More than 100 people filed into Boston City Hall March 23 as community members testified about an alleged lack of transparency among Boston’s higher education institutions, particularly at Northeastern.
The three-hour hearing consisted primarily of 28 public testimonies that centered around Northeastern’s administrative transparency, including its rebranding of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, or DEI, last January and the role of student representation and influence in university policy decisions.
The first half of the hearing was moderated by Councilor Miniard Culpepper, followed by City Councilor At-Large Julia Mejia, chair of the city’s Committee on Education. The hearing opened with statements from a panel of three members of Northeastern’s community.
“[Universities] are sustained by millions of dollars in uncollected property taxes, access to public grants and, critically, participation in federal student aid programs which allows them to collect federally-backed student loans,” said Kyle Beltramini, a senior research fellow at the academic excellence non-profit American Council of Trustees and Alumni, during the opening panel. “This public support hinges upon a promise that they are going to do their best to pursue truth and cultivate the next generation of citizens, for which we all benefit.”
Emily Spatz, editor-in-chief of The Huntington News — Northeastern’s independent student newspaper — and a fourth-year journalism and political science combined major, spoke about the paper’s relationship with the university’s media relations team, as well as its ongoing campaign to interview President Joseph E. Aoun. (Aoun and Vice President of City and Community Engagement John Tobin were invited to the hearing, but neither were present.)
“Our reporting indicates that presidents of Boston University, Emerson [College] and Boston College have sat down with their presidents in the past two years, sometimes several times in the past year,” Spatz said in her five-minute testimony.
Among the public testimonies were a few students and professors from Boston University, as well as Suffolk University, who offered remarks about their respective institutions.
The third panelist, Northeastern professor of philosophy and affiliate professor of law Adam Omar Hosein, spoke about Northeastern’s duty as a higher education institution to encourage democracy among its students.
“It’s crucial then that universities remain committed to the democratic mission and retain their independence from those political forces that would seek to suppress that mission,” said Hosein, who is the vice president of Northeastern’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a nonprofit union for faculty and other academic professionals.
Following the panelists’ remarks, the hearing opened testimony to the public. Several students of color raised concerns regarding the rebranding of the university’s DEI office to the Office of Belonging. More recently, in January, the university limited hours for the John D. O’Bryant African American Institute — which students were previously allowed to stay in late into the night — to weekdays from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. The university said the change was due to safety concerns following the shooting at Brown University in December.
“Research regarding DEI has been cut. Terminology for DEI is also considered a threat to institutional funding, and I’ve been kicked out of our cultural center multiple times now because of newly enforced hours for safety concerns,” said Phylicia Dias, a third-year music industry and communication studies combined major and co-president of the Northeastern Black Student Association.
Kwadjo Otoo, a fourth-year Africana studies and media and screen studies combined major who is the vice president of the Northeastern Black Student Association, spoke about the importance of having spaces like the African American Institute.
“When I came to college, finding places like the African American Institute was a safety and it was my lifeblood,” Otoo said in his testimony. “Having African studies classes that were able to articulate my circumstances and the things that I had seen my friends lose their life to consistently … was something that was very important, and now these are things that are slipping through our fingers.”
In a March 24 statement to The News about the hearing, Vice President for Communications Renata Nyul said the university encourages students to make their views known.
“Northeastern’s administration admires the passion of our students, who clearly care deeply about their university,” Nyul wrote. “Their advocacy makes Northeastern stronger. We encourage our students to take advantage of the multitude of channels — both formal and informal — to express their views. A passionate student body is one of the hallmarks of a great university.”
Other public testimonies expressed concerns about Northeastern’s immigrant and international student communities amid the surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, activity in Boston and nationwide over the past year. Leo Ansari, a second-year whose family emigrated from Iran in the 1980s, called on the university to create a policy which would state protections for international students if ICE were to come onto campus.
“Their dream was for me to come here, join one of the prestigious academic universities here and be able to express my beliefs freely,” Ansari said of his family. “Northeastern does not support the dream in anything, and that’s from my experience. But even more so for international students.”
Ansari, a political science major, said in his two-minute testimony that the university has “actively hidden its ICE policy” from the community. (The university did not address whether it has a policy for federal immigration agents coming on campus when asked by The News.)
The second panel featured four speakers who detailed legislation passed by Northeastern’s Student Government Association, or SGA, that calls on the university to include more student voices in university decision making. Dylan Lee, a fourth-year data science and economics combined major and SGA’s executive vice president, was one of the panelists who provided a testimony.
“SGA collaborates with the Northeastern administration, who have the real power to enact change, but our model with them is a reactive, not a structural one,” Lee said. “While, over time, we’ve built strong relationships with many administrators … students hold no guaranteed seat at the decision making table.”
The Light, Truth and Courage legislation, which the SGA Senate passed in November 2025, was authored by the Educational Freedom Project, a student group organized to defend freedom of expression and opportunity in higher education, and addresses several of the transparency issues raised during the hearing.
Mejia announced her plan to file a resolution with the Boston City Council which states that “higher education institutions need to do a better job at listening to their staff, students and faculty.” She also proposed continuing to work with Northeastern students and Boston residents to create a community oversight panel.
“I like to respond to the moment, and I was really inspired trying to figure out a pathway because the city government has very limited powers over private institutions,” Mejia said in an interview with The News following the hearing. “I’m really looking forward to working with the students to draft [the resolution] up.”
This piece was originally published by The Huntington News on March 25, 2026.
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