of journalists is not to present “both sides” and let the reader figure out the truth. The old Fox News slogan of “we report, you decide” was always idiotic, even without the obvious hypocrisy of the right-wing bias imposed by the corporate owners at Fox.

I think the third-rate relativism known as journalistic objectivity is utter nonsense. However, the role of a university requires institutional neutrality—the administration does not impose its opinions about journalism and allows both the critics of objectivity and the dubious advocates of it to express their ideas.

The idea that a professor could be banned from teaching for not believing in objectivity is so absurd that it shocks the conscience. It also shocked the Northwestern faculty committee that rejected the argument and ordered Thrasher’s reinstatement.

But this suspension was never meant to get rid of Thrasher; it was purely intended to keep him out of the classroom, and appease his powerful enemies among Republican leaders, until Northwestern could deny Thrasher tenure in 2025. Then Northwestern compounded its crimes by banning Thrasher from teaching in his terminal year, claiming that his criticism of the tenure denial constituted sufficient grounds to suspend him yet again.

The story of Steven Thrasher shows how this network of government extortion and repression has had a powerful impact pressuring campuses to fire dissenting faculty and silence free speech. Thrasher’s lawsuit may reveal more of the ugly details of the extortion on campus, and perhaps it will bring him some measure of justice.