Shiel has led the university since 2022.
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President Michael Schill plans to resign after Republican reviews on how Northwestern University handles Pro-Palestinian campus protests and months of federal funding freezes.
Schill, who has been president since 2022, announced his departure on Thursday.
“It has been my honor to be the president of Northwestern University for the past three years,” Sear wrote in a letter to the campus community. “At that time, our community has made significant progress while facing extraordinary challenges at the same time. Together, we have made the decision to strengthen the institution and help maintain its future.”
Schill’s export marks the end of a turbulent deadline in the northwest.
Rich private institutions in Illinois were attacked by Congressional Republicans for a deal with protesters on the Palestinian campus who set up camps based on college reasons. Congress dragged Schill into a hearing on anti-Semitism in May 2024 when it reached an agreement with protesters. Shiel agreed to provide more insight and opinions on university investment decisions, due to demands for evacuation from companies in Israel’s war efforts. He also promised more support to Palestinian students and faculty.
(However, the Northwest has not yet provided the level of layer transparency it promises.)
The president defended the deal before Congress. Schill, who appeared with leaders from Rutgers University and the University of California, Los Angeles, was a primary goal for congressional Republicans, but he persisted in establishing his foothold – addressing hypothetical issues and refusing to discuss the behavior of individual faculty.
Nevertheless, since then, alleging improper anti-Semitism in the Northwest continues to do dog snow in Schill, while the Trump administration has investigated alleged civil rights violations and later frozen the university’s $790 million federal research funding, which led to layoffs this summer.
Shiel and other Northwest leaders said in July that they were working to restore research funding and “hopefully it will happen soon.”
Faculty and other critics also raised concerns about actions taken under the Northwest leadership. Steven Thrasher, a journalism professor who participated in the pro-Palestinian protests on campus, alleging that the Northwest had denied his tenure with his activism.
Shee also got involved in the turmoil of track and field when a whistleblower claimed in late 2002 that he had run unrestrictedly in football plans. Shiel briefly paused and later fired Northwest football coach Pat Fitzgerald and his subordinates. The coach sued the Northwest for illegal dismissal in 2023; the two parties reached an undisclosed settlement last month.
“As I reflect on the progress we have made and what we are going to be ahead, I believe that now is the right time for new leaders to bring Northwest leadership into the next chapter,” Shiel said Wednesday.
Shiel will continue to take on his role until an interim president enters the job.
Schill’s pending withdrawal means that only one of the seven campus leaders who were called to testify at the congressional hearings in late 2023 and 2024. Leaders at Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, UCLA, Rutgers University, now Northwest resigns within one year of the hearing. (At the time – Ukraine President Gene District was ready to retire.) Only Sally Kornbluth of Massachusetts Institute of Technology is still working.
Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican of New York, who became one of the more aggressive investigators at an anti-Semitism hearing on campus, celebrated the news on social media.
“It should have been done!” she wrote on X. “ @northwesternuni President Michael Schill finally resigned after protecting Jewish students because he was bored of anti-Semitism, pro-Hammas mob demands on the Northwest campus but failed to hold students accountable for anti-Semitic attacks at the Education and Workers Committee hearings.”
The White House also welcomed Shee’s resignation in an emailed statement.
“The Trump administration looks forward to working with new leaders, and we hope they will seize this opportunity to make the Northwest great again,” wrote spokesman Liz Huston.
