It has been more than three years since Northeastern President Joseph E. Aoun last sat down for an interview with The Huntington News, and numerous requests from News staff to interview the president about university and world events have gone unfulfilled.
The News has asked for an interview with the president in writing 11 times since Aoun was last interviewed by The News in December 2022. Members of The News’ staff and editorial board have also directly asked for interviews during in-person conversations with either Aoun himself or members of Northeastern’s Office of External Affairs.
In the past decade, Aoun has spoken with The News three times, in the fall of 2020, 2021 and 2022. Prior to these interviews, the last time Aoun sat down with The News was October 2013.
Aoun is one of the most important voices and recognizable senior figures at the university, setting priorities for how Northeastern is run, both now and in the future, and partly influences how student tuition dollars are spent.
Since taking over as president in 2006, Aoun has shaped Northeastern into a global university. During his presidency, the university has added 14 satellite campuses — in both domestic and international locations — to its global network. Additionally, under Aoun, Northeastern became an R1 research university in 2016, added new research-focused buildings to the Boston campus and expanded its research capabilities by establishing the Roux Institute in Portland, Maine, which opened in 2020.
The News is the only student-run, independent news publication at Northeastern, and one of the most widely-read publications on campus.
The News garners over 1 million impressions on social media each month and produces around four print editions every semester, circulating 3,000 papers around campus for each edition.
Since The News’ last interview with Aoun, Northeastern’s campus has experienced a number of significant events.
Interview requests issued since December 2022 include one in fall 2023, when The News asked the president to speak about rising tensions and turmoil on campus in the wake of Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel. The 2023-24 academic year was marked by protests — including some met with disciplinary action — culminating in an April 2024 encampment that resulted in the arrest of around 100 individuals, including students, faculty and staff, on Northeastern’s campus.
At the time, the university conveyed information to the Northeastern community through a Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQ, article, called “Safe Campuses, Civil Discourse: Frequently Asked Questions,” published through the university-run media outlet Northeastern Global News, or NGN. The answers were unattributed and the FAQ article did not state how NGN determines frequently asked questions.
Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration in January 2025, students have expressed frustration about the university’s perceived neutrality and lack of transparency about Trump’s policies, which include threats to international students, federal research funding for universities and diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Throughout his second term, Trump has targeted higher education institutions, and Northeastern has been no exception. Aoun wrote a statement to the university community Feb. 12, 2025, emphasizing the university’s continued commitment to experiential learning and research. It remains the only statement he has publicly authored addressing the second Trump administration as of the publication of this article.
In each interview request, The News provided, or offered to provide, Northeastern’s media relations department with topics it would like to discuss with Aoun.
Media relations did not respond to three requests. The News was told three times that the team would check Aoun’s calendar, or were reminded of the president’s busy schedule, but never got a response back despite repeated follow-ups. One additional request in April 2025 was met with the intention to schedule a meeting between The News and Northeastern’s media relations, but media relations gave no response to additional follow-ups. The meeting never occurred.
In response to two of the requests, media relations offered The News interviews with other university administrators, such as Ken Henderson, Northeastern’s chancellor and senior vice president for learning. The News interviewed Henderson in April 2024 and spoke to him about topics like diversity and Northeastern’s global campus network.
In response to a February 2025 request for an interview with Aoun, media relations gave The News information about the athletic facility replacing Matthews Arena, but did not answer further requests for comment about Northeastern’s expansion.
The university granted The News’ 2020 interview with Aoun — the first in seven years at that time — after The News launched a months-long public campaign, which included a petition created by a News alum pressuring the president to talk to The News that garnered 436 signatures. The issue was picked up by The Boston Globe after former managing editor for The News Deanna Schwartz posted on X, formerly Twitter, calling the lack of communication between the university and the newspaper “unacceptable.”
“Northeastern University President Joseph Aoun has, since 2013, denied interview requests from The Huntington News, NEU’s independent student newspaper. The News works to ‘maintain a high standard of quality’ of reporting, but it is unable to do so without transparency from the university’s foremost leader,” the petition, created by former News staff writer Sully Barrett, reads.
When Aoun last sat down with The News in 2022, interviewers Marta Hill and Rachel Erwin, editor-at-large and editor-in-chief at the time, respectively, asked the president about Northeastern’s new Miami campus and various other global campuses.
During Aoun’s 2020 interview with The News, interviewers Kelly Chan, former editor-in-chief; Schwartz; and George Baker, former staff reporter, asked Aoun various questions centered around the worsening COVID-19 pandemic and campus diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies.
The 2020 interview was conducted via online video call and lasted about an hour.
Presidents of other Boston-area universities — and comparable universities nationwide — speak to their university’s student newspapers more frequently than Aoun.
Former Boston University president Robert Brown spoke with The Daily Free Press, BU’s independent student paper, three times between 2012 and 2023 (the year he stepped down from the role). The university’s current president Melissa Gilliam granted the paper an interview in 2024.
Down the street from Northeastern, The Berkley Beacon, Emerson College’s independent student newspaper, has sat down with Emerson’s presidents six times since 2020. The president of Simmons University spoke with the independent student-run newspaper The Simmons Voice in 2023, and Boston College’s president spoke with the university’s paper, The Heights, in February 2025.
Across the river in Cambridge, The Harvard Crimson last spoke with Harvard President Alan M. Garber in May 2025. In response to an interview request, The Crimson directed The News to that interview, in which Garber discussed Harvard’s dedication to protecting international students. The article noted that Garber had previously spoken with The Crimson in December 2024.
Maren Halpin, a senior print/web journalism major at Suffolk University and editor-in-chief of The Suffolk Journal, said the student newspaper has a good relationship with the university’s media relations team.
For Halpin and other writers at The Journal, Greg Gatlin, vice president of communications at Suffolk, is the main point of contact, and responds to requests in a “timely manner.”
“If I wait more than an hour or two, it’s unusual,” Halpin said about Gatlin’s swift response time to The Journal’s various requests.
Since starting at The Journal in 2022, Halpin has sat down with Suffolk’s president, Marisa Kelly, six times, discussing a range of university topics including arming campus police officers and faculty layoffs.
Halpin feels that student journalists’ access to their universities is critical to accurately report on their communities. She drew a parallel to journalists interviewing CEOs of companies, a common practice when reporting a story.
“Higher ed colleges are businesses at the end of the day. And it would be baffling if the press didn’t have access to a CEO of a business. That would be appalling, I think,” Halpin said.
Halpin said many of The Journal’s stories would not be possible without input from Kelly. She added that, while the newspaper is not independent from the university, Suffolk’s administration doesn’t control what The Journal publishes and has not infringed upon the paper’s editorial freedom.
Student journalists at The Daily Free Press have a standing semesterly interview with Gilliam, according to Lauren Albano, a third-year journalism major who served as The Free Press’ editor-in-chief during the fall 2025 semester.
The Free Press usually communicates with Colin Riley, a BU spokesperson. When the paper asks for comment requests from any department, they get forwarded to Riley, according to Albano.
Albano was a campus editor last spring and interviewed Gilliam about her first year as BU’s president at the time.
“A few weeks out from the end of the semester, we scheduled a date with Colin [Riley]. We were able to reach out to him to schedule that interview, and he was pretty responsive in getting us the time,” Albano said about her interview with Gilliam last spring.
While The Free Press has been able to speak to the president a few times, Albano said it usually reaches out to the university’s media relations team for a statement about a topic rather than requesting an interview. However, she said that universities should be willing to work with their student journalists and maintain a good relationship.
“I would just advocate for university administration to be transparent with its journalists and be helpful, because also, you know, we’re trying to build our careers,” she said. “You should support uplifting student journalists as they’re beginning their careers … it’s important to help the next generation of students, you know, in that way.”
In its most recent request, sent on Dec. 30, 2025, The News asked to speak with Aoun and offered to provide the university with a list of topics it wants to discuss with the president. After media relations told The News the request would be raised internally, The News asked that the university give a response by Jan. 21, which it did not receive.
The News reached out for comment on this article from Northeastern’s media relations on Jan. 27. In response, Vice President for Communications Renata Nyul offered to set up a meeting with The News and her and Senior Vice President for External Affairs Mike Armini to talk about setting up an interview with the president. She did not directly offer an interview with Aoun. The News agreed and asked for times media relations would be available, but has not heard back as of publication.
