Staying True to Our Guiding Principles
Dear members of the Northwestern community,
The events of the past two months have left many in our community stunned and uncertain about the future of higher education in our nation and our ability as a university to effectively pursue our joint mission of research and teaching. Between the threats to our budget coming from the proposed reduction of Facilities and Administration charges and proposals to increase the tax on our endowment returns, to restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and “holds” on federal research grants, many of us are quite literally trying to catch our breath.
All of this is in the backdrop of a U.S. Department of Education investigation of Northwestern and several other universities as well as a Department of Justice task force visit that was announced last week.
While the scope of Executive Orders, agency guidance and other measures from the federal government has been wide-ranging, a common theme through many of them has been the potential penalties that colleges and universities face — specifically, the loss of federal funding for our students and faculty that would fundamentally undermine our ability to fulfill our mission.
We write today not to detail plans for dealing with all these challenges. Things are changing day-to-day, and quite honestly, we don’t have all the answers yet. But we are working hard to develop strategies to protect our University and its ability to achieve its mission. We commit to responding to whatever challenges come our way in a thoughtful, deliberative and inclusive way.
Our purpose today is to let each of you know what some of our guiding principles will be as we make the many hard decisions in front of us.
- We share with you a fierce commitment to academic freedom. We will defend the rights of our faculty to determine the content of their scholarship and their courses. Restrictions on academic freedom undermine the purpose of the university — the search for truth and enlightenment and the transmission of knowledge to our students and future generations.
- We value free expression and vigorous debate. We wholeheartedly endorse the August 2024 statement of the President’s Advisory Committee on Free Expression and Institutional Speech, which states, in part, “[w]hether in concert with prevailing wisdom or in defiance of it, Northwestern University faculty and students have wide-ranging liberty to pursue their scholarly, pedagogical, intellectual and artistic activities.”
- We believe that all students, faculty and staff deserve to be free from discrimination, hate and intimidation. We must, through our rules, practices and teaching, promote a culture of respect and community that furthers engagement and the free flow of ideas.
- We believe that the diversity of our University — bringing together students, faculty and staff from different backgrounds, viewpoints and communities — is essential to our mission of teaching and research. It is only through engagement across difference that we can obtain the full transformative benefit of a great residential university. Furthermore, we can maximize the potential of our remarkably diverse community only if we ensure that every one of our members is valued, supported and feels a part of Northwestern.
- We believe in access and opportunity regardless of socioeconomic status. Neither of us would be here today without the help of others who opened the doors to college. Higher education is the springboard for mobility and community empowerment, and we want to share that experience with future generations.
- We pursue excellence in every part of the University and never lose sight of our ambition to forever be among the greatest research universities in the world. As we work through what promises to be a challenging fiscal future, we will always keep this in mind.
- We believe that research is essential to the future welfare and competitiveness of our nation and the world. We will vigorously advocate for continued government investment in research and innovation. In periods of public retrenchment, we will seek support from other partners including industry and philanthropy.
- We believe in and will adhere to the rule of law, but we also will use our collective voice in partnership with our fellow universities to promote higher education policies and practices that are in line with these values.
We both have an abiding optimism about the role our University plays and can continue to play in building civil society. There will be ebbs and flows in human progress, but higher education will always be its driving force. Both of us understand that it is a privilege to participate in the leadership of this amazing and vital institution.