https://www.city-journal.org/northwestern-univ-president-schapiro-stands-up-to-rioters
Since June, a group of Northwestern University students has demanded that the school disband its campus police force and sever ties with the Evanston, Illinois police department. On Saturday, October 17, their protests became unruly. Members of NU Community Not Cops (NUCNC) sprayed anti-cop graffiti on private and public property, broke a window at the local Whole Foods market, set at least one trash can on fire, and burned a school banner. The following Monday, Northwestern’s president denounced the violence in the most unequivocal of terms—and was himself promptly denounced as a racist for having done so. But the president, Morton Schapiro, to his enormous credit, has neither apologized nor backed down on his refusal to abolish the campus police department.
The Northwestern episode is doubly instructive. Schapiro is one of the most woke college presidents in the country. Yet he has done something that almost no Democratic politician or progressive opinion leader has dared do with such forcefulness: draw a bright line between Black Lives Matter protests and violence. Had Democratic presidential and vice presidential candidates Joe Biden and Kamala Harris been as unhesitating in their condemnations of this year’s murderous race riots, the country might have avoided the worst of the anarchy.
But Schapiro is to a considerable extent the architect of his own problems. Over the last several years, he has pandered to the maudlin identity politics that lead students at the most prestigious colleges in the country to think of themselves as oppressed. The ongoing conflict at Northwestern should remind college presidents everywhere that they feed the beast of adolescent narcissism and self-pity at their peril.