University President Michael Schill is in Washington D.C. for a meeting today with U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon amid the Trump administration’s Tuesday freeze on $790 million in federal funds for Northwestern, according to people familiar with the matter.
A University spokesperson confirmed to The Daily that the meeting had been scheduled for some time, and that the University is “eager to share the progress Northwestern has made on many areas over the past year with Secretary McMahon.”
This comes after the University released a progress report in March on its efforts to combat antisemitism, touting an 88% decrease in reports of discrimination or harassment against Jewish students on campus between November 2023 and November 2024.
While federal officials have confirmed the freeze at NU, it is expected that the Trump administration will draw up its own list of demands for NU to comply with in exchange for returning federal funds — similar to demands made of Harvard University and Columbia University.
Schill’s visit to D.C. also reflects the increasingly fine line that top brass at universities must walk as they face federal freezes and lead their institutions.
In March, Columbia agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration to begin negotiations to restore its $400 million in federal funding currently frozen. The demands at Columbia included banning students from wearing masks at protests, hiring additional campus security who have the ability to arrest students and appointing a new senior vice provost to oversee its Department of Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies.
New developments in those negotiations emerged Thursday that could portend the Trump administration’s playbook for other universities, like NU.
The Trump administration is now planning to pursue a legal arrangement that would put Columbia into a consent decree, The Wall Street Journal first reported Thursday. It would give a federal judge authority to ensure Columbia changes its policies, according to the federal government’s demands, or be held in contempt of court if the judge determines it falls out of compliance.
Before Tuesday’s funding freeze, the Department of Education had already launched Title VI investigations in February into five universities, including NU, for “widespread antisemitic harassment” on their campuses.
Up to that point, federal lawmakers had mostly focused their ire on Schill himself, after he was grilled during the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s hearing on allegations of campus antisemitism in May 2024 following last April’s pro-Palestinian encampment on Deering Meadow.
In a U.S. House of Representatives Staff Report on Antisemitism from December, Schill was also singled out for misleading Congress, “actively entertain(ing) the request” to hire an “anti-Zionist rabbi” and putting “anti-Israel faculty” in charge of negotiations to end the encampment on Deering Meadow.
Tuesday’s federal funding freeze is already playing out on NU’s campus, with over 100 stop-work orders from the Department of Defense announced this week.
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