Thrasher Sues Northwestern, McMahon, Walberg Over Tenure Denial

Steven Thrasher sued Northwestern University and four top federal officials this week, alleging that Northwestern denied him tenure because, among other things, federal agencies pressured officials to punish his pro-Palestine activism.

“Defendants robbed Dr. Thrasher of his successful academic career and livelihood because of a joint project of Northwestern and elements of the federal government to manufacture consent for their participation in the Zionist colonial project in Palestine,” Thrasher’s lawyers wrote in the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois.

Along with the university, Thrasher is suing Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and Rep. Tim Walberg, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Education and Workforce Committee. In 2024, that committee wrote to then–Northwestern President Michael Schill, criticizing him for refusing to answer whether Thrasher was still teaching students after he “scuffled with and obstructed Northwestern University Police Department officers.”

Thrasher, whom Northwestern hired in 2019 as an assistant journalism professor and its inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of Social Justice in Reporting, tried in spring 2024 to block police from breaking up a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. His lawsuit weaves between actions by Congress and the Departments of Education, Justice and Health and Human Services and the escalating harm he alleges he suffered, which includes suspension from teaching, a criminal complaint against him, tenure denial and his looming termination next month.

Alongside reinstatement to a tenure-track position or a payout “equal to the wages and benefits” he would have received “over the course of his career,” Thrasher is also asking the court to invalidate the university’s settlement with the Trump administration, which Northwestern made to restore federal research funding, to the extent the deal requires suppressing campus speech on Palestine. He’s also asking the court to prohibit “the government defendants from pressuring Defendant Northwestern University to suspend or terminate” faculty.

Thrasher’s suit says Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications Dean Charles Whitaker told him in March 2025 that he was denied tenure “based upon an 8-8 vote by Medill’s Promotion and Tenure Committee.” The university later refused “access to a full internal appeal of his tenure denial,” Thrasher alleges.

In all, he’s suing on 12 counts, including First Amendment retaliation and discrimination against him because he’s Black, gay and associates with Palestinians. Northwestern said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, and the other defendants didn’t return Inside Higher Ed’s requests for comment.