As colleges across the country face increased scrutiny due to the Trump Administration’s attempts to reshape higher education, the Northwestern University Graduate Workers union is looking to make its voice heard. Sophia Casa has the story.
In University Library, Slavic Languages and Literatures, PHD Candidate Grace Clifford is hard at work with a needle and thread on their Halloween costume.
[GRACE CLIFFORD: I’m gonna hand stitch these holes together and then the [word unintelligible] will be finished]
But Clifford isn’t alone, the table is filled with other people: graduate students reading books, writing papers, and talking to one another. All wearing buttons and t-shirts, the group is part of a “public work in” held on Friday by the Northwestern University Graduate Workers union.
CLIFFORD: So today we’re all coming together to work in public as a show of solidarity to make our presence known on campus and to raise awareness about the deal that Northwestern admin, particularly President Bienen wants to make with the Trump administration. And of course, show that we oppose it, obviously.
Since Trump has taken office in January 2025, colleges and universities have found themselves scrambling to adapt [to and resist the myriad of demands put out by the administration. Political Science PHD candidate and NUGW Vice President Summer Pappachen witnessed the fallout in real time.
SUMMER PAPPACHEN: the moment Trump came into power, we already saw Northwestern start to change a lot of policies. The website for all DEI resources was taken down.
This led to the freezing of Northwestern’s federal funds, roughly $790 million, in April.\on October 1st, the Trump administration sent out a proposal for “The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” to 9 schools. This compact offered schools federal funds in exchange for adoption to specific demands. These demands frighten many in the union including Kristian Rodriguez, a PHD candidate in Musicology.
KRISTIAN RODRIGUEZ: But this compact restricts academic freedom in a number of ways. Putting restrictions on any kind of ethnic, gender and sexuality studies, anything that can be construed as anti-conservative, such as like Marxist studies or anything like that. It places restrictions on trans expression and identity and it also creates the ability to target students and workers solely based on immigration status or their country of origin.
While this affects everyone on campus, Rodriguez calls attention to the specific and unique role grad students hold in the issue.
RODRIGUEZ: We’re in an interesting position in that we are both students and workers at the same time. And so because of that we have things that impact both students and both workers, impact us.
Meaning grad workers are dealing with restrictions in both their roles as students and as researchers and teachers, something that concerns NUGW which covers and protects roughly 3,500 grad students on campus.
While Northwestern wasn’t sent the compact in the initial round, graduate workers are beginning to brace for the eventual impact. At the head of this is NUGW President and PHD candidate in Anthropology, Mounica Sreesai.
MOUNICA SREESAI: our fight is not just against the federal admin, but also Northwestern, because like Northwestern has a choice to protect its workers and reject the compact demands
While nothing has been officially said and done, on October 15th in a Northwestern Faculty Assembly Meeting, President Bienen affirmed his commitment to not signing off on all demands in the compact, but he expressed an interest in trying to make a deal with the federal government. Something many, including Clifford, take issue with.
CLIFFORD: Nobody wants him to sign this deal and so I think one of the things we’re doing is we’re showing solidarity. We’re showing the fact that we, as an organized presence, absolutely oppose this.
As a result of the compact and an uncertainty with the university’s path the Northwestern University Graduate Workers Union joined with its sister unions at schools like Cornell and UChicago releasing a joint statement through their union the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America to reject settling and urge their universities’ to “Put Workers Over Deals”.
Following this, these unions took a week of action to bring attention to the current situation. And according to Pappachen, their efforts have been successful in spreading awareness.
PAPPACHEN: It’s created a lot of excitement about the fact that we have a means to resist. And we’ve been doing flyering and buttons and walkthroughs that various organizers in the union have been leading all week and so it’s really created a lot of buzz, at least among the grad student population.
This buzz culminated in Friday’s “public work in”. This is where the union members work in community instead of in isolation as normal. What’s more- they proudly wore union shirts and buttons to promote union efforts. While it might sound like an odd choice for organization efforts, Rodriguez explains the benefits of this type of action.
RODRIGUEZ: akin to a sit in, it’s a non-violent form of political demonstration in that we are taking up space. A lot of people actually didn’t even know about the compact or its potential impacts so this is a way of kind of taking up space and showing our presence in a way that supports our fellow community members.
Especially as the possibility of negotiation becomes more and more possible, Sreesai finds that it is more important than ever to express this dissent.
SREESAI: We are against these deals and any sort of like settlements used, especially using students and faculty, like our work and our research, our lives as like negotiating chips in these deal making.
For Pappachen and the dozens “working in” across Evanston and Chicago, this fuel to fight these threats is powered by one thing.
PAPPACHEN: What’s motivating each and every one of us is a love for these universities and it is a love for our jobs. We are all teachers, we’re researchers, and we’re thought leaders, so to say. For us, this craft and this job is so precious that we wanna protect it from those who are trying to turn higher education into essentially a cesspool of ideology that only benefits the right wing.
[NAT SOUND OF WORK IN CONVERSATIONS]
Northwestern has not announced any start of negotiations or a deal with the Trump Administration. As of October 26th, no university has signed “The Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education”.
For WNUR News, I’m Sophia Casa