043025

APRIL 30, 2025

SIXTH WEEK

VOL. 137, ISSUE 14

“We Are Ready to Defend Our Values”: University Presents Mixed Picture at Budget Town Hall

By NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor and KALYNA VICKERS | Senior News Reporter

In its fourth invite-only budget town hall, held April 21, the University presented a mixed picture of its financial situation, reemphasizing the progress it has made toward eliminating its substantial budget deficit in the past year while expressing concern over continued uncertainty tied to recent federal policy changes.

University Provost Katherine Baicker and Enterprise Chief Financial Officer Ivan Samstein presented the University’s updated financial outlook, reiterating that the operating deficit had narrowed from $288 million in fiscal year (FY) 2024 to $221 million for the current fiscal year. Still, Baicker and Samstein highlighted major challenges, including the termination of nearly 40 federal research grants and lower-than-expected tuition revenue, which currently sits

$7 million below budget projections.

University President Paul Alivisatos opened the event by noting that recent changes in federal policy under the Trump administration could alter the University’s financial trajectory.

“This is a different kind of moment than previous budget town halls, so we will need to bring a different kind of spirit to the enormous challenges at hand,” Alivisatos said. “The present situation absolutely reflects a dramatically altered landscape from where we were in December.”

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has introduced a series of executive actions targeting federal research funding, discussed expanding taxes on endowments and philanthropic gifts, and signaled in-

terest in revisiting the tax-exempt status of universities.

Alivisatos emphasized the University’s commitment to its foundational values, including academic freedom and open debate. He noted that, although ongoing financial and policy volatility could constrain leadership’s ability to share detailed plans, the University is “ready to defend our values.”

The subsequent presentation shared a mixed picture of how key budget categories are tracking against expectations. According to presentation materials, the University’s projected net tuition revenue for FY2025 is $689 million—approximately $7 million below initial budget expectations.

Baicker described the deviation as “generally in range,” noting that core revenue sources are performing close to expectations despite broader economic headwinds.

The University is currently seeing higher-than-expected costs in staff salaries and

benefits (projected at about $7 million more than budgeted) and in supplies, services, and other expenses (projected at about $20 million more than budgeted).

Enrollment remained stable over the past year, with the incoming Ph.D. cohort mirroring that of past years and enrollment in master’s programs meeting the budget projection, according to Baicker. The University also launched four new non-degree programs, which could generate new revenue from tuition-paying learners outside of traditional degree pathways.

Looking ahead, Baicker noted that spending moderation would continue to be necessary as the University seeks to close its deficit by 2028. While the University’s long-term plan focuses primarily on growing revenue, Baicker said that spending moderation is necessary in the short term because “spending moderation can happen

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New Information on Lead-up to Encampment Raid

By ELENA EISENSTADT | Deputy Editor-in-Chief and NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor

Internal emails and documents obtained by the Maroon through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, along with new interviews and anonymous accounts, have revealed additional details about how the University administration, disciplinary committees, police, and local politicians responded to protest activity during and after the encampment.

These new sources reveal the tensions the University faced as it turned to the

NEWS: Booth School of Business Receives $100 Million Donation to Executive MBA Program

Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the courts for support outside of its own disciplinary policies in quelling what it deemed disruptive conduct.

One year ago this week, UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) launched its “Popular University for Gaza” protest encampment on the main quad, erecting tents and artwork across a gradually expanding footprint. After nine days on the quad, the encampment was dismantled by

VIEWPOINTS: A Call to Institutional Honor and Moral Obligation

the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) in the early hours of May 7, 2024.

UCUP did not respond to requests for comment by time of publication.

According to a person with knowledge of the matter, University of Chicago Chief of Police Kyle Bowman did not make the final decision about whether to raid the encampment; the University, with the advice of UCPD, made that determination.

President Paul Alivisatos wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed on May 7 that, although he did not take “immediate action

VIEWPOINTS: UChicago Must Protect Its Community

against the encampment… when I concluded that the essential goals that animated those demands were incompatible with deep principles of the university, I decided to end the encampment with intervention.”

Just after midnight, encampment organizers wrote in their Telegram channel, “We have received credible information that police WILL be carrying out a raid against the UChicago encampment in the coming hours.” Hours before the raid, Illinois State Senator Robert Peters and two city hall reporters wrote on X that a police

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ARTS: Maroon Musings

“It’s really important to share this information as it evolves... [T]he answers to a lot of these questions are going to be different next week from what they are right now.”

A figure breaking down the University’s operating revenue for FY2025. karen yi . A figure breaking down the University’s operating expenses for FY2025. karen yi .

more quickly than the revenue levers.”

“We spend most of our money—as we should—on our people,” Baicker said, highlighting that 29 percent of spending is allocated to staff salaries and an additional 12 percent towards benefits. However, non-personnel expenses (SSO, supplies, travel, equipment) are coming under review as part of a broader contingency planning effort.

Most of Baicker and Samstein’s presentation was devoted to discussing federal grant terminations, which had “some limited effect in this fiscal year, but [are forecasted to have] a more substantial effect for next year and the year going forward,” according to Baicker.

As of this month, nearly 40 federal research grants have been terminated with an expected aggregate impact of $10–15 million this fiscal year. That impact could grow to as much as $40 million during FY2026, Baicker said.

“We get new terminations weekly, so we expect that number to keep ticking up,” Baicker said. ”So that’s one of the areas where we really want to partner with the faculty and deans and the [research] teams to figure out how we help support researchers who are in the position of having their grant terminated.”

In addition to grant terminations, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced plans in February to slash negotiated rates for coverage of indirect research costs—expenses like administrative func-

tions, building maintenance, utilities, and equipment—from 64 percent to 15 percent. According to Samstein, a cut of that size represents a potential annual loss of nearly $100 million for the University.

While a universal cut to the indirect cost rate is currently subject to a permanent injunction, the University is scheduled to enter its next routine renegotiation with the federal government for rates taking effect in July 2026.

The University’s annual federal grant portfolio sits at approximately $550 million, half of which comes from the NIH, according to presentation materials. “We are fortunate in that we have a pretty diverse revenue base,” Baicker said. “There are peer institutions where this grant number is a much more concentrated percentage of their numbers of their revenue base.”

The University’s FY2026 budget— which Baicker and Samstein added is typically finalized by this point in the year—also remains in flux as a result of the evolving federal situation. “We are having to be a little more flexible and take as much time as we can to be able to have as much information as we can before inking a plan for the coming year,” Baicker said.

Other potential threats to the University’s long-term financial goals include the possibility of the loss of its tax-exempt status or an increase in taxation on its endowment. After Harvard University stated that it would not comply with federal efforts to undermine its independence, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Perhaps Harvard should

lose its Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity.”

Samstein stressed that the loss of UChicago’s tax-exempt status is “lower on the spectrum” of his concerns. The endowment tax is placed on net investment income, which would not correspond to significant weight in the short term. However, he noted that each 1 percent increase in the endowment tax rate correlates to an approximate $10 million loss in revenue for the University.

Any increase in the endowment tax rate would more likely come from a congressionally approved bill, rather than an executive action, Samstein said. One proposal, introduced by Representative Troy Nehls (R-Texas) in January, would raise the endowment tax rate from its current 1.4 percent to 21 percent.

The endowment also faces pressure from stock market volatility in the wake of Trump’s tariff plans, but, as Samstein joked, “the good news is the stock market can’t drop at 5 percent a day, every day, forever.”

Baicker and Samstein also addressed uncertainties around Medicaid and federal healthcare policy, with potential implications for the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMed).

“Our hospital here in Hyde Park is the largest Medicaid provider in the Midwest, of any single-site hospital,” Samstein said. “We are quite concerned about what might happen and what transpires in Medicaid.”

One particular area of concern is the

federal 340B Drug Pricing Program, which provides discounted pharmaceuticals to hospitals serving a large Medicaid population. Changes to the program—along with broader cuts or restructuring of Medicaid— could significantly alter UCMed operations. Although no concrete proposals have been introduced, Baicker warned that such reforms would likely appear in a future federal budget reconciliation bill and are “something we’ll need to monitor.”

Going forward, Baicker said the University hopes to broaden its funding base by pursuing partnerships with foundations, nonprofits, and industry, which is part of a larger effort to identify external support that can help research institutions reconfigure their portfolios as traditional federal grants are withdrawn.

The University also plans to expand global and hybrid education platforms to support international students, whose visa eligibility and status in the U.S. remain uncertain due to shifting immigration policy; three weeks ago, seven UChicago affiliates had their visas revoked by the U.S. Department of State without explanation.

