Update: Obama to speak at Northwestern University on economy

Updated from Monday…WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama will deliver a speech on the Evanston campus of Northwestern University on Thursday, which will come after Obama headlines a fundraiser in Chicago for Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn.

The last president to speak at Northwestern, according to the university, was President Dwight Eisenhower in 1954. Obama will deliver his speech at 1:15 p.m. at Cahn Auditorium, 600 Emerson St., on the Evanston campus.

“I am extremely pleased to announce that President Barack Obama will come to Northwestern’s campus in Evanston to make a major address about the economy and his plans to keep expanding opportunity for Americans,” said Northwestern President Morton Schapiro in a statement.

Obama arrives in Chicago on Wednesday evening. After spending the night — it’s not known whether he will go to his Kenwood home — Obama heads downtown for the fundraiser at the Gold Coast home of Meredith A. Bluhm-Wolf, the daughter of Chicago business honcho Neil Bluhm, a major Northwestern benefactor — in 2013 Bluhm, a law school alum, donated $25 million to Northwestern.

After the fundraiser, Obama heads to Evanston for the speech on the economy at NU’s Kellogg School of Management. White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer said in an email sent Wednesday that in the Northwestern speech, “the President will make the case for what has always fueled America’s leadership — and that’s America’s economic greatness. He’ll take a step back from the rush of current events to explain what we’ve done to recover from the Great Recession and what we need to do to ensure that more middle-class Americans feel that progress in their own lives.”

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said at the Tuesday briefing that Kellogg was selected because “this is one of the top business schools in the country and is an appropriate venue for a serious speech about America’s economy.”

On Monday, a Sun-Times videographer spotted military aircraft doing a practice run for the presidential visit at a parking lot near Soldier Field while other spotters in Evanston saw U.S. military aircraft landing on the NU campus lakefront landfill area.

In 2006, then Illinois Sen. Obama delivered the commencement address at Northwestern. What America needs, Obama said in 2006, “is a sense of purpose.”