I was a sophomore at Northwestern University at the time of the 2008 presidential election. I had never voted before. I had never thought about politics before. I came from a household that always voted Republican, that was “socially liberal, fiscally conservative.”
I was naive and privileged and did not get it at the time. People around me got it, though. There were HOPE posters, and students going to rallies, and buses taking people to President Obama’s acceptance speech in Grant Park. And for the next three years there, over and over again, I was exposed to people different from me and different from the people I grew up around. People who came from different countries, people who thought different things, people who questioned the beliefs I never doubted.
Higher education encourages students to question assumptions, engage with new ideas and develop critical thinking skills. Campuses are places of free speech, liberalism, democracy, learning, research and innovation. Is that why they’re so scary to authoritarian governments around the world? It is not so easy to trick people into believing propaganda if they’ve been taught how to read and think critically, and are exposed to different viewpoints, and know that there are other worlds possible.
Look at what happened in Hungary, led by one of Trump’s favorite strongmen, Viktor Orbán. They are dismantling public education, eradicating opposing viewpoints and turning campuses into places of mistrust. As Ruth Ben-Ghiat writes, “Orbán aims to discredit and dismantle all liberal and democratic models of education to produce a new authoritarian-friendly population. As someone who grew up under Communism, Orbán knows the power of political socialization. He also knows that universities have always been sites of resistance to authoritarianism.”
What happens when universities aren’t the sites of resistance? What happens when universities, like Northwestern, don’t protect free speech, liberalism and democracy? Will we slowly descend into authoritarianism one acquiescence at a time?
Northwestern took down the website for its Women’s Center because of Trump’s anti-DEI orders, and because of his attack on NIH funding. But everything is unclear, and everything is under litigation. And, as the RoundTable reports, “other colleges — including the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago — have defied the federal order, maintaining and even in some cases reiterating commitments to multicultural programs in support of diversity and inclusion.”
It’s so disappointing to see my alma mater do the very thing that every expert on authoritarianism says exactly not to do — obey in advance. The Women’s Center website “offered resources for gender responsive health, parenting, LGBTQ+ resources, gender-based violence and more. It promoted the center’s projects and events relating to gender justice work.”
What should everyone using that resource do in the meantime? Is it really so scary for a university with the ninth-largest endowment in the country, worth $13.7 billion, to offer its students a vital resource at a time when this administration wages a war on women?
The Trump administration seems okay with open disdain for women. His cabinet is full of people facing sexual assault allegations and those who minimize sexual misconduct. He’s reinstating policy to restrict abortion worldwide, there are hints that the Supreme Court will gut access to birth control and there is legislation that would disenfranchise women’s right to vote. Right now there is legislation in Idaho that would make it permissible for hospitals to deny life-saving miscarriage care.
Under this administration, women will die from miscarrying. This is who Northwestern is listening to. Shouldn’t, instead, Northwestern act in accordance with its own principles? As President Schill says, “Every member of our community should feel welcome … regardless of their socioeconomic status, political viewpoint or protected characteristic.”
I woke up this morning back in Evanston with my three kids and my husband, who is Medill Class of 2011. We met at Nevin’s before it was demolished for that condo building with the empty bottom. We came back here in 2020 to raise our family in a place which reflects our values, along the lake with a beautiful university and the culture of a university town. I think much of that is summed up by the three words diversity, equity and inclusion. What a disgrace that a wealthy university, in a blue city, in a blue county, in a blue state, is too scared to stand up to Trump.
The irony doesn’t escape me that I’m now writing this op-ed against decisions taken by the very institution that taught me how to think, how to question, how to look at the world around me differently. It’s such a disappointment to know that some of the most powerful institutions in our country are appealing to the whims of this power hungry president. I posted the Daily Northwestern story about this to Instagram, and so many women I know who went to Northwestern with me responded with some iteration of WTF.
When Trump was elected this time around, I knew I would have to take part in the opposition. I know too much is at stake for me and my daughters and my family, for our community, for our country and for our democracy. So my friends and community members and I are doing the things that need to be done to protect women and children and the most vulnerable populations.
I don’t know, though, if Northwestern is with us.
Emily Miller
Letter to the editor: Why is Northwestern kowtowing to Trump? is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.