Topline: Northwestern University — one of the only colleges to negotiate with and appease pro-Palestinian protesters this spring — has received $4.14 billion in U.S. taxpayer money since 2018, according to a new report from OpenTheBooks.com.
Northwestern has also accepted nearly $1 billion since 2007 from foreign donors, including $690 million from the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar.
Key facts: While some colleges punished or even arrested anti-Semitic, anti-Israel student protesters, Northwestern gave into student demands.
Administrators agreed to leave an “aid tent” for protesters to use until June, created five scholarships for Palestinian undergraduate students and hired two Palestinian faculty. They also plan to make an advisory committee that will consider sanctions on Israel.
Northwestern has become a top target of Congressional calls to defund universities who allow antisemitism on their campuses.
Since 2018, the school has received $2.6 billion in grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, $361 million from the National Science Foundation, $256 million from the Department of Defense, and much more.
Northwestern, like other colleges, gets a tremendous tax benefit: taxed for just 1.4% of its $14.9 billion endowment, not 23.5% like wealthy individuals.
The school’s money from Qatar was partly to fund scholarships for Middle Eastern students. Northwestern was also paid to open a campus in Qatar’s “Education City” along with Georgetown, Carnegie-Mellon and more.
Northwestern also received $24 million from Saudi Arabia.
Background: University President Michael Schill testified on May 23 along with other university presidents at a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on campus antisemitism.
Northwestern and Rutgers received the most scrutiny from lawmakers for tolerating antisemitism, according to the Associated Press.
Supporting quote: Schill defended his decision to end the pro-Palestinian encampment through negotiations.
“We had to get the encampment down,” Schill told Congress. “The police solution was not going to be available to us to keep people safe, and also may not be the wisest solution as we’ve seen at other campuses across the country … I would never recommend to the Board of Trustees divestment of anything or any academic boycott of Israel.”
Critical quote: “You should be ashamed of your decisions that allowed antisemitic encampments to endanger Jewish students,” Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) told Schill. “You should be doubly ashamed for capitulating to the antisemitic rule breakers.”
Summary: Just as taxpayers deserve to know how the government spends their money, those paying tuition deserve to know which foreign nations are funding their universities.
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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