A Northwestern University professor who participated in the pro-Palestinian student encampments last year says he has been denied tenure and will not have his position renewed in April 2026 by the private research university in Evanston, Ill.
Steven Thrasher, an associate professor of journalism and the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting, released a statement on Thursday claiming that the dean of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism informed him of the school’s decision earlier this month. Thrasher said he intends to appeal the decision, which he believes is political in nature and a violation of his free speech rights.
In April 2024, Thrasher helped form a line between police and anti-Israel protestors at the student encampment on Northwestern’s campus in an attempt to prevent officers from breaking up the protests. Thrasher was charged with misdemeanor obstruction, which was later dropped.
In May 2024, Michael Schill, Northwestern’s president, was called to testify before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce over his response to the encampment.
During that hearing, U.S. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) identified Thrasher as a faculty member who “blocked the police officers on your campus from doing their job.” Banks queried Schill on whether Thrasher would be allowed to continue to teach after the “embarrassing incident.”
Schill declined to comment then, citing personnel and due process matters, and a university spokesperson had a similar response following Thrasher’s statement last week but noted that Northwestern had “full confidence in the decision-making process of the Medill faculty and dean.”
The school canceled his fall classes and launched its initial investigation in September. In January, the school found no grounds to suspend Thrasher and a new investigation was launched. He will return to the classroom for the spring quarter.
Thrasher’s social media accounts revealed several anti-Israel statements comparing Israel to Nazis and appearing to express support for the actions of Hamas during its terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Additionally, in a November 2023 blog post, Thrasher compared Gaza to a Nazi concentration camp, arguing that if Jews were able to break free from concentration camps in Nazi Germany, they would have killed “anyone they found partying”—a seeming reference to the Nova Music Festival, where hundreds of people were killed and dozens of others taken hostage on Oct. 7.
Thrasher, who earned his doctoral degree in 2019 from New York University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was denounced by university leadership for an address during the convocation ceremony when he expressed support for the BDS movement and voiced his support for the Students for Justice in Palestine, a group that has since been suspended on a number of campuses due to its organization of illegal protests and intimidation of and violence toward Jewish students.
