A Message from President Schapiro Regarding the Tragic Events in Minneapolis
To the members of the Northwestern community:
I felt outrage and disgust watching video of the fatal mistreatment of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
And I was further sickened this morning when our recent graduate, CNN’s Omar Jimenez, was arrested live on television for, as Medill Dean Charles Whitaker described it, “the sin of doing journalism.”
Our Northwestern community grieves for the many ways in which our society tolerates and facilitates injustices, demonstrated so vividly in these and other recent events.
Dean Whitaker poignantly expressed his personal pain as a father of African-American sons. Many of the rest of us can barely begin to imagine the personal toll that racism takes on marginalized communities every single day. But we can all increase our resolve to create a Northwestern community, and a world, where all people are accorded the dignity and the safety they deserve.
Our nation must do better, and I pledge that I, and our university, will work toward that end.