“This has to be an iterative, collaborative endeavor, and we’re in the middle of it, and we’re going to be in the middle of it for a long time, so we will commit to coming back regularly with more information,” Baicker said. “But it’s really important to share this information as it evolves, because the answers to a lot of these questions are going to be different next week from what they are right now.”

Uncommon Interview: Immigrants’ Rights Clinic Director Nicole Hallett

By NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, his administration has enacted a deportation program targeting undocumented immigrants and legal residents alike. Hundreds of international students at schools including UChicago have had their visas revoked, often without explanation.

In some cases, the administration has labeled participation in pro-Palestine activism a threat to national security, allowing federal law enforcement to apprehend and detain even those with legal status who have not been accused of a crime.

To understand the rapidly shifting immigration landscape, the Maroon sat down with Nicole Hallett, a University of Chicago Law School clinical law professor and the director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, which provides legal representation and advice to noncitizens.

Hallett discussed the Trump administration’s mass deportation program, the rights of noncitizens, and how the administration’s efforts may cause conflict with the Supreme Court.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Chicago Maroon: What work does your clinic do under normal circumstances, and how has that changed under the second Trump administration?

Nicole Hallett: There’s lots of immigration work to do under any administration, including the Trump administration; my clinic represents immigrants in a variety of proceedings before the government. Sometimes we represent people whom the government is trying to deport. Other times, we’re representing people who are applying for humanitarian benefits with the government—for example, asylum or relief for victims of human trafficking or domestic violence. But we essentially will represent anyone—any noncitizen—in any matter related to their immigration status in the United States.

CM: How has that work changed or

increased since the beginning of the second Trump administration?

NH: I don’t think [our work] has changed. In some ways it hasn’t changed. It hasn’t changed in that the government continues to arrest people [and] continues to detain people.

I would say that the kinds of people who are being caught up in immigration enforcement have changed under Trump. So, it used to be, for instance, that maybe I would talk to a student who had an immigration issue once every year or two. Now I have students in my office every day asking questions because their visa has been revoked or because they’re worried that it’s going to be [revoked].

Under normal circumstances, the people who are really at risk of deportation are people who’ve been convicted of serious crimes and people who are undocumented. Now, it seems like the [Trump] administration is going after everyone, and so the kinds of people that end up in my office are a much broader group.

CM: What rights and protections do noncitizens in the United States have?

And then, more specifically, what rights do students and faculty members at this University who are in the United States on visas or [who] have lawful permanent residency have?

NH: All noncitizens have the right to due process if they’re inside the United States, and so the government cannot simply deport someone without allowing them to fight their case, usually in immigration court. That can take weeks, it can take months, [or] it can sometimes take years.

However, even though all noncitizens have the right to due process, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to have very many good ways to fight their deportation. Specifically for people on non-immigrant visas—so that’s people who are on student visas, as well as people on temporary work visas, which includes many people who are in faculty roles—those people can have their visa[s]

revoked, and the statute gives the government very broad authority to do that.

CM: Which statute gives the government that right?

NH: The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) is the statute that controls basically everything related to immigration—both who we admit to the country and who’s allowed to remain and under what conditions. And the government in this area and the area of immigration has always had very, very broad authority.

Courts have traditionally given the government very wide discretion in terms of who is allowed to enter the United States and who is allowed to remain and under what conditions. Traditionally, this was because immigration was seen as an outgrowth of the executive branch’s authority over foreign affairs and Congress’s control over naturalization [as specified] in the Consti-

tution. So, there has been, historically, very little judicial review over the laws that Congress passes and then that the executive [branch] uses to either prevent people from entering [or deport] people. Right now, [the Trump administration seems] to be revoking visas for very specific reasons that might not be permitted. They seem to be revoking people’s visas based on their speech or their protest activity. We really haven’t seen that much in the last few decades in the United States, and I think the courts are going to have to consider whether the government has the right to do that, but the statute does give them broad authority to cancel visas, and so people should just be aware of that. Even though they can contest their deportation and immigration court, the government has broad authority in this area.

CONTINUED ON PG. 4

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“They want noncitizens to be afraid to speak out, to protest, and to do anything that will get them in the crosshairs of the administration.”

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CM: Recently, the Supreme Court has taken a little bit more of an active role in some of the higher profile cases. The New York Times reported that the president of El Salvador said he would not return an individual who was deported from the United States that the Supreme Court ordered the U.S. government to return. What is that setting up? Is there recourse beyond that, and what is ultimately going to happen in that case?

NH: The Supreme Court did order the [U.S.] government to facilitate his return, and I think the Supreme Court was hoping that the administration would make a good faith effort to do so.

It seems very clear at this point that they have no intention of making any effort at all, and so this issue will almost certainly go back to the Supreme Court, and it’s being set up to be a conflict between the judiciary and the executive [branches] and potentially the first time in this administration that we’ve seen them directly flout a court order.

That remains to be seen, and it also remains to be seen how far the Supreme Court is willing to go to try to get the administration to comply, or whether they will back down in the face of the intransigence that they’re seeing from the administration. Now, I don’t have a crystal ball, so I don’t know how the Supreme Court is going to rule. But I think that this is really being set up as a test case for the administration in terms of how much they have to listen to [the] courts and how much they can assert their own prerogatives in the area of immigration.

CM: What would the Supreme Court asserting itself in the realm of immigration look like? What recourse do they have to essentially force the executive branch to take an action that [the courts have] ordered?

NH: In the previous order, the Supreme Court was very deferential, and it allowed the executive to determine the steps that it needed to take in order to bring Mr. Garcia back to the United States. The government has refused to take any steps, and so I think that the

Supreme Court could order the administration to take more specific steps.

If the [Trump] administration then were not to comply with the order to take specific steps, the district court could hold government officials in contempt. That could include fines, it could include jail time, and we haven’t really seen a court go that far yet. They haven’t been required to.

But I think it’s also equally as likely that the Supreme Court will throw up its hands and say, “Well, we asked them to do what they could. They’ve told us they could do nothing, and so therefore they’ve complied with the order.”

I don’t know how it’s going to come out, but I think if the Supreme Court gives the government that power, they are going to use it broadly. They’re not just going to use it against [noncitizens]. We heard [on April 14] from President Trump in the Oval Office [that] he intends to send U.S. citizens to this mega prison in El Salvador. And so I think this would be the first of many situations in which the administration believes that it is above the law and acts accordingly.

CM: Some of the higher profile deportation efforts, specifically of people like [Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestine activist] Mahmoud Khalil, have been justified under a provision of the INA. Can you explain that provision and how it’s being used specifically to target the political speech of noncitizens?

NH: It’s a provision in the INA that allows the secretary of state to declare that a person’s presence in the United States is a risk to the foreign policy interests of the United States, and then, if the secretary of state makes that determination, it renders that person deportable.

The statute gives the secretary of state broad discretion to make those determinations. This statute was originally enacted during the Red Scare of the 1950s, [and] it has essentially not been used since then. It remains to be seen whether the federal courts—where this will eventually get litigated—are going to allow the administration to invoke it, when really what we’re talking about

is protected speech. But the text of the statute itself is very broad and is intended to be used exactly the way that the administration is using it, although not necessarily in this particular context.

CM: How does the federal government’s current program of revoking student visas differ from the way that it has revoked visas in the past?

NH: The government could always revoke visas. Oftentimes that would occur when someone was convicted of a serious crime or there were other national security concerns that arose. That authority was usually not used to handle minor infractions.

What the government is doing right now, my understanding is that they’re comparing a list of students and faculty who are on temporary visas with law enforcement databases, and if there’s any hit at all, those visas are revoked almost automatically. That can mean something as minor as a traffic ticket [or] being arrested and then immediately released and no charges being filed. You know, very, very minor things.

You might wonder, why is the administration doing this? I think there’s a couple of reasons. The first is that I think the administration is trying to form a culture of fear on U.S. campuses and universities. They want noncitizens to be afraid to speak out, to protest, and to do anything that will get them in the crosshairs of the administration. And so I think they’re really succeeding at that. I talk to people every day that are terrified that their visa is going to get revoked. I think that is an explicit goal of the policy.

The other reason I think the administration is doing this is that they have promised that they would deport a million people in the first year of Trump’s second term, and they are not nearly on track for that. It turns out that it is very difficult to deport people; particularly if you’re talking about undocumented immigrants, it’s very difficult to locate them. They usually are living in the shadows, and so [the administration looks at] these students [whom] they have… addresses [for]. They know where they

live, and they know that [these students are] much less likely to contest their deportation and more likely to simply go home if their visa is revoked.

