Some Northwestern students boycotting antibias training

Micol Bez has three weeks to make a choice.

The Northwestern University graduate student has spent years studying political epistemology and abolitionism. Now, she is prepared to risk everything — her Ph.D. dissertation, her student status and her visa — in an act of protest she calls “a question of moral clarity.”

Bez is part of a group of students boycotting Northwestern’s controversial antibias training video, which critics say conflates criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Those who refuse to complete the online training will be unable to enroll in fall classes, the university said, which could jeopardize their academic standing if they miss the final course registration deadline.

“I’m in a profound moral crisis,” said Bez, who is a member of the student group Northwestern Graduate Workers for Palestine. Her refusal to engage in the training, which makes it “impossible to structurally critique Israel, its policies, the apartheid and the ongoing genocide,” she said, is her taking a stand against Northwestern serving “misinformation to thousands of students.”

Northwestern developed the training video with the Jewish United Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit, amid steep federal pressure to curb alleged antisemitism on campus. But concerned students say the training spreads propaganda about Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza.

The 22-minute video is part of a mandatory antibias course titled “Building a Community of Respect and Breaking Down Biases,” which also includes a segment on anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian biases. Students are required to complete training on discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct.

Northwestern told the Tribune that fewer than three dozen students will be impacted if they do not complete the training this fall. It was unclear if all those students were participating in the boycott, or simply had not completed it. But more than 200 students, faculty and community members have signed an open letter to administrators condemning the program since its introduction in February.

Like Bez, most of the students boycotting the video have watched at least some portion, but refused to mark it for completion.

A Northwestern spokesperson said in a statement that the university is “committed to maintaining education, work and living environments in which people are treated with dignity and respect.”

“Students are not required to agree with the training modules but must attest that they will abide by the Student Code of Conduct,” the statement said.

Northwestern has faced heightened scrutiny under President Donald Trump’s administration, which has painted elite universities hubs for antisemitism. In April, the White House froze $790 million in research funding amid multiple government investigations into the university’s climate for Jewish students.

The probes stemmed from Northwestern’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations last spring. In the aftermath, the university’s then-President Michael Schill testified before a Republican-led congressional committee, pledging to adopt new policies to combat antisemitism — including the antibias training. Schill abruptly resigned last month.

The online course explicitly states that, “It is not antisemitic to criticize the policies, practices, or members of the Israeli government,” unless that criticism relies on antisemitic tropes. But critics say the video’s framing suggests otherwise.

One segment of the video compares comments made by critics of Israel to remarks made by David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. The video also states that Israel was founded “on British land,” and does not show Palestinian populations already in the region.

Students also contend that the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian training glosses over the toll of the ongoing war in Gaza and the history of Palestinians in the Middle East.

“I don’t think anyone is saying that antisemitism doesn’t warrant attention,” said Eden Melles, a fifth-year Ph.D. student also boycotting the training. “I think what people are saying is, ‘We find it really embarrassing that the university has taken such a narrow position on what antisemitism is.’”

In the spring, Northwestern’s Faculty Senate passed a resolution urging the university not to mandate its completion, citing the Illinois Worker Freedom of Speech Act. Other student protests have sprung up in the months since.

“There is a moral incongruence with sitting and watching this training, knowing that it denies the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people,” said Salma Moustafa, a third-year Ph.D. student in sociology.

In an interview with the Tribune, Jewish United Fund President Lonnie Nasatir said he was surprised the training stirred controversy. He stressed that the video explicitly states that criticism of Israeli policies is not antisemitic.

“It was an opportunity to educate and mitigate some of the experiences Jewish students have been feeling the last year and a half on campuses like Northwestern,” Nasatir said. “We felt we were providing a service to Northwestern to create a more inclusive environment.”

Antisemitic incidents on college campuses shot up 84% in 2024 from the year prior, according to the Anti-Defamation League. The spike followed the Oct. 7 attacks, during which Hamas militants killed about 1,200 Israelis and took another 250 hostage.

In response, Israel launched a military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 66,000 people since 2023, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The conflict sparked a wave of campus protests across the U.S, including at Northwestern.

When Schill appeared again before the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce in August, he was questioned on the training and its controversy. He told lawmakers that senior administrators “felt that students really didn’t understand antisemitism,” prompting its development.

“I don’t want to put a stake in the ground and say things are unchangeable because that would be not what an educational institution does,” Schill said, according to the committee transcript. “But we will do antisemitism training, something like this, every year.”

Claire Conner, president of Northwestern Hillel, a national Jewish campus organization, said she thought the training video offered a comprehensive overview of Jewish history and antisemitism. The junior found it “deeply troubling” that some students were refusing to complete it altogether.

“There’s so much recognition of pluralism and of nuance in this video, which made it especially surprising to me that people were cherry-picking the contents to make it seem like one particular viewpoint was being imposed on students,” Conner said.

Others aren’t so sure. Moustafa, originally from Egypt, said the antibias training conflicts with her academic research, which focuses on land dispossession, religion and mass culture. She particularly criticized the training video’s map of Israel, which did not show the Palestinian populations living there.

Although she enrolled in fall courses before a registration hold was placed on her account, she won’t be able to register for winter classes. As a visa holder, changes to her student status could risk her ability to stay in the U.S.

“I think that if it comes down to it, I will have to do the training … but my ultimate goal is to make sure that this training doesn’t go unacknowledged,” Moustafa said. “We can’t pretend not to know how our institutions are complicit.”

Bez, an international student from Italy, faces a more immediate deadline. As she writes her Ph.D. dissertation, She still has yet to register in a mandatory fall academic course — and the final date to enroll is Oct. 20.

Last December, Bez traveled to the West Bank to research violence committed by settlers. Her experience instilled in her a fierce drive for activism. “I came back with a strong feeling of responsibility, but I realized that I was encountering a very different environment (at Northwestern),” Bez said

She is more than midway through writing her thesis on sexual ethics and abolitionism. She still is torn over how to address the training.

“I cannot, in my discipline, do this,” she said.

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