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In February 2021, Northwestern University political science professor Elizabeth Shakman Hurd signed an open letter to the institution’s leaders expressing outrage over allegations of racism, sexism and harassment on the school’s cheer team — all at the heart of a federal lawsuit filed a few weeks earlier by Northwestern senior Hayden Richardson.
“Many of us teach topics associated with the history of women, gender and patriarchy, and their intersections with racism and imperialism,” the letter read. “We are frankly astounded that at the exact same time that we have been teaching our students about the baneful impacts of these phenomena in history and culture, the university where we work has evidently been engaging in them in blatant and illegal ways.”
Hurd’s signature was first on the letter, which was signed by 80 faculty members. Professors of history, African American studies, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, English, art history, psychology, statistics and religion were among the signatories.
“We wanted to push the broader social context and institutional context of what these students have experienced,” Hurd told me at the time. “We want to make sure the university comes up with a clear plan for making sure this doesn’t happen again. Whether it’s an ombudsman or some kind of alternative chain of authority or place where people can turn to and trust they will be heard and their scholarships and well-being as students won’t be put into jeopardy by telling the truth.”
Now Hurd’s name is on another open letter to Northwestern leaders — this time in support of student athletes in the wake of a hazing scandal that has rocked the university, resulting in the ouster of head football coach Pat Fitzgerald, two lawsuits (at the time of this writing), and attorneys alleging Northwestern baseball, softball and volleyball players have been victims of trauma and abuse within their programs as well.
“We are dismayed to find Northwestern Athletics embroiled in another major scandal that involves allegations of sexual abuse and harassment as well as negligence or indifference among administrators and coaches,” the latest open letter reads. “We call on Northwestern leadership to take immediate, comprehensive steps to remedy the current situation and to protect all student athletes from future abuse.”
In an interview with Chicago Tribune reporter Megan Crepeau, former Northwestern quarterback Lloyd Yates described sexually abusive hazing rituals that included players dry-humping other players and teammates being forced to perform naked in front of others.
“You have to realize, we’re 17- (or) 18-year-olds, young freshmen, really excited, really anxious,” Yates told Crepeau. “We hear these different stories, we’re trying to fit in … at the time, it’s things you hear about, you don’t really think it’s true, you don’t think it’s gonna happen to you. But, you know, it happened to me, and it happened to a lot of guys within the culture.”
I called Hurd after reading the story.
“It’s not at all surprising,” she said. “I’m saddened. So Saddened. I’m mortified. But I’m not surprised.”
Hurd compared the allegations — and the university’s response to them — to other large, longstanding institutions whose power differentials breed, and bury, abuse.
“If you think about the Catholic Church, for example, or other institutional cultures that have massive power differences within their hierarchies that are very strictly enforced, it’s really the perfect recipe for this kind of situation.” she said. “There are bigger, deeper structural issues that this entire scandal is a symptom of.”
The allegations are horrific, heartbreaking and spreading by the day. I asked Hurd where she would like to point our attention.
“Everyone is focused on the lawsuits, understandably,” she said. “We want to see justice served. My concern is that might use up all the oxygen in the room in terms of people’s patience and bandwidth to talk about this story.”
She wants larger, longer conversations about public accountability for an institution like Northwestern — a private university, but one that receives millions upon millions of federal dollars. She wants state and federal representatives to weigh in.
“Hazing is illegal in the state of Illinois,” she points out.
She wants us to center, always, the heroism and the humanity of the students — those who spoke up about the alleged abuse, those who are deciding whether it feels safe to come forward with what they’ve endured, those who are covering the story and all of its sad twists and turns in the Daily Northwestern.
“We couldn’t clear this up if it weren’t for their courage,” she said. “They’re the first constituency for us and the ones we’re most concerned about and the ones we want to offer solidarity to. They’re the ones who are pushing against a dominant culture that is trying to silence them. They’re the heroes of this story and the reason we’re here.”
As a parent, I know the joy and community and bone-deep commitment that can come from athletics — that can come from being part of any team or group that relies on each other and pushes each other and grows with each other. I also know how simultaneously scary and exhilarating it is to be new — at school, in the locker room, onstage, whatever form that stage takes.
To hear stories of those emotions and vulnerabilities and new beginnings being poisoned, polluted, tuned punitive — it crushes your soul. It breaks your heart. It breaks my heart.
The students’ courage helps piece it back together. That shouldn’t be their job or their burden, but here we are.
“We want to offer them all the strength and solidarity in the world,” Hurd told me. “And also honor their humanity and their dignity and their privacy if they want it.”
In a rapidly evolving story, where new wrongs seem to surface daily, that one thing feels right.
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