[The students are] sort of acting like low-hanging fruit. [The Trump administration] can get their numbers up, and they can make it seem like they’re being very tough, even though the number of [deported] “serious criminals” or undocumented immigrants remains fairly steady from previous administrations.

CM: For people who have their visas revoked—who are informed either by the State Department or by the organization that is sponsoring them—what recourse do they have? Can they contest that decision or do they just have to leave the country?

NH: They can contest the decision. There [are] a couple ways that they can do that. They can file a request for reinstatement with the government. That’s sort of an administrative procedure. They can also go to court and file a lawsuit in federal court and allege that revocation of their visa is arbitrary and capricious and that the government simply cannot do it for the reasons that they’re giving.

And then, of course, there’s always a third option, which is to remain here and sort of remain in the shadows so that hopefully [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] (ICE) doesn’t find you and detain you and deport you. And then I think some people are choosing to self-deport. So there’s really four options. There’s two different ways to challenge it legally. There’s the option of sort of laying low and hoping that ICE doesn’t find you. And then there’s the option of leaving. I know students that are in all four of those categories.

CM: For people who choose to fight the decision, either through the administrative method that you mentioned or by filing a lawsuit, how successful are those efforts typically?

NH: Well, what’s happening right now is very unprecedented, so it’s hard for me to say whether they will be successful or not. In the past, requesting

“But certainly there could be more that the University could do to support these students beyond giving them some basic advice.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 4

reinstatement is sometimes successful. It’s unlikely, I think, that this administration is going to reinstate many people, because they have obviously decided that this is their policy, and I don’t think they’re going to back down if individuals request reinstatement.

In terms of the federal courts, the first cases have been filed, and there have been a few orders issued by courts that enjoin the government from detaining and deporting students who’ve had their visas revoked. But those cases are at a very early stage, and so it’s really too early to say how they will come out and whether those students will be successful.

CM: Can you explain the difference between the typical federal court system that I think many people are familiar with and the immigration court system, and how those two different bodies respond to the executive [branch]?

NH: Most of what happens in immigration law happens at the agency level. So, there are several immigration agencies. There’s ICE, which is Immigration and Customs Enforcement, there’s CBP, which is [Customs and] Border Patrol. And then there is USCIS [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services], which is the agency where you apply for affirmative benefits with the immigration system.

Those are part of the executive branch, and those agencies make de -

cisions all the time that affect people. They grant visas, they deny visas, they put people into removal proceedings. They deport people. All of those things happen at the agency level.

However, because we live in a constitutional system, there has to have been some review of those decisions by the judiciary. So, in most cases, individuals who are subject to an adverse agency action can then go to federal court to challenge that. Now it is true that in some cases, the immigration agency sort of looks like a court, so there are things called immigration courts that exist within an agency of the government. Although they’re called courts, they’re actually just agency proceedings, and, in those cases, individuals still have the right to appeal to what’s called an Article Three court, which is the independent judiciary that’s set up by the Constitution.

CM: Recently, seven UChicago affiliates, including three current students, had their visas revoked by the State Department for reasons that [the department] would not specifically explain. What can the University, as the organization that is sponsoring those students, do to offer support, and what should it be doing in those cases?

NH: I think primarily the University needs to support those students in making decisions about their future and also giving them options for fighting the visa revocation. At many universi-

ties, there are programs where students can access outside legal counsel that can help them fight their cases. Sometimes those resources are actually in-house; there are lawyers within the university that are helping students apply for visa reinstatement or filing lawsuits.

To my knowledge, the University of Chicago has not done that yet and is simply providing advice on an individual basis to the students that are affected. But certainly there could be more that the University could do to support these students beyond giving them some basic advice.

CM: What would you recommend, in your capacity as a director of an immigrants’ rights clinic, that the University do?

NH: I think it’s important that every student who’s had a visa revoked has access to legal counsel. And as you probably know, it’s very expensive to hire a lawyer in this country, and many students are not in a position to pay very much money to a private lawyer to take their case, and there just simply are not enough nonprofits out there to represent people pro bono.

I would like to see the University make resources available to those students, so that even if the University is not going to bat for them directly, it’s providing them the resources so that they can contest the visa revocation, and I would think that the University would think that that was in [its] best interest.

These are students who were admitted to the University, who are currently in degree programs, who are currently paying tuition, and it seems like it would be in [the] University’s interest to make sure that they could finish their degrees. And so I am anxiously waiting to hear what steps the University is going to take in order to support these students.

CM: Where should people go if they’re interested in learning more about the rights that they have and what recourse they have if they are contacted by the State Department or if deportation processes are initiated against them?

NH: There are many organizations that are providing information online, so I think the first thing that a student should do is to try to do a little bit of online research to find out what is happening [and] what their options are, and then, like we said, it’s going to be really hard for a student to do anything about it unless they’re in touch with a lawyer. There are lots of immigration lawyers, for instance, in the Chicago area, where you can do at least a free consultation. My clinic has been providing brief advice to students who are in this situation as well, although we don’t have the capacity to take on everyone’s individual cases. Primarily, I think they need to be seeking out information and then trying to identify legal resources that they can use to get some advice before they make a decision about how to proceed.

Phoenix Party Sweeps Undergraduate Student Government Elections

By OLIVER BUNTIN | Deputy News Editor and ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter

The University Student Government (USG) elections committee announced the results of this year’s student government elections on Friday, April 25. On the executive slate, the Phoenix Party defeated the newly formed Happyness Party. Elijah Jenkins was reelected as USG president and Alex Fuentes was elected USG vice president.

For the rest of the cabinet, which leads USG’s projects and initiatives, Annie Yang was elected vice president of campus life, Andrea Pita Mendez was elected vice president of advocacy, Malaina Culberson was elected vice president of student affairs, and Tim Lu was elected trustee and faculty governance liaison.

On the College Council, the main decision-making body and voice of the Student Association, Grace Beatty, Aidan Keesler, Esther Ma, Destiney Samare, and Joseph Ayalew were elected for the Class of 2028. Eric Wang, Demetrius Daniel, Kevin Guo, Nefeli Abutahoun, and Kyle Obermeyer were elected to represent the Class of 2027. Finally, Johnny Fan, Ben Fica, Logan Toe, Sebastian Davis, and Logan Hansler will represent the Class of 2026.

According to Nevin Hall, the chair of USG’s Elections & Rules Committee, this year’s elections saw 892 ballots cast, representing around 12 percent of UChicago’s undergraduate population. Hall said voter participation had declined by about 500 students compared to last year’s elections.

Hall also noted that one of the College Council elections was decided by only two votes, and 21 candidates only received a single vote.

“UCPD was concerned that, if protesters knew in advance about the raid, they would lose a tactical advantage and potentially face a more dangerous situation.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 1

raid was likely to occur in the early hours of May 7.

According to persons with knowledge of the matter, UCPD had postponed the raid until later that night because encampment participants had learned about the original time of the planned raid, allegedly through the Chicago Office of the Mayor.

UCPD was concerned that, if protesters knew in advance about the raid, they would lose a tactical advantage and potentially face a more dangerous situation, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.

Neither the Mayor’s Office nor CPD responded to requests for comment by time of publication.

The University declined to comment about why UCPD had postponed the raid time and what were the security concerns that led to this decision.

Just after 4 a.m. on May 7, UCPD officers drove police cars onto the quad and informed those at the encampment that “the University of Chicago [did] not permit their

assembly in this area,” and that they were “hereby notified that [they were] committing criminal trespass by remaining on… private property without permission.”

According to a person with knowledge of the matter, UCPD had planned for arrests during the raid in the event that encampment participants refused to leave.

The University declined to comment about this plan by time of publication.

Internal emails obtained by the Maroon through a FOIA request show that Bowman asked CPD as early as May 3 about what support they would be able to provide in the event of escalation, including for prisoner transportation. The emails also indicated that the raid was initially planned for May 4.

At 5:14 p.m. on May 6, 11 hours before the raid would begin, Bowman emailed CPD Director of Community Policing Glen Brooks asking for assistance.

“As we discussed, are [sic] goal is to gain voluntary compliance in getting individuals to leave,” Bowman wrote. “The Univer-

sity has communicated that the activity is not permitted and after asking individuals to disband and clear the area has directed us to address the trespassing issue.”

Bowman continued: “If [CPD is] unable to provide direct assistance to the encampment area, we would ask that you increase patrol in the arear [sic] off campus that we would normally call out [sic] extended patrol area.”

The request was sent shortly after a meeting between the University, CPD, and City of Chicago leadership. Bowman, CPD Chief of Staff and former General Counsel Dana O’Malley, Deputy Mayor of Community Safety Garien Gatewood, and UChicago Associate Vice President for Safety & Security Eric Heath were all in attendance.

