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A fire alarm forced the evacuation of Northwestern University’s Cahn Auditorium on Tuesday night, interrupting a staged reading of OCTOBER 7, a play based on survivor and eyewitness accounts of the Hamas-led massacre.
Co-author Ann McElhinney posted on X that someone had set off the alarm, noting it was already October 7 in Israel. The audience returned only after passing through security checks. Northwestern Hillel hosted the event.
Breaking. Right now at Northwestern Our play October 7 has been disrupted by someone setting off a fire alarm. The whole theater has to be evacuated. This hits even stronger because it’s already October 7 in Israel. pic.twitter.com/Zs9pvp0eK0
— Ann McElhinney 🧡 (@annmcelhinney) October 7, 2026
The Coalition Against Antisemitism at Northwestern (CAAN) highlighted the painful parallel with the 2023 invasion, which began under rocket barrages and air-raid warnings. Hamas-led terrorists killed approximately 1,200 people that day, most of them civilians, and abducted 251 hostages.
“At this time, the cause of the alarm and whether it was intentionally activated to disrupt the performance have not been established,” CAAN said.
Northwestern University Police are involved, according to the coalition, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office Hate Crimes Unit has urged attendees with relevant information to submit reports to police. CAAN also noted that the office secured a seven-year prison sentence in September in an antisemitic hate crime case involving swastikas and other Nazi symbols on Northwestern’s Evanston campus.
The coalition called on Northwestern to “promptly conduct a thorough investigation to determine what happened, whether the alarm was intentionally triggered, and whether antisemitic bias — including bias based on Jewish or Israeli shared ancestry — played any role.”
“If intentional misconduct is established, those responsible must be identified and held accountable under University policy and applicable law,” CAAN said.
CAAN warned that a deliberate disruption “would raise serious federal civil rights concerns under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and could also implicate Northwestern’s November 2025 Resolution Agreement with the United States.” That agreement required the university to pay $75 million to settle antisemitism complaints and obligates it to enforce policies against “any disruption, prevention, obstruction, or attempt to prevent or obstruct” university activities and events.
“The testimony of October 7 survivors deserves to be heard,” CAAN said. “It will not be silenced.”
Take Action
CAM has launched Report It, a secure app to report antisemitic incidents anonymously and in real time. Don’t stay silent. Download it today on the Apple App Store or Google Play. See it. Report it. Stop it.
