Meet the Professor Northwestern Hired As Part of Deal With Student Radicals

Campus
Meet the Professor Northwestern Hired As Part of Deal With Student Radicals
Mkhaimar Abusada serves on boards of organizations that regularly partner with Hamas and the PFLP

Anti-Israel protesters at Northwestern (Scott Olson/Getty Images)
Jessica Costescu
May 27, 2025
A Northwestern University professor—hired as part of a deal with anti-Israel groups to end last year’s encampment—sits on the boards of two organizations that were founded by and frequently partner with Palestinian terrorists, a Washington Free Beacon review found.
Last year, Northwestern president Michael Schill struck a deal with radical student groups, including Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), to end their encampment, agreeing to recruit two Palestinian professors and provide full rides to five students from Gaza. Abusada also serves on the boards of two organizations that present themselves as human rights groups—the Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR)—that, in reality, maintain close ties to terrorists. ICHR has praised Hamas and met with the terror group’s leaders, including Ismail Haniyeh, while PCHR has Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) members on its payroll—with one serving as its leader.
NGO Monitor president Gerald Steinberg condemned Northwestern for hiring Abusada.