A Letter From President Schill

There is nothing better than spring at Northwestern. After a chilly winter, Evanston and Chicago come alive with new energy and optimism. 

Gorgeous days on Northwestern’s campuses fill me with gratitude and a sense of purpose. While so much is rapidly changing, I am reminded of what has not changed: my belief in and commitment to the mission of higher education. In an era in which some Americans view higher education as the enemy, I fervently believe it is our main hope for the future. 

I grew up in a working-class community in Schenectady, N.Y. My grandparents on both sides were immigrants to the United States. Neither of my parents had the opportunity to go to college, and my father worked in a factory. He was determined that I attend the best university possible. Bolstered by his encouragement, I attended Princeton and went on to be a lawyer, a law professor and dean, and a university president. While the details vary, stories like mine are repeated on college campuses every day, reflecting the value of a great higher education. 

College transformed me. It wasn’t just the classes taught by world-class professors or the research I did. It was conversations with my peers in the hallways, deep and sometimes difficult discussions in the classroom and, most of all, exposure to people who thought differently than I did.   

Being exposed to different viewpoints from both an academic perspective and from my classmates’ lived experiences allowed me to grow as an academic, a researcher and a person. It changed my entire worldview and helped me develop new and very different perspectives on politics and civic life. That is what a great university does — it provides the opportunity to learn from and alongside people who look, think and act differently than we do, spurring innovation at the intersection of disciplines and ideas and preparing students to be active and informed participants in our democracy. 

Northwestern attracts and supports exceptional students, faculty and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds, perspectives and geographies who learn from one another and contribute to research that impacts the world. They go on to be leaders in politics, business and civic life. 

I am proud of our ability to identify current challenges and provide solutions. These days, seemingly every topic leads to a contentious debate — a result of deep political divides. And often it is difficult to get past our immediate emotional response to communicate, let alone hear each other. It is the duty of institutions such as Northwestern to firmly uphold academic freedom and show our students — and the world — that it is possible and necessary to connect across what can sometimes feel like irreconcilable differences. 

That’s why one of our institutional priorities is defending free expression and promoting engagement across differences. We believe our new Center for Enlightened Disagreement will make Northwestern a model for how to promote constructive discourse in today’s increasingly polarized world. 

The center, housed at the Kellogg School of Management, is developing programming that will reach both undergraduate and graduate students, ensuring that engagement across difference is an essential part of a Northwestern experience. This will provide vital training on how to meaningfully engage with our world as responsible citizens and — importantly — as leaders. The research done by the center will also serve as a blueprint for other institutions. (Read more about the remarkable work of the center’s co-leaders, professors Eli Finkel ’97 and Nour Kteily.)

Advancing enlightened disagreement is just one of our priorities as a great university. Our research enterprise is dedicated to improving quality of life across all sectors. Our researchers are working on treatments for cancer and other life-threatening diseases, as well as studying the rapidly developing fields of data science and artificial intelligence. Through research, we are opening doors to better lives for all. This research will increasingly be the key to American competitiveness in the world. 

Our students study with the most innovative researchers in their fields, with access to cutting-edge laboratories. Whether they are undergraduates embarking on their first research projects or graduate students collaborating with our superstar faculty as those professors develop and advance their own pathbreaking research, our students are making their mark on the world — and they are doing it together. 

No single person enacts change. No single person makes impactful research happen. It takes teamwork. 

At the end of the day, that’s the crux of our mission: bringing our multitude of perspectives together to learn, grow and change the world. 

Our nation and world are more divided than ever, and the challenges facing us are mounting. That is why we must find ways to connect with one another, seek to understand those we disagree with, and engage with those people and their ideas. This is how we are contributing to a brighter and better world. This is what we will continue to fight for. Because education changes lives. 

Northwestern changes lives.