On November 28, Northwestern caved to President Trump. The university was caught up in the administration’s campaign of intimidation against American universities, in this case leading to a freeze on nearly $800 million in federal funding. To end the freeze, Northwestern agreed to pay a ransom of $75 million as well as agree to several other controls on the university’s operations, including providing the government data who is admitted and why, asking international students why they want to study in the United States and developing training materials to “socialize” them, and refusing to provide “hormonal interventions and transgender surgeries” on anyone under eighteen at the university’s hospitals. The purported reason for the funding freeze, campus antisemitism, is a real problem that deserves attention from every institution of higher learning and the federal government, but the breadth of controls on the university in this deal show that that’s not really what this is about.
Along with Northwestern faculty and students, many Democrats decried the deal and called it capitulation, and they’re right. Contrary to the interim university president’s statement, Northwestern no longer runs Northwestern.
Northwestern is meaningful to me. I didn’t go there for college, but I did go to summer camp there in middle school and high school. It was my first extended experience away from home and first time on a college campus, and it’s why I live in Evanston now—I fell in love with the town during those summers. Whenever I’m near the university, which is just a few minutes away, I’m filled with those early memories.
I’m outraged by the administration’s campaign of intimidation, which extends beyond universities to companies, law firms, individuals, independent agencies, and on and on. When the attacks started, I applauded those who stood up, and was ashamed of the ones that folded immediately, particularly because when places with institutional strength and resources fold, it tells everybody that it’s not worth trying to stand firm.
But after months of this, Northwester’s settlement struck me differently. I hate the invasion of academic freedom, the subversion of an independent institution to political manipulation, and the cruel restrictions on medical care, not to mention the drag on scientific research and innovation. But now I’m left wondering: what were they supposed to do? At an institutional level, a university cannot take an activist position indefinitely. They are responsible for the careers of faculty and staff, for the ambitions of students, for the economies and cultures of the communities where they sit. They have budgets and reputations to manage, and they must compete for grants, for top faculty and students, for everything. They have a vital role to play in civic and cultural life, but they are not built to withstand a siege by the most powerful entity in the world.
I don’t know what deliberations went into coming to this agreement, but I imagine that a critical question, implicit or explicit, was how long this would last. If the university believed this would be over in six months, or even a year or two, I’d expect them to hold firm, draw down their endowment, and make a stand for both broader principle and their own integrity. But what assurance do they have that this will end any time soon? How long should they wait? As of now, there’s no reason to expect that the Trump Administration will relent voluntarily, that the Supreme Court would side with the university in a challenge, or that Democrats will be able to do anything about it even if we pick up a few more seats in the House. That means it’ll be at least 2029 before this stops, and if I were a university leader looking at the landscape, I would not bet on the Democrats’ current chances in 2028.
Capitulation comes in a many forms. There are the eager sellouts in the Republican Party who are all-in with an administration they once claimed they’d never support. There are those, like Northwestern, who cave while making their dissent known, some quickly and some after a struggle, some quietly and others stridently.
And then there is the masked capitulation of the Democratic Party. We loudly disapprove of the administration and posture as the resistance, but we are failing to do what it would take to actually fight: finding a new platform, persuading new voters, and building a majority that can win back the House, the Senate, and most indispensably the White House. Fighting without trying to win is a kind of surrender, and many of the Democrats vocally opposing this deal are doing exactly that by running on platforms that can win a Democratic primary but that will not move the party one inch closer to ending the MAGA era.
One of my opponents in the race, Evanston mayor Daniel Biss, argued that the university faced “impossible decisions,” and I agree. While I find this deal shameful, I don’t place the blame with the university. It’s their job to stand up for their principles, but they were never going to be able to match a concerted effort by the federal government to starve them of resources and harass them into submission. I would place the blame with the administration, but at this point they’re less like an administration and more like a natural disaster: devastating and beyond reason. Instead, I place the blame with Democrats. It’s our job to stand up for the principles at stake here, and we don’t face an impossible decision. We can settle comfortably into performative resistance or we can focus on winning back leadership and ending this madness. I’d like the politicians condemning the university’s deal to take a harder look at which choice they’re making.