Northwestern will pay $75 million to settle Title VI investigation

On Nov. 28, Northwestern University reached an agreement with the Trump administration which would require the school to pay the U.S. treasury $75 million, uphold a commitment to protecting Jewish students, adhere to Title VI by protecting men from women’s spaces, and terminate its previous agreement to fund a set of Palestinian faculty and student positions. 

This agreement comes after President Trump froze $790 million in federal research to the university to hold the university accountable for alleged Title VI violations.

In his public statement, Northwestern President Henry Bienen said that the agreement was not entered into “lightly.” Bienen refers to the process of being examined by the federal government for Title VI violations as “grueling” and a “difficult stretch.” 

[RELATED: Northwestern President Michael Schill resigns amid anti-Semitism controversy]

Bienen emphasizes that the $75 million settlement payment is a mere “condition of the agreement” and not an “admission of guilt.” In a Q&A video, Bienen cited the slow nature of the American legal system as to why the university chose to sign the agreement. 

”Litigation would’ve taken years to work its way through the legal system,” Bienen said.  

Zachary Marschall, Editor-in-Chief at Campus Reform, submitted a Title VI complaint against Northwestern in 2023. The Biden administration opened an investigation against the university in January 2024 over failures to protect Jewish students from discrimination based on national origin. 

The Daily Northwestern and the Washington Examiner reported the connection between Marschall’s Title VI complaint and subsequent investigation to the frozen funding. 

In the spring of 2024, Schill’s administration struck up the Deering Meadow agreement with pro-Palestinian demonstrators to end an on-campus encampment. 

Northwestern administrators pledged to “support visiting Palestinian faculty and students at risk.” The deal includes funding two Palestinian faculty positions each year for two years and covering the full cost of attendance for five Palestinian undergraduates.

The university also promised additional facilities, granting “temporary space” for Muslim students and students in the Middle East and North African Studies Program. Administrators further committed to constructing a permanent house to serve those student groups.

Michael Teplitsky, president of the Coalition against Anti-Semitism at Northwestern (CAAN) told Campus Reform that he considers the Deering Meadow Agreement “one of the most discriminatory and dangerous documents ever produced by a major American university.” 

Teplitsky said the agreement granted preferential treatment based on national origin, elevated groups involved in harassment, bypassed mandatory governance safeguards, and signaled institutional surrender.

”Northwestern never once met with the Jewish community while negotiating this agreement, nor did it consult its own President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate (PASH), which had been created specifically to provide guidance on these issues,” Teplitsky told Campus Reform.  

CAAN spent two years documenting violations, collecting testimony, and engaging federal agencies, congressional investigators, and oversight partners. In 2024, we brought students to Congress to share their experiences directly with lawmakers, and in 2025 we brought additional students to the White House, the Department of Justice, the Department of Education, and the Senate HELP Committee. 

”You do not accept a $75 million federal penalty and multi-year oversight regime unless there were serious failures,” Teplitsky told Campus Reform. “Northwestern’s public claim that it was ‘not found in violation’ misrepresents how civil-rights resolutions work; agencies routinely resolve violations through agreements once corrective plans are secured.”

The agreement also pushes the campus-climate fight toward auditable student data.

Northwestern must hire an external party to survey students—including Jewish students—within six months, asking whether they feel “welcome,” safe reporting anti-Semitism, and satisfied with the university’s response, and then deliver the results to the federal government within 45 days. The point is a numbers-based, independent read on Jewish students’ wellbeing, not just Northwestern’s self-reporting.

Amid a frenzy of those calling the Trump administration’s oversight of Title VI investigations a hindrance to “academic freedom,” the agreement opens by acknowledging that it will not and does not “dictate faculty hiring, University hiring, admission decisions, Northwestern’s curriculum, or the content of academic speech and research.” 

[RELATED: WATCH: Dr. Marschall says Northwestern University is ‘ignoring’ anti-Semitism issue]

“Today’s settlement marks another victory in the Trump Administration’s fight to ensure that American educational institutions protect Jewish students and put merit first,” said Pam Bondi. “Institutions that accept federal funds are obligated to follow civil rights law.”

Though the Resolution Agreement doesn’t name a formal federal monitor like Columbia University’s agreement does, its architecture amounts to the same thing. The university is now locked into mandatory reporting, documentation, corrective-action duties, and rolling review by ED, DOJ, and HHS. 

Campus Reform has reached out to Northwestern University for comment, and this article will be updated accordingly.