At 9:46 p.m., Brooks declined Bowman’s request for direct support, citing “the constraints of the UCPD’s operational tempo.”

“[W]e are unable to meet the public safety requirements necessary to provide resources beyond our operational patrol

units. Please note that, as always, our district patrol resources are available for emergencies and officer safety incidents,” Brooks wrote.

A person with knowledge of the matter noted collaboration between CPD and UCPD has sometimes generated tension due to disagreements about their respective responsibilities.

The University declined to comment on the typical nature of coordination between CPD and UCPD or how the encampment impacted that working relationship by time of publication.

A final briefing was scheduled to take place at 2 a.m., two hours before the raid, according to the emails between Bowman and Brooks.

Ultimately, 12 Cook County Sheriff’s Officers stepped in to coordinate traffic and provide crowd control during the raid, according to documents obtained by the Maroon through FOIA. No CPD officers were present on campus during the raid or its aftermath.

Booth School of Business Receives $100 Million Donation to Executive MBA Program

By CELESTE ALCALAY | Senior News Reporter

The University announced on Tuesday that Russian-born private equity investor Konstantin Sokolov (M.B.A. ’05) donated $100 million to support the Executive MBA Program at the Booth School of Business. The donation represents more than 10 percent of Sokolov’s net worth and is among the largest ever made to Booth, according to the Chicago Tribune

“This gift will help the school further adapt and refine its offerings to meet the evolving global business landscape,” Madhav Rajan, dean of Booth and George Pratt Shultz Professor of Accounting, said in a University press release.

Booth’s Executive MBA Program, a 21-month program taught across Booth campuses in Chicago, Hong Kong, and London, is designed for professionals who

want to pursue a business degree while remaining in the workforce. The program will be renamed to the Sokolov Executive MBA Program in Sokolov’s honor.

According to the release, the donation will ensure the continued availability of scholarship and operating funds and allow for the program to build its alumni network. A new clinical professorship, a role filled by a practitioner with experience in their field, will also be established for a scholar who teaches Executive MBA students.

The donation comes less than a year after Booth received $60 million from two alumni to support the Master in Finance program. Due to increased uncertainty around federal funding, institutions are increasingly relying on private donors—

including alumni who want to give back to their alma maters—for support. Booth’s official website reports that 39 percent of its revenue comes from alumni giving.

In a recent Chicago Tribune profile, Sokolov said he still looks up his classmates when he is in Chicago and credits the Booth program for launching his career. This month, he is celebrating the 20th anniversary of his graduation.

“The lessons I learned, the experiences I gained, and the friendships I forged at Booth remain the foundation of my career and my life,” Sokolov said in the University press release.

Determined to pursue a career in telecommunications, Sokolov moved from St. Petersburg, Russia, to the United States in 1997 at the age of 21, according to the Tribune. He then enrolled at Booth in 2003. He is also the founder of IJS Investments,

a Chicago-based private equity firm. Sokolov previously donated $1.5 million to Booth, which funded improvements to the student lounge at the Gleacher Center, Booth’s downtown Chicago campus.

Konstantin Sokolov (M.B.A. ’05) recently gifted $100 million to Booth’s Executive MBA Program. courtesy of chicago booth

DoJ Says UChicago Suspended a Diversity Scholarship Amid Lawsuit Threats, University Claims It Hasn’t Participated Since 2023

By EVGENIA ANASTASAKOS | Managing Editor and JULIAN MORENO | Senior News Reporter

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) announced in an April 11 press release that the state of Illinois and several educational institutions, including UChicago, had suspended participation in a state-run scholarship program for minority students pursuing graduate degrees. In a statement to the Maroon, the University said it has not participated in the program since 2023.

In the release, the DoJ said an unspecified scholarship program had “unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of race in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment,” citing the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellow of Harvard College.

Multiple Chicago-area institutions, including the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and Loyola University of Chicago, “informed the Justice Department that they had ended their participa-

tion in the program” after being notified of the DoJ’s findings, the press release stated.

The DoJ did not respond to a request for comment.

A UChicago spokesperson confirmed to the Maroon that the program in question was the Diversifying Higher Education Faculty in Illinois program (DFI).

“In 2023, the University informed the program’s administrators that it would no longer be accepting new fellows,” the spokesperson wrote in the statement to the Maroon.

The DoJ’s actions to end the DFI initiative are part of a wave of anti-DEI actions directed at higher education by the Trump administration.

In February, the Department of Education distributed a letter to colleges and universities instructing them to end DEI programs and policies or risk losing federal funding. Last month, the University of

Chicago became one of 45 schools under investigation by the department for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance.

DFI was established in 2004 to diversify tenure-track faculty at Illinois institutions of higher education. The program offers up to four years of need-based financial aid for minority students pursuing graduate degrees, with the condition that fellows must agree to accept a teaching or staff position at an Illinois institution of higher education or an education-related position in a state agency after they receive their degree.

Before the program began, African-American faculty made up 5 percent and Latino faculty 2 percent of all faculty at Illinois institutions of higher education, according to a 2003 report from the Illinois Board of Higher Education (IBHE), which oversaw the DFI program.

“For underrepresented students, in

particular, a diverse faculty creates a more welcome campus climate and provides increased opportunities for students to find mentors who can also serve as role models,” the report said.

The IBHE did not respond to a request for comment.

In 2022, ABC7 reported that the percentage of non-white faculty still lagged behind the percentage of non-white students at multiple Chicago-area universities, including Northwestern University, the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and Loyola University of Chicago. For instance, while roughly 57 percent of UIC’s students were non-white, people of color accounted for only 33 percent of faculty. The University of Chicago declined to share faculty demographics with ABC7.

From 2021 to 2023, a total of ten DFI graduate fellows in fields including political science, social work, anthropology, Middle Eastern studies, and cinema and media studies studied at the University of Chicago, according to the IBHE website.

Uncommon Interview: UChicago Alum and NYC Mayoral Candidate Brad Lander

By JULIAN MORENO | Senior News Reporter

On June 24, 2025, New Yorkers will vote in an open primary for their mayor, with nine Democrats challenging embattled incumbent Eric Adams. Brad Lander (A.B. ’91), the current comptroller of New York City, has been a vocal critic of Adams since 2021 and is among the more progressive Democratic primary candidates.

Lander spoke with the Maroon about his studies at the University and his New York City mayoral campaign.

Note: This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Chicago Maroon: Were you involved in any political activism during your studies at the University of Chicago?

Brad Lander: A lot of my career, both

in affordable housing and community development and in politics, got its start at the University of Chicago. I was very active in community development and affordable housing work on the South Side. I helped create a student group called “Partners in Community Development” that worked with the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, Centers for New Horizons, and The Woodlawn Organization, trying to help fix up public housing [because] at the time those neighborhoods had seen tons of abandonments. That’s really what launched me into a career in affordable housing and community development, which is then what took me into the city government.

I was also active with a Chicago organization called the Jewish Council in Urban

Affairs (JCUA), and a lot of the folks involved in JCUA had been part of the [former Chicago Mayor] Harold Washington administration. He died when I was a firstyear in the College, [but] there had been a lot of energy behind his campaign and the coalition he built, and I was really inspired by that.

Unfortunately, his death demobilized that movement, and the funniest thing is that I actually worked on a local Board of [Aldermen] race for a guy who I’m pretty sure was an alum of the College, or at least in the University somewhere, and was representing Hyde Park. His name is Larry Bloom, and we all thought he was squeaky clean—one of the reformers fighting the boss, [former Chicago Mayor Richard] Daley, and fighting the machine—except that then a few years later, it turned out [Bloom] was corrupt, and he went to prison.

CM: I noticed you majored in Fundamentals at UChicago. What was your question?

Brad Lander (A.B. ’91) is running for the Democratic nomination in the New York City mayoral race this year. courtesy of lander for mayor

“I’m working hard to run a campaign that shows people we’ll really deliver on what matters to them.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 7

BL: My question was, “What is a person?” with the relevance of that question for politics. Like, how do we think about what a person deserves in the sense of human rights and dignity, and what is a person capable of in terms of contributing to democratic decision-making and the polity?

I’ll see if I can remember my books. They were Plato’s Crito, Antigone—Greek was [a] language which I could read then but cannot now—[Tocqueville’s] Democracy in America, Rousseau’s Second Discourse, Claude Lévi-Strauss’s Tristes Tropiques, and Louis Dumont’s Homo Hierarchicus.

CM: As comptroller, you challenged Mayor Adams’s attempt to reduce funding for city public schools. What are the main threats to K-12 and higher education today, and how do you plan to address them?

BL: Unfortunately, Donald Trump and the MAGA, federal government is the biggest threat to New York City’s budget in general, including our public schools. The ways that they’re defunding the Department of Education risks student loan funding [and] risks direct funding to [the City University of New York] and New York City public schools. [New York City public schools] have about a $30 billion budget, of which about $2 billion is federal funding, so it’s not the majority, but $2 billion is a lot of money.

Trump is shredding things in every direction, but he certainly has made clear his intent to come for cities like Chicago and New York that have sanctuary city policies and stand up for immigrant families. As mayor, we’re not going to let ICE into our schools or our hospitals or our shelters.

I am proposing a set of policies. We have a report coming out Wednesday [April 16] looking at the impact on the New York City budget of the tariffs, which unfortunately have a very real chance of leading to at least a mild and possibly a more serious recession, which would hit the city’s revenues.

Luckily, we had a pretty good year this year, so I’m proposing a big increase to our reserves from this year’s budget so that we’ll have a reserve next year both against cuts that Trump might make and against revenue shortfalls that could come from a

tariff-induced recession.

CM: How can cities such as New York defend the rights of workers, immigrants, and vulnerable populations despite the current presidential administration’s aggressive policies towards those groups?

BL: Let me give an example of each. Most American workers are what’s called “at will employees”.… If you’re an employer, you don’t have to give a reason, you could just fire someone. You’re not allowed to fire them for bad reasons—you can’t fire them because of their race—but you can just fire them without cause. It’s not like that in most of the world. In most of the world, even if you’re not in a union, you have what are called “just cause” or “good cause” employment protections. There’s got to be a reason to fire you.

We did that in New York City for fast food workers. I’m proposing that we pass that law for all New York City workers [so] that there has to be a reason to fire you. When you organize a union, if the boss fires you for organizing a union, that’s illegal, and your recourse is to go file an unfair labor practice with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), but that’s going to be useless during the Trump administration. If New York City passes this just cause employment law to end at-will employment here, then we can protect workers when they organize a union and get them their jobs back, even if Trump’s NLRB is toothless.

For reproductive rights and gender-affirming care, right now, New York City Health and Hospitals (H+H), the city-run health authority with 11 public hospitals and a lot of clinics, provides abortions and gender-affirming care. H+H has about a $4 billion budget; about $1 billion of that comes from the federal government. The abortions and gender-affirming care are less than $100 million, and I’m worried that at some point they’re gonna say, “Well if you do that, we’re going to stop giving you the billion dollars.” So my plan is to create an independent authority funded by city, state, and private dollars that will do the abortions and contraception and gender-affirming care, and then we can protect the billion we get from the federal government because H+H won’t be doing those things;

they will be done by the independent authority.

So there’s some creative strategies, and then there’s just standing up to bullies and for our sanctuary city laws. If somebody has been convicted of a serious violent offense, then the city by law cooperates with ICE, but otherwise ICE is not welcome in our schools or jails or public hospitals or shelters, and I will enforce that law and work together with other cities so that we have strategies for going into court together and standing up together.

CM: Have you adjusted your political strategy in light of New York’s shift to the right this past presidential election? How can New York Democrats win over these voters?

BL: I’ve said on the campaign trail a bunch of times that I think progressives, myself included, were slow to reckon with the rising sense of disorder coming out of the pandemic and that it’s important to address that.

I’ve made the number one issue in my campaign ending street homelessness for people with serious mental illness in New York City. We don’t have to be a city where a couple thousand of our mentally ill neighbors sleep on the subway platforms and the stoops of our buildings, a danger to themselves, obviously in a condition that no one wants to live, and sometimes a danger to others.

There have been several very high-profile incidents: people getting pushed onto the subway tracks, one woman getting set on fire. We can end that and use this policy called “Housing First” that cities like Houston and Denver and Salt Lake City are using very effectively. They get people off the street and into housing with services, and then we’ll have a safer city and a more humane one. When I talk to voters about that, regardless of who they voted for for president or how they think about themselves ideologically, everybody I talk to wants to live in a city with fewer mentally ill people sleeping on the streets and subways.

I’m working hard to run a campaign that shows people we’ll really deliver on what matters to them: the sky-high cost of living, housing and childcare, [and] feeling safe in their neighborhoods. I think part of

the reason why some New Yorkers shifted to voting for Trump is [they’re] just fed up with [a] government that [they don’t] feel like is actually fighting hard for them and delivering for them. I have a track record of making government work for people, actually preserving and creating affordable housing, really making neighborhoods safer, helping workers have better jobs, desegregating our public schools, and helping them run better, and that’s what I’m running on.

CM: What is the best way for progressive candidates like yourself and others to defeat Andrew Cuomo and other establishment candidates in general?

BL: You get out there and talk to everyone, which is what’s great about New York City. It’s just like this incredibly diverse city. It’s fun to be in every corner of it, talking to people. Cuomo’s got a long history not just as an establishment candidate but as an abusive and corrupt person, you know, with this long [history of] sexual harassment—we thought it was 13 women, but then the former mayor of Syracuse last week added her name to the list of someone whom he abused and forcibly kissed.

During the pandemic, he sent thousands of seniors to their deaths in nursing homes and then lied about it and was shown by Congress to have personally edited a Department of Health report to lie about and undercount the number of COVID deaths. There’s a new audit out; during the pandemic, he overruled the [state] health department that historically bought all the health equipment and centralized the purchasing under his own office, spent half a billion dollars purchasing 250,000 pieces of medical equipment, and literally only three of them ever made it out to help New Yorkers. The other [249,997] pieces are still rotting in warehouses. It’s a time of a lot of distraction because Trump has people pretty distracted, but I think when people really look at Andrew Cuomo’s terrible record and abusive personality, New Yorkers will realize he is not what we want for mayor.

CM: What do you think were the major lessons from the pandemic in New York about how we can respond adequately to CONTINUED ON PG. 9

“I’m focusing on

housing and public safety and ending street

homelessness and expanding childcare—practical things that matter in people’s lives.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 8

future public health crises?

BL: This is such a hard question because I think what we need is an effective public health infrastructure that people trust, and one thing the pandemic did was weaken trust in that infrastructure. I would point people to—here I’ll be very “UChicagoan”—David Wallace-Wells, [who] has had some really good articles recently, kind of at the five-year anniversary, on pandemic lessons.

There is a great book by Rebecca Solnit called A Paradise Built in Hell about the ways in which disasters can bring out solidarity in people. We saw that here after Superstorm Sandy. When you get walloped by a disaster and the neighbors really show up for each other, you get a kind of communal feeling that you want to protect your neighbor and help them even if they’re very different from you ideologically or politically

or demographically. Unfortunately, the pandemic is not the only reason we have polarized politics and an attention deficit and a big lack of trust, but it has really contributed to that.

I think what we have to do—this kind of comes back to the campaign I’m running— is have bold and ambitious ideas for things that will really deliver for people. That’s why I’m focusing on housing and public safety and ending street homelessness and

expanding childcare—practical things that matter in people’s lives—and then [I’m] actually going to deliver [on] them and govern the city more effectively with some small steps.

Rebuilding trust by having government deliver on things that matter to people, I think, is what we’re charged to do, both coming out of the pandemic and given the real crisis of democracy that Trump reveals and is exacerbating.

Obama Foundation Hosts Earth Day Cleanup with Community Organizations

By ALEX AKHUNDOV | News Reporter

Community members from Hyde Park and surrounding neighborhoods gathered on April 19 for a cleanup of Jackson Park and a renovation of the landscaping surrounding Hyde Park Academy High School.

The service event was held in anticipation of Earth Day and was organized by the Obama Foundation in collaboration with several other organizations, including the Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, the Chicago Parks Foundation, and the Jackson Park Conservancy. Attendees gathered in front of Hyde Park Academy against the backdrop of the Obama Presidential Center site, scheduled to open mid-2026.

“Every year we like to pull together volunteers from all across Chicago for special projects around Earth Day,” said Joshua Harris, vice president of public engagement for the Obama Foundation.

Participants helped dig and prepare the gardens in front of Hyde Park Academy as music from the check-in table played through speakers. The attendees also worked together to plant and water several perennials that will decorate the exterior of the building.

Landscape architect Ernie Wong was recruited by Ghian Foreman, president and CEO of Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative, to design the new landscape for the perimeter and campus of Hyde Park Academy.

