CHICAGO — Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss is calling on the Trump administration to explain how its recent agreement with Northwestern University could affect protests, community partnerships and immigration enforcement in the city the school calls home, according to a letter provided to the Chicago Tribune.

Northwestern late last month announced it would pay a $75 million fine and enter into an agreement with President Donald Trump to settle allegations of antisemitism and restore roughly $800 million in frozen federal research funds. The move brought both relief and backlash on campus, with critics alarmed by the Trump administration’s expanding influence over one of the nation’s top universities.

Biss, who is running for the U.S. House in Illinois’ 9th Congressional District and has protested the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration enforcement actions for months, used his letter to fault the administration for releasing limited information about the terms of the deal, saying the limited disclosures have “already created deep confusion and alarm.”

“Now that a settlement has been reached, we still do not have a full accounting of what your Department has required, what oversight you intend to exercise, or how these actions will affect the people of Evanston,” Biss wrote to U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “Given the unprecedented nature of this intervention, ambiguity is not an option.”

One of the mayor’s central concerns is how the agreement could alter responses to campus protests, Biss wrote, as it requires the university to have “cooperation agreements with local, regional and federal law enforcement.”

“In 2024, former Northwestern President Michael Schill requested Evanston Police arrest peaceful campus protesters, a request that we denied,” Biss wrote in his letter, which was provided through his campaign. “Will federal officials be reviewing or influencing decisions about how protests are managed? Will federal compliance pressures impact local law-enforcement coordination?”

Schill resigned earlier this year amid the funding freeze and intense conservative criticism over his handling of a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus. As part of the recently announced settlement, the university said it would dissolve the agreement reached with demonstrators under Schill.

Given the Trump administration’s recent immigration enforcement actions, Biss also pressed for details on whether the Education Department would collect or share new types of data about international students.

He also expressed skepticism about the agreement’s provisions that aimed to limit Northwestern’s consideration of students’ racial backgrounds in admissions. In the letter, Biss demanded “unambiguous guidance on what you believe Northwestern is now prohibited from doing, required to do, or required to dismantle — especially if these requirements touch community-based scholarship programs, DEI partnerships, or joint initiatives involving our schools and nonprofits.”

And Biss — who has said he has “two children who are thriving because of gender-affirming care” — also questioned the federal government’s authority to use the agreement to compel Northwestern and its medical affiliates to change their transgender health care practices.

Biss is part of a crowded field in the 9th Congressional District race to replace retiring U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky. Like others in the race, Biss has increasingly clashed with the Trump administration as both a candidate and mayor.

Elsewhere in the race for the 9th District, candidate and political commentator Kat Abughazaleh is facing a federal indictment related to her participation in protests at the Broadview ICE facility — protests that Biss and other candidates also joined before ICE activity quieted down from the fever pitch it reached this fall. Biss was not charged.

_____

©2025 Chicago Tribune. Visit chicagotribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.