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The photo’s caption and Palestinian officials attributed the deaths to an Israeli air strike, while Israeli and American officials blamed Hamas for the deaths. In November, investigation by Human Rights Watch found the explosion was the result of “an apparent rocket-propelled munition, such as those commonly used by Palestinian armed groups.”

The parody paper’s largest headline declares “Northwestern complicit in genocide of Palestinians,” and asking how university administrators have responded. The brief items that follow contain fake quotes from several university administrators and staff.

Its text also analogizes Israeli government’s policies of collective punishment of the population of Gaza with the imagined response of the university to the theft of items from the dining hall, like dining hall officials announcing they would cut off food and water until they are returned or administrators airdropping leaflets ordering the evacuation of everyone from the north side of campus.

The bottom right of the satirical front page contains a fake advertisement for Birthright Israel, the 10-day tour offered for free to Jewish young adults, with the caption “One man’s home is another man’s former home!” and a call to scan a QR code. The code leads to the URL northwesternhasbloodonitshands.com, which contains a message declaring tuition and tax money is supporting the bombing of children in Gaza.

The Probe

“The fake newspaper included images and language about Israel that many in our community found offensive,” university representatives said in a statement following the distribution of the satirical front page. “The student newspaper, which is a separate entity from the University, is looking into the issue.”

The student-run Daily Northwestern is independent of university administration. Instead, it is overseen by a not-for-profit entity called Students Publishing Company, which is also in charge of the undergraduate yearbook. The company’s board of directors issued a statement the day after the discovery of the parody papers.

“We understand that the content was upsetting to a significant portion of our readership, on campus and beyond,” it said. “We cannot say this any more plainly: We reject and condemn this act of vandalism, and we have engaged law enforcement to investigate and find those responsible.”

With the publishing company seeking to press charges, members of Northwestern’s private security force traveled to the Chicago apartment of one of the charged students to leave a note under their door on Nov. 10, while multiple officers stopped the other student at the door of a classroom on Nov. 15, according to a petition calling for the charges to be dropped, which had gathered more than 6,100 signatures in its first week.

University security officials referred the matter to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, which later that month charged two students with theft of advertising services, a class A misdemeanor offense that makes it a crime to attach or insert any unauthorized written or photographic material into a periodical.

A former supervisor for the Cook County Public Defender’s Office said that she had never seen anyone charged, and the Chicago Police Department’s arrest database shows only one person charged under the statute, the Intercept reported.

The Backlash

On Friday, a letter to the editor signed by 89 student organizations, faculty and community members in support of the charged students was published in the magazine North by Northwestern.

“This situation is yet another instance of a widespread effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices, disproportionately impacting people of color,” it said.

“We are watching the targeting of Black students at this University continue without accountability,” according to the letter, which noted that both students arrested are Black. “This is a symptom of the very over-policing Black students organized against last year after the University announced it would use private security to remove them from campus buildings at night; like from 2020 to 2022, when Northwestern University Community Not Cops’s (NUCNC) protests to invest in Black students were met with riot police, pepper spray and arrests.”

In a separate letter to the editor published Monday, 70 student organizations announced a boycott of the Daily Northwestern and its publishing company.

“Until the Students Publishing Company takes meaningful steps to reverse their stance — by not only dropping the charges against these students but also rescinding their complaint with the district attorney and law enforcement — we will not speak, collaborate or engage with The Daily Northwestern or the SPC,” the organizations’ joint statement said.

“Our decision to disengage and boycott is not taken lightly but stems from a commitment to uphold the values of justice, equity and the freedom to advocate for those whose voices are often marginalized or silenced,” it continued. “The issue at hand transcends the immediate legal implications for the two students; it is a matter of principle. Our choice reflects a broader commitment to support the right to advocate for Palestinian rights and against racial injustice.”

On Monday, the Daily Northwestern’s editorial board called on Students Publishing Company to ask prosecutors to drop the charges. While it objected to “tampering” with the paper and acknowledged the fake front pages “damaged our relationships with community members,” the board said it could not support the criminal prosecution of fellow students.

The board of the student newspaper’s parent company also issued a statement Monday, describing the wrapping of fake front pages on the Daily as an “act of vandalism [that] interfered with the rights of student journalists to publish and distribute their work,” and noting that the charging decisions are the sole prerogative of the state’s attorney’s office.

“The content of the fake front page had no bearing on this decision. This is not an issue of speech or parody. A fake newspaper distributed on its own, apart from The Daily Northwestern, would cause no concern. But tampering with the distribution of a student newspaper is impermissible conduct,” the board said.

“All individuals have a right to express their opinions on issues that matter to them,” it added. “But just as you cannot take over the airwaves of a TV station or the website of a publication, you also cannot disrupt the distribution of a student newspaper.”

Accusations Of Bias

Michael Simon, the executive director of Northwestern Hillel and a member of the university President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate, told WBBM in October that the fake newspapers had targeted all Jewish people unfairly.

“There’s a rising sense of kind of tension that makes students feel unsettled,” Simon said at the time. “And students walking into their classes and seeing these fake newspapers felt an unsettling sense that we’re not on a campus where dialogue or trying to understand differences is being respected right now.”

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In December, a nonprofit group called Alums for Campus Fairness booked a six-figure ad campaign to criticize Northwestern and its president Michael Schill for their response to the Oct. 7 attacks and antisemitism on campus.

University representatives responded with a statement referencing Schill’s recently formed antisemitism prevention advisory committee and characterizing the campaign as preposterous.

“These are outlandish claims not based on facts, including the claim that ‘student and faculty groups “resoundingly support” Hamas Terrorism,'” it said.

Critics of the university have pointed to an Oct. 17 open letter from 60 faculty and staff of Northwestern’s campus in Qatar, which condemned the Israeli bombing campaign without referencing the Hamas attacks that preceded it. The U.S.-designated terrorist group killed about 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, and took hundreds hostage in the cross-border operation.

“While we deeply mourn all innocent lives taken and call for respecting international law’s prohibition against targeting civilians, we condemn the Israeli state’s 75-year regime of settler-colonialism and apartheid as the root cause of the violence,” it said. “We affirm that the only ethically-acceptable and viable means to end all violence, whether the violence of the oppressor or the reactive armed resistance of the oppressed, is to take meaningful and effective action to end oppression, the root cause of violence.”

It also called on staff, students and faculty at the Evanston campus to pressure the administration to apologize for its “ill-conceived one-sided statements” and to pressure Israel to end its war and the U.S. to block weapons shipments and military funding to its close ally.

The faculty’s letter came a day after Khaled Hroub, a professor at Northwestern University in Qatar and a research associate at the Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge, said during a live interview on the WBUR show “On Point” that he had not seen “any credible media reporting” confirming that Hamas had killed women or children during the Oct. 7 attack. The interview prompted condemnation from university officials, while producers at the NPR affiliate said they “felt compelled” to pull the show from national distribution.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights opened an investigation into Northwestern’s possible violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition on discrimination based on national origin stemming from a complaint from a conservative activist publication about its response to harassment of Jewish students. University representatives pledged to cooperate with the federal probe.

“The complaint against Northwestern was not filed by a member of our community but instead by an outside organization. The Department of Education is investigating dozens of universities.” they said. “Northwestern is committed to providing a safe, welcoming environment for everyone in our community.”

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