“Ghian calls me up and says, ‘Hey, we have this initiative to try to clean up Hyde Park High School.’ And me, I kind of got a little distraught because I’m a Kenwood Broncos alum, so I was like, ‘What? Why would I want to do that?’” Wong jokingly recalled.

Wong is the founding principal and president of Chicago-based landscape architecture and urban design firm Site Design Group, continuing a family legacy from his father, who was also an architect. His company has been involved in many landscaping projects all over the city as well as at the University of Chicago, such as the Arts Lawn and Campus South Walk. The firm is leading the local landscape architecture for the Obama Presidential Center.

“Everybody talks about a new landscape and what that does. What people never talk about is the amount of maintenance that requires,” Wong said. “Dealing with volunteers is really difficult, and especially [with] this many volunteers. So, [today] we really had to make sure that the planting design was simple enough but beautiful enough in order to really make an impact on the front of the school.”

At a second site within Jackson Park, another group of volunteers fanned out to pick up trash, starting from the soccer fields and continuing onto Wooded Island toward the Garden of the Phoenix. Others worked to mulch trees alongside the walk-

ing paths, carting around large mounds of soil.

Organizing staff manned a lunch table, providing light snacks and water for the attendees. The Obama Foundation also CONTINUED ON PG. 10

Volunteers work to renovate the landscaping around the entrance of Hyde Park Academy. alex akhundov

Participants plant perennials in the garden in front of Hyde Park Academy. alex akhundov

Volunteers shovel soil into wheelbarrows in Jackson Park. alex akhundov

Volunteers assist in picking up trash around Jackson Park. alex akhundov

“Parks should be democratic institutions where people... from all races, from all generations, can come and be together.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 9

hosted 30-minute guided tours throughout the day, showing interested participants around the perimeter of the Presidential Center.

Louise McCurry, a member of the Hyde Park community for 56 years, said that the occasion marked a continuation of longstanding efforts by many residents such as herself towards the maintenance and care of Jackson Park. Now 75 years old and in a wheelchair, she continues to actively participate in such events.

“You don’t live forever. And so you celebrate when you can, when you’ve got cherry blossoms… when you’ve got trees that are alive,” McCurry said. “You keep them alive.”

of the Obama Center complex. The building is slated to feature a multipurpose gymnasium with an NBA-size basketball court, fitness equipment, and other sports amenities. It will serve as a hub for various leadership and community engagement opportunities for youth and adults alike.

“I think sustainability and obviously civic participation are two important aspects of the Obama Foundation and our mission. And so anytime that we can get people together in the community to also give back, the better,” Harris said. “This is a lovely event that I look forward to every single year.”

McCurry has worked with several local organizations throughout her time here, including by previously serving as the president of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference (HPKCC), a community organization that hosts multigenerational activities and discusses major issues that affect the future of the neighborhood. She is also involved with Jackson Park Conservatory.

“The idea is to take Jackson Park, which is the most used park on the South Side, and make it safe for families and children, and for critters, and for dogs and cats,” McCurry said. “Parks should be democratic institutions where people… from all races, from all generations, can come and be together.”

Despite its recent efforts to promote local development, the Obama Center’s construction has not been without controversy. Community members and organizations have raised concerns, ranging from availability of affordable housing and residents potentially being forced out due to rising property taxes, to the detraction from public parkland space for the construction of the privately owned complex.

However, Harris thinks the arrival of the Center will have a positive impact on the community through spaces like Home Court, an athletics facility just across the street from Hyde Park Academy and part

Local resident Travis Williams, one of the many volunteers manning the wheelbarrows in Jackson Park, has been involved with the HPKCC for three years and recently became its president. Speaking to the role that he hopes the Obama Center can play within the community, Williams said that he hopes it can bring stability and a boost to small businesses by providing more traffic and visitors to the area.

“Some people are for it, some people aren’t. But I’m for it,” Williams said. “Whatever’s going to bring money into the community that we can use for other things, that’d be great.”

The large turnout and diversity of participating groups highlighted the potential for synergistic partnerships between the Center and community. McCurry particularly emphasized the importance of young people to sustain these efforts.

“We need young people,” McCurry said. “I’m 75. We will die off, and there’ll be nobody. So we want to get back to the young people.”

Harris hopes the Obama Foundation can continue to facilitate such engagement in collaboration with programs like My Brother’s Keepers Alliance and Girls Opportunity Alliance, both of which form other partnerships between the Foundation and Hyde Park Academy. These initiatives aim to connect local grassroots organizations with schools, educate young people about career opportunities, and help empower them to effect positive change on their community as well as the wider world.

Many of the older volunteers and staff mentioned a sense of wanting to give back to the community as a driving force for their participation.

“I grew up on 51st and Kimbark. I’m a native of the community, so it’s been nice to be able to come back and to contribute,” Wong said. “Given everything that’s going on in the world right now, this is a really fun event to get all the stupid shit that’s going on off of [people’s] minds and bring people together. I mean, you can’t go wrong with plants.

Event staff operate the lunch table in Jackson Park. alex akhundov.

Louise McCurry sits in front of West Lagoon in Jackson Park. alex akhundov.

Travis Williams (Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference) pushes a wheelbarrow in Jackson Park. alex akhundov

Newly planted perennials at Hyde Park Academy welcome their first visitor. alex akhundov.

An Obama Foundation tour guide pauses by West Lagoon in Jackson Park to speak to a group of visitors. alex akhundov

The long-awaited cherry blossoms return to Jackson Park, against the backdrop of the Museum building of the Obama Presidential Center. alex akhundov

Participants of the Jackson Park cleanup team pose for a group photo. alex akhundov

The Encampment and IOP Occupation, One Year Later

On the first anniversary of UChicago United for Palestine’s “Popular University for Gaza,” the Maroon revisits last spring’s protests and the University’s response.

By ELENA EISENSTADT | Deputy Editor-in-Chief and NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor

This piece is the third of a three-part series on the history of protest and the disciplinary system at UChicago. It covers the 2024 pro-Palestine encampment and its aftermath. Other articles have covered 1967–1974 and 2010–2020.

Introduction

One year ago this week, UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP) launched its “Popular University for Gaza” protest encampment on the main quad, erecting tents and artwork across a gradually expanding footprint. After nine days on the ground, the encampment was dismantled by the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) on May 7, 2024.

A banner reading “End the Siege on Gaza,” Ceasefire Now,” and “Free Palestine” hangs inside the encampment. nathaniel rodwell-simon

The Encampment’s First Four Days

Throughout the 2023–24 school year, pro-Palestine student groups responded to the October 7 attacks and the escalating Israel–Hamas war with protests, rallies, and sit-ins at colleges and universities across the country. At UChicago,

UCUP called on the University to divest from Israel-aligned businesses and enact a program of reparations for Palestine and the South Side.

Throughout the academic year, many university presidents were brought in front of Congressional committees to justify their handling of the protests, and multiple university leaders, including Harvard University President Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill, were forced to resign.

UCUP protestors in April 2024. nathaniel rodwell-simon

Tensions simmered as the spring wore on, with demonstrations continuing intermittently until early April, when students at Columbia University established the first “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” and sparked a new wave of demonstrations following in their example.

The wave of protest encampments reached UChicago on April 29, when protesters gathered on the western end of the main quad near Swift Hall and established an encampment of their own. While UCUP’s plans had been leaked

the previous week, the University community was not entirely prepared for its launch that day. As the Hyde Park Herald reported, one UCPD officer said that they “weren’t expecting this until Wednesday.”

Encampment participants gather around the “Welcome Tent,” where organizers distributed information and supplies. nathaniel rodwell-simon

Within hours, University President Paul Alivisatos released the first of several messages to the University community “concerning the encampment.”

In the message, Alivisatos indicated his willingness to allow the encampment to remain as a testament to UChicago’s commitment to free expression but warned that “if necessary, we will act to preserve the essential functioning of the campus against the accumulated effects of these disruptions.”

In his statement, Alivisatos also included an extended digression concerning the military roots of the word “encampment,” earning him the brief addition of “etymologist” to his Wikipedia profile.

Notable local leaders, including Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr., Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers, and

25th Ward alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez visited the encampment to express their support, participating in rallies and hosting teach-ins on topics related to protest history and Palestine.

Bill Ayers speaks to encampment participants during a teach-in. nathaniel rodwell-simon

After three days of the encampment, the University offered the encampment’s organizers a one-hour meeting with Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker in exchange for the removal of the encampment and cessation of further violations of University policy. In addition to a private meeting, the University offered an open forum with the president and provost to discuss “the many viewpoints related to the Israel–Hamas War and divestment.”

UCUP declined the proposal on the fourth day, refusing to dismantle the encampment unless the University committed to their demands.

A thunderstorm later in the day prompted University Facilities Services to take down the American flag from the main quad, in keeping with protocol, which protesters quickly replaced with a Palestinian flag. The day ended in a brief rally around the flagpole and a confronCONTINUED ON PG. 12

“We know that this is not about us; this is about Palestine.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 11

tation with UCPD officers trying to take the Palestinian flag back down. Security officers removed the Palestinian flag the next morning and cut the halyard, preventing any flags from being raised.

Frat Brothers March on the Encampment

On the morning of May 3, the encampment’s fifth day, University community members received a second email from Alivisatos about the encampment.

“On Monday, I stated that we would only intervene if what might have been an exercise of free expression blocks the learning or expression of others or substantially disrupts the functioning or safety of the University,” Alivisatos wrote. “Without an agreement to end the encampment, we have reached that point.”

Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, an organization composed of pro-Palestine faculty and staff members, decried the email in a statement to the Maroon. “The administration has not negotiated in good faith with our students, offering them absolutely nothing in hastily arranged meetings. In light of the brutal police repression of students, faculty and staff across the country, threatening to forcefully dismantle the encampment is a serious escalation.”

Around noon that day, the encampment hosted a rally with more than 200 participants; at the same time, opposing student group Maroons for Israel hosted a picnic on the other side of the quad. Shortly afterward, a group largely made up of fraternity members marched toward the encampment waving American flags.

Protesters and counterprotesters faced off across the center of the quad, with pro-Palestine protesters chanting, “UChicago you can’t hide, you invest in genocide,” and counterprotesters chanting, “U.S.A., U.S.A.” and playing patriotic songs.

At 1:06 p.m., the University sent out a cAlert asking community members to avoid the quad as the crowd grew to roughly 1,000 people. Twenty-five UCPD officers, some in riot gear, lined up between the two groups and prevented people from crossing to either side. Chicago Police Department (CPD) and Allied Security officers were also present on the scene.

you don’t have the freedom to vandalize, you don’t have the freedom to obstruct University walkways, and you don’t have the freedom to disrupt learning, spraying ‘Death to America’ on buildings, chanting ‘Death to America.’”

front of the building, where it remained for several hours.

A person with knowledge of the situation told the Maroon in an interview in 2025 that protesters brought barricading tools, medical equipment, locks, smoke bombs, tactical equipment, and food into the building.

Heidi Heitkamp, director of the IOP, was inside the building during the occupation and exchanged words with the protesters before UCPD escorted her out. In a April 2025 interview, Heitkamp told the Maroon, “It was not well thought out on their part in terms of how they were going to occupy this building.”

“Eventually I just said, ‘I’m not leaving.’ And they said, ‘Well, you know, you’re going to get hurt.’ And I said, ‘Who’s going to hurt me?’”

As the demonstration died down, Arthur Long, a fourth-year in the College who led the counterprotest, told the Maroon, “I’m all for freedom of speech. And I love that UChicago protects that… But

In a statement to the Maroon that afternoon, UCUP said they would “[remain] steadfast in holding the encampment but will not engage in escalation with police or Zionists.”

Alumni Weekend Protesters Occupy IOP

Following a rally around the alumni beer garden on May 17, a group of “autonomous” pro-Palestine protesters, many of whom were alums, marched from a second rally on the Midway Plaisance to the Institute of Politics (IOP) building near 57th Street and South Woodlawn Avenue.

UCPD removed protesters from the building after less than half an hour while CPD officers observed from the street. No arrests were made, and protesters remained on the property until around 9 p.m. when UCPD officers forced them out of the IOP’s backyard.

The group reconvened outside of Alivisatos’s house, where they rallied again, rehanging and beating the piñata-style effigy of Alivisatos on the front lawn.

Before the group split up, one organizer said, “We know that this is not about us; this is about Palestine.”

Protesters entered the building, barricading doors and spray-painting security cameras. Others gathered on the lawn outside, hanging banners and erecting tents. One demonstrator hoisted an effigy of Alivisatos onto a tree in

This piece was produced by the M aroon ’s Investigations team, whose members are Celeste Alcalay, Evgenia Anastasakos, Elena Eisenstadt, Gabriel Kraemer, Zachary Leiter, Tiffany Li, and Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon.

Students and faculty gathered on the eastern end of the quad for a picnic hosted by Maroons for Israel. nathaniel rodwell-simon.

Fourth-year Arthur Long leads the ‘frat march’ against the encampment. nathaniel rodwell-simon

Protesters and counterprotesters confront each other on the main quad. nathaniel rodwell-simon

A line of UCPD officers in riot gear separated protesters and counterprotesters, preventing either group from crossing the quad. nathaniel rodwell-simon

Protesters confront UCPD officers on the IOP’s front lawn after being removed from the backyard. nathaniel rodwell-simon

Protesters on the lawn outside of the IOP. nathaniel rodwell-simon

VIEWPOINTS

A Call to Institutional Honor and Moral Obligation

A trauma surgeon reflects on the pro-Palestine encampment, reimagining our University as a site of conscience, violence prevention, and resistance.

By TANYA ZAKRISON

The Convergence of Violence

As trauma surgeons at the University of Chicago Medical Center, we consistently confront a tripartite taxonomy of violence in our practice. First, massaging the heart of an eight-year-old in traumatic arrest from a gunshot wound is the obvious direct violence we witness, with firearm injury now the top cause of death of children and adolescents in the United States since 2020. Second, there is an emotional violence that we impart, as trauma surgeons, on desperate parents and family members that await—in our ironically named “quiet room”—updates on their child. The sounds that emanate from parents upon learning that their child is dead are carried deep within us forever. The third form of violence we encounter is structural violence: the harm caused by social systems and institutions that create or maintain inequity. Rooted in supremacist ideologies, racial hierarchies, and other forms of discrimination, this violence perpetuates historical patterns of domination and subordination through economic policies, healthcare access disparities, and political structures, stripping certain groups of their basic human needs, leading to increased high-risk survival behavior and direct physical violence. This multilayered cycle of devastation persists because institutions of influence—universities among them—too frequently

avert their gaze.

This cycle manifests with stark geographic specificity on Chicago’s South Side, where historical redlining practices have produced a cartography of disinvestment that corresponds with alarming precision to contemporary patterns of firearm violence—patterns disproportionately affecting African American and Latino communities. The same cyclical violence operates in Gaza; I witnessed it firsthand as a medical student conducting research in the Middle East in 2000. I remember the shame of a Palestinian host family kindly tolerating my survey questions as they were unable to offer me tea due to a 72-hour water shortage. No more than 100 feet away were Israeli children in a settlement swimming in their backyard pool. Today, my surgical colleagues in Gaza confront the three forms of violence in analogous scenarios: the treatment of Palestinian children presenting in traumatic arrest from gunshot wounds, the grim responsibility of conveying catastrophic news to any surviving family members, and the moral burden of bearing witness to genocide against a population systematically denied the basic necessities of life. In Gaza, similar to the U.S., preventable direct violence and its corrosive, destabilizing effects represent the predominant cause of pediatric mortality.

This structural-direct violence dialectic has catalyzed resistance movements at our own institution. South Side Black youth community activists

employed disruptions, demonstrations and direct action to demand the establishment of an adult trauma center at the University of Chicago Medical Center. These actions were met with institutionally sanctioned force via the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD). More recently, a coalition of students, staff, and faculty established the “UChicago Popular University for Gaza” encampment on April 29, 2024, articulating interconnected demands for the University: acknowledgment of the genocide in Gaza, severance of ties with Israeli companies and the Israel Institute, transparency regarding investments in weapons manufacturers, and commitment to reparative justice “from Palestine to the South Side.” This mobilization similarly encountered institutionally authorized police intervention, again from UCPD.

Violence prevention, whether direct, emotional, or structural, constitutes a fundamental dimension of our professional mandate as trauma surgeons within the larger rubric of injury prevention. Similarly, universities bear an institutional responsibility to contribute to societal betterment. Thus, this collective ethical obligation extends to confronting atrocities to which we may be contributing, whether through action or calculated inattention. The campus pro-Palestine encampment represented such a necessary ethical intervention. Indeed, silence in the face of such circumstances would have consti-

tuted a profound dereliction of moral responsibility. Not surprisingly, both campaigns were disproportionately led by youth communities of color, who assumed personal risk to contest the systemic violence directed at similarly marginalized populations—a troubling reflection of how resistance to structural violence itself is inequitably distributed.

The Kalven Report and Institutional Responsibility

The University of Chicago’s Kalven Report, which articulates our principle of institutional neutrality, states a precise purpose: to foster the “development of social and political values in a society,” doing so “out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.” The Kalven Committee also asserts that a “good university, like Socrates, will be upsetting.” The committee speaks to the University’s responsibility to nurture critical inquiry and rigorous intellectual pursuit. Even in its corporate manifestations, the Kalven Report stipulates that the University’s “prestige and influence are based on integrity and intellectual competence; they are not based on the circumstance that it may be wealthy, may have political contacts, and may have influential friends.” It explicitly mandates that the University conduct its affairs with honor, whether in a corporate capacity or otherwise.

The forcible dismantling of the encampment thus consti-

tuted a bifurcated transgression—simultaneously violating the academic principle of free inquiry and abdicating the corporate obligation to operate with honor. The UChicago Popular University for Gaza represented an extraordinary opportunity for our institution to lead the nation in galvanizing widespread discourse and action. When UCPD shut them down, the institution forfeited any authentic fidelity to the report; it forfeited the protection of rich discussion on university campuses and the respect and protection of broader societal debates, especially during times when constitutional violations and student disappearances are occuring in the U.S. Ultimately, the University forfeited the prevention of violence—direct, emotional, and structural—to avoid the deprivation of dignity, the denial of human potential, and to eliminate preventable deaths. Beyond prevention, upholding the Kalven Report’s vision, where intellectual freedom and diverse viewpoints promote justice, innovation, and well-being, is essential for transforming universities into catalysts for positive change through necessary, though sometimes uncomfortable, discourse.

The University as Dialogical Commons: A Missed Opportunity Honoring the principles enshrined in the Kalven Report would have meant recognizing the student encampment as an CONTINUED ON PG. 14

“A

genuine center for higher learning would conceptualize such mobilizations... as pedagogical moments to be embraced.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 13

embodiment of the University’s highest educational ideals: the cultivation of rigorous intellectual engagement with urgent societal questions. A genuine center for higher learning would conceptualize such mobilizations not as disruptions to be suppressed, but as pedagogical moments to be embraced within the broader project of participatory democratic education. Rather than deploying armed force against peaceful protest, the University could have established deliberative spaces— modern-day Socratic salons—in which contentious claims concerning genocide, complicity, and institutional responsibility could be subject to rigorous analysis and dialectical scrutiny. Indeed, a university that takes seriously its mandate to cultivate critical thinking must recognize that theoretical contemplation alone remains insufficient when confronted with potential atrocities of such magnitude. We also need action.

Chicago’s own radical intellectual heritage offers examples of such praxis, particularly in Fred Hampton’s extraordinary coalition-building accomplishments. At just 21, Hampton transcended sociopolitical divisions by facilitating substantive dialogues between the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, and the Confederate flag-displaying Young Patriots. Through difficult conversations and breaking bread, these activists found common ground in analyzing structural oppression and building class solidarity: a Rainbow Coalition so threatening to power structures that Hampton was assassinated at the FBI’s initiative.

The encampment offered a similar reciprocal learning opportunity to demonstrate how

different groups can engage in meaningful conversation despite disagreements. The University’s failure to initiate such pedagogical interventions represents more than a tactical miscalculation; it constitutes a profound abdication of its educational mission and social obligation. By embracing challenging moral questions through open dialogue, the University could have demonstrated how academic communities navigate ethical disagreements while setting an inspiring example for institutions nationwide.

The Historical Continuity of Student Activism

Student mobilization through demonstrations, direct action, and encampments constitutes a venerable academic tradition rather than a contemporary anomaly. This tradition extends at least to the University of Padua in 1507, when students actively rebelled at the cancellation of Carnevale vacation. Due to this resistance, vacation was reinstated. In the U.S., student and faculty activism has catalyzed transformative social movements advancing civil rights; gender equality; efforts opposing imperial wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and beyond; racial justice; LGBTQIA+ liberation; and gun violence prevention. These interventions have been fundamental to the reconfiguration of our societal value structures.

Despite this positive contribution, however, the American academic landscape has a troubling history of violence against student protesters, from the 1970 Kent State massacre during Vietnam War protests to the often-overlooked killings at Jackson State in Mississippi 11 days later. These events depict a historiographical erasure—an exam-

ple of the operation of racial hierarchies in collective memory. The forcible dismantling of the UChicago encampment echoes this pattern of suppression, albeit with less lethal means, demonstrating how universities continue to prioritize institutional control over meaningful dialogue on urgent moral issues.

University communities across the country expressing horror at the ongoing, preventable brutality in Gaza simply reflect a broader societal outrage. Had the UChicago Popular University for Gaza been allowed to maintain its presence, to continue the longstanding tradition of student activism, it could have catalyzed a national conversation that transcended academic boundaries, potentially influencing public policy and reshaping our collective ethical response to humanitarian crises.

Institutional Ethics: Global and Local Dimensions

Conducting our institutional mission with honor extends across concentric spheres of influence, from the hyperlocal to the transnational. The University of Chicago is a predominant landowner on Chicago’s South Side, benefiting from its tax-exempt status, including exemption from property taxes. Such a privilege deprives local Chicago public schools of essential revenue. The consequences become particularly significant given our own institutional research demonstrating that third-grade mathematical proficiency functions as a predictive indicator for future involvement in firearm violence.

Honorable institutional conduct would necessitate comprehensive investment transparency, subjecting our financial portfolio to democratic oversight

by the entire University community. It would further require the formalization of a Community Benefits Agreement with South Side community leadership: a contractual commitment to community development rather than tacit complicity in the socioeconomic conditions that perpetuate violence and childhood mortality. By embracing these responsibilities, we can transform our institution from merely a center of learning to a powerful catalyst for equity and flourishing across the communities we touch, creating a legacy of positive change that extends far beyond our campus boundaries.

A transformative institutional vision would reconceptualize the relationship between the University and the surrounding communities. It would extend the University’s intellectual resources and safe spaces to South Side educational institutions, inviting local students to participate in the University’s opportunities for intellectual growth in secure environments. These same ethical imperatives apply globally, mandating transparency regarding investments in entities engaged in weapons manufacturing or organizations implicated in crimes against humanity, genocide, or structural violence. Imagine an investment portfolio oriented toward human flourishing rather than profiting from military operations that target civilian populations and healthcare infrastructure.

The imperative for transparency informed the encampment organizers’ demands for disclosure, divestment, and reparations. They articulated intersectional connections between the Palestinian genocide, the multigenerational displacement of Black South Side residents, and environmental degradation. One

UChicago Against Displacement organizer incisively observed at an April 2024 rally: “Both Black South Siders and Palestinians are being displaced and forced to live in tents in a modern apartheid with no community, no shelter, and no safeguards.” In this critical moment, the University faces not merely an institutional challenge but a social imperative to align our considerable resources with our professed values. It must create a model where academic excellence and ethical commitment converge to address the most pressing injustices of our time, both locally and globally.

The University as Vanguard of Moral Leadership

The University possesses extraordinary potential for intellectual leadership during periods of historical crisis. Realizing this potential necessitates democratic reform of governance structures, particularly the Board of Trustees, alongside institutional accountability. This includes clarification of who authorized UCPD to dismantle the encampment, especially given that Mayor Brandon Johnson reiterated his commitment to free speech and the Chicago Police Department’s commitment to de-escalation in the days prior to the UCPD raid.

Effective, honorable leadership would also constitute collaboration with peer institutions in pursuing class action litigation contesting documented human rights violations or imposed violations of free speech. The University could implement numerous strategies to channel democratic deliberation toward opposing injustice. It could draw instructive parallels from institutions of European academic

“Let us honor... the

animating spirit of the Kalven Report

by transforming our institution into the university it envisions.”

resistance during the 1940s: coordinated intellectual opposition, institutional support for student-led movements like the White Rose in Germany, provision of secure academic positions for persecuted scholars, and facilitation of alternative educational and scientific initiatives when conventional channels are compromised by authoritarian interventions.

Charting a Path Forward: Toward Institutional Transformation

The encampment illuminated our multifaceted institutional responsibility—both as a center for critical inquiry and as a cor-

porate entity—to our South Side communities, to Palestinian populations experiencing genocide, and to all populations subjected to structural, emotional, and direct violence. The moral burden of confronting supremacy-driven structural violence should not rest primarily upon vulnerable students of color, who now face institutional sanctions, threats to immigration status, or even disappearances with no due process after articulating perspectives that disrupt dominant narratives. Rather, the University should reconceptualize itself as an intellectual nexus dedicated to developing expertise in constructing bridges of solidarity—effectively a Rainbow Coa-

lition 2.0—that transcends divisions, addressing contