This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

PW: Are there any updates in Northwestern’s decision to renew its contract with the Qatar campus? Has the Iran War changed anything? 

Bienen: If it was up to me tomorrow, I would continue the relationship. I think it’s worked out reasonably well. The folks in Qatar have been honest to their commitments. We’ve had two Rhodes (Scholars) from there — we get good students. We have good faculty.

But about 22% of (Qatar’s) natural gas has been taken offline by Iranian drones and bombs. So that has an effect. It takes me to the other part of your question, which is the war. I have no better guess on this war than you. 

In the longer run, geo-strategic environment matters. I mean, we wouldn’t want to have our faculty and staff and students be there in an unsafe place. If the ceasefire holds and we have some kind of relative peace, even if it’s tense, I would think we could go along with this relationship.

We’re committed to a four year teach-out, so if we say we’re there for two more years or five more years, we’re actually there for a longer period of time as we get close to the end of whatever designated period we said we'd be there for, because we wouldn’t do what Texas A&M did, which is to leave abruptly. We would honor our commitments and teach out the four years.

PW: Are there any updates on the presidential search?

Bienen: I’m not really at liberty to say much. I have not been part of the search. I gave the search committee that our trustee, Steve Callihane, chairs my views about the kind of person I thought would be good, rather than individuals, just the sort of qualities that I thought would be good for Northwestern. So I do expect that an announcement would be made fairly soon. I want to say mid-May.

PW: Will you bring back merit-based faculty raises?

Bienen: We’ve decided on a number for the raises. There will definitely be raises for faculty and staff.

PW: Why did you decide to come back to Northwestern? Did you expect to be put under the sheer amount of federal scrutiny and pressure that you faced?

Bienen: We were already under the gun with respect to the freeze in grants. I think honestly speaking, to be blunt, part of the reason I was asked to come back was to negotiate the deal. So I understood that. There were no surprises. 

Why did I do it? I care about the university. Obviously, I spent 14-plus years of my life being president. I’ve stayed in touch with the university. Not only has it been good for me and my family, but I think it’s one of the great universities in the world. Really, I thought I could help. I knew the place pretty well. I felt I owed it.

PW: Reflecting on your two terms as university president, what do you think is your biggest achievement, and what do you think your legacy will be?

Bienen: Well, I don’t think one should say what one’s own legacy is, because that sounds conceited. I have my views for good and for bad, and lots of people in the university, no doubt, have their views for good and for bad.

I think I was brought back to do a deal, and I did the deal. When I say I, obviously, it was a collaborative thing. It wasn’t just me, but I represented the university as president, so you can blame it all on me or say it was a good idea or a bad idea. I accept that, and I think a lot of people think it was really important, that it was an existential crisis for the university. 

I had a conversation with a woman the other day where she said, “Well, was the $350 million worth the values of the university?” And I said, “I don’t think of it that way,” because it wasn’t just $350 million. It was Northwestern as a research university. We would have lost senior faculty. Yale wasn’t under the gun. Stanford wasn’t under the gun. Some places like Harvard and (U.C.) Berkeley and UCLA were. Would people have sat around and waited? Not everybody, I don’t think so. It really wasn’t just “give me the money” versus doing a deal with these characters.

I told the federal government I wouldn’t sign the deal, and I’ll sue you. And I meant it. I really did, because they had provisos I wouldn’t sign. I told our faculty, I told our board that the independence of the university, the autonomy of the university to hire who we want to teach, what we want to do, the research we want, is a red line for me. And I didn’t spend decades in this game to go over that red line. I just never would have done it.

PW: President Schill’s term was marked by student activism at Northwestern. This year, we’ve observed less student activism like protests on campus. Do you see the decline as a move in the right direction, or does it concern you?

Bienen: I’m not against student activism and protests within the bounds of what I call reasonable behavior. President Schill put me on what he called the free expression committee prior to the end of his presidency. I was part of that group that wrote these new (demonstration) rules. We’ve said there are some lines. If you cross them, there’ll be consequences. I’m not so sure we had clear rules and regulations (before). 

Part of it may be people are fearful in this climate. I don’t like that. I don’t want to see fear at the university. There have been law school lectures at different universities that have been disrupted because somebody thought the speaker was a conservative, or this or that. That goes against my grain at a university where freedom of openness and speech is really essential.

PW: What are your plans once you step out of office? We’ve heard Hawaii is a popular destination for you.

Bienen: My wife and I, we have a big family, and it’s spread around. We go off to Hawaii in part of January and February, we don’t spend more than four or five weeks. We have a lot of grandkids. 

I’ve had a pretty active life during the 15 years between the first time I was president. Now I’m on boards. (My wife and I) go to theaters a lot. We travel. We’re very involved in Chicago cultural life. So we’ll just continue to do the things good health allow us to do, but I don't think our lives will be different going forward than they were before.

One of the things about the office of the presidency at any major university, it’s a pretty unrelenting job that you have a lot of formal things you do. I always feel you could wind up a robot toy of me, send it out and put it on Zoom.

I hope I’ll continue to be involved in the university. I don’t mean in making decisions on things. I help it raise money. I have a lot of friends out there. So if the new president wants me to help, I’ll do it. If they don’t, they won’t, but I don’t think I’ll be scratching my head to say, “What am I going to do next Tuesday?”

~ Thanks for reading. See you next time!