Northwestern Professor Faces Title VI Complaint for Teaching Israel Has No "Rights to Self-Defense"
The Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern submitted a Title VI complaint following a November 17 lecture by Associate Professor Helen Tilley in her “Biomedicine and World History” course
A Northwestern University history professor is facing federal civil rights complaints after allegedly transforming a biomedicine course into an anti-Israel political session that created a hostile environment for Jewish students, according to documentation filed by the Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern.
The Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) watchdog group submitted a Title VI complaint following a November 17, 2025 lecture by Associate Professor Helen Tilley in her “Biomedicine and World History” course. The complaint alleges that Tilley presented politically charged accusations including “genocide,” “apartheid,” and “ethnic cleansing” as established facts rather than contested political viewpoints, while minimizing the October 7 Hamas massacre.
Course Allegedly Strayed Far From Biomedicine Focus
According to the complaint, the course—which officially “uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a point of departure to study the history of global health and biomedicine”—deviated dramatically from its stated academic purpose. Student documentation shows the November lecture featured guest speakers affiliated with anti-Israel campus groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, who were presented as neutral experts without disclosure of their activist affiliations.
The Washington Free Beacon obtained lecture slides showing claims that Israeli forces deliberately killed their own citizens on October 7 under the “Hannibal directive,” and assertions that while Palestinians possess rights of self-defense, Israel does not. The presentation reportedly omitted key historical context, including Arab rejection of the 1947 UN partition plan.
When a Jewish student attempted to discuss the October 7 Hamas attack, Tilley allegedly responded that she “didn’t want to talk about it,” according to the complaint documentation.
Pattern of Political Activism Raises Concerns
Tilley is a public signatory to the “Northwestern People’s Resolution,” a 2024 petition that accused Israel of genocide and called for boycotting the Jewish state. The guest speakers who participated in the November lecture—medical professor Peter Sporn and medical student Ramzy Issa—also signed the resolution, raising questions about whether the classroom session constituted academic instruction or coordinated political advocacy.
CAAN’s complaint argues that this alignment of stated ideological positions with classroom behavior demonstrates antisemitic bias that undermines the educational rights of Jewish students.
Second Title VI Complaint in One Week
The filing against Tilley comes just one week after CAAN submitted another Title VI complaint concerning Professor Michael Anthony Turcios’s National Cinema class, where similar accusations of anti-Israel political content injected into unrelated coursework were raised. CAAN characterizes this as an emerging pattern across Northwestern departments where politicized messaging with antisemitic impact appears without academic balance or oversight.
What CAAN Is Demanding
CAAN is calling for a comprehensive review of the November 17 lecture and enforcement of academic neutrality standards. The coalition demands full disclosure of guest speakers’ activist affiliations, anti-retaliation protections for Jewish and Israeli students, and system-wide review of faculty oversight to prevent what it terms “faculty-driven student radicalization” through political messaging outside instructors’ academic expertise.
University Already Under Federal Scrutiny
Northwestern faces ongoing investigations from multiple federal agencies over campus antisemitism. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights included Northwestern among 60 universities receiving warning letters in March 2025 regarding potential Title VI violations related to antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
The Department of Health and Human Services also opened an investigation in May 2025 examining whether Northwestern violated Title VI by discriminating against Jewish students. The Trump administration has reportedly terminated or frozen over $1 billion in federal grant funding to Northwestern since January 2025, according to the Daily Northwestern.
As investigations continue and additional complaints emerge, the Northwestern case may become a bellwether for how federal authorities address allegations of faculty-driven antisemitism and political bias in American higher education.
Not permitting my kid to apply to that filth-generator.
I was fired as a prof at the University of Guelph for saying Hamas were Nazis to a stranger in Pakistan https://open.substack.com/pub/paulfinlayson/p/fired-sacked-terminated-deplatformed?r=iy2ds&utm_medium=ios