* I saw lots of stories during the break about Northwestern University agreeing to pay the federal government $75 million to get out of some legal hot water, but I haven’t seen many reports that actually detail what’s in the agreement. Click here for some insight into that, and click here for the actual agreement.
Gov. Pritzker is not just one of the state’s most outspoken Trump critics, he’s also a Northwestern law grad who, along with his spouse, donated $100 million to what is now the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law.
Isabel and I were both curious what he thought about the agreement, so she brought it up at today’s press conference…
Isabel: What’s your reaction to Northwestern agreeing to a settlement that adopts Trump-era definitions of sex and gender and restricts gender affirming care for minors? Do you believe the university should accept the terms? And are you concerned about the precedent this could set for other Illinois institutions?
Pritzker: I don’t think the universities should be capitulating to the extortion that’s being brought upon them by the federal administration. Period. End of sentence. Any university.
I am, you know, of the belief that every time a university signs an agreement based upon this extortion that they’re whittling away just a little bit at the democracy that I think we’ve all relied upon. So I understand what the challenges are for universities, that they’re having hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even more than a billion dollars, taken away from them, each one. These are research institutions that all of us rely upon, by the way, for their medical research and other work that often leads to, well, groundbreaking life-saving solutions to problems in the world.
But we are, as each day goes by and as each university battles with these questions, we face the, problem of the truly existential nature of the challenge that’s before them and before us as a result.
* Isabel also asked Pritzker if he’d met with Northwestern’s president. He said he did. She asked some follow-ups to her follow-up…
Isabel: What was that conversation like?
Pritzker: I expressed what I said to you about universities and the extortion that the federal government is bringing upon them.
Isabel: Did he offer any apologies?
Pritzker: I think he expressed what I think most people in his position might say, which is the pressure that’s being put on universities today is massive. And if you think about what they were attempting to do in the face of having more than $700 million taken away from them from the federal government. Remember, we’re all for efficiency in the federal government, and you know, if you can spend less money and get the same or better results, great. That’s not what the Trump administration is doing. They’re trying to effectuate policies that are not law by taking grants away and holding the university hostage, and forcing them, therefore, to sign an agreement that might have things in it that aren’t even in the law and that the university may not want to or may not believe in, in order to get the hundreds of millions.
Why is that important to a university? Well, you can imagine you’ve got scientists that you’ve attracted to R1 institutions. These are the best research institutions in the country, and they are in danger of losing those people to foreign governments, to foreign universities, or just competitive universities.
I want them to stay in Illinois. But again, I understand the pressure that’s on them. I just feel like every day democracy is slipping away whenever any of us capitulate in any significant fashion.
