Kathleen Hagerty, who has been the provost at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., for five years, announced on Thursday that she plans to resign at the end of the academic year.
“I have worked with dedicated, smart and caring people who know how to get things done and love Northwestern as much as I do, including an incredibly talented and caring group of deans and senior leaders,” she stated.
Her resignation comes amid a U.S. Department of Education probe, announced in February, of the school over its handling of Jew-hatred on campus.
The Department of Health and Human Services is also reportedly investigating the university, and the House Education and Workforce Committee has grilled Michael Schill, who has since resigned as president of the university, about his administration’s efforts to address Jew-hatred on campus.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, told JNS that “in a transcribed interview, Northwestern’s outgoing president Michael Schill told my committee that Hagerty viewed pro-Palestine encampments—which exist to terrify Jewish students and faculty—as ‘teachable moments.’”
“She demonstrated clear support for the antisemitic BDS movement, even going so far as to enthusiastically endorse a proposal for Northwestern to boycott a brand of hummus,” he said.
“Like so many university leaders, Hagerty indulged the whims of antisemitic mobs while doing very little to protect Jews,” Walberg told JNS. “I hope her replacement does a better job of protecting all students and faculty as required by law.”
Daniel Schwartz, president and co-founder of the Chicago Jewish Alliance, told JNS that Hagerty’s resignation is the “first acknowledgment that something went terribly wrong.” (JNS sought comment from Northwestern.)
“For a year, Jewish students at Northwestern have lived with fear, isolation and silence from the very leaders sworn to protect them,” Schwartz said. “When antisemitism swept across campus, the administration’s instinct was not moral clarity but negotiation. Hatred was treated like a scheduling conflict. Safety became a bargaining chip. That is not leadership.”
Hagerty’s resignation “must be the beginning of a reckoning,” Schwartz said. “Northwestern has a chance to start again. It must not waste it.”
Michael Teplitsky, president of the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern and a Northwestern alumnus, told JNS that congressional investigators found text messages indicating that Hagerty was advising a professor at the university on “how to pressure Northwestern’s board of trustees to divest from Israel-linked companies.”
That advice included how to boycott Sabra Hummus “as a bargaining chip, while praising encampment leaders who violated university policy,” according to Teplitsky.
“Hagerty oversaw every dean, faculty appointment and academic program, including the schools now at the center of federal findings,” he said. “Under her watch, administrators ignored antisemitic harassment, empowered extremist faculty and rewarded activists who targeted Jewish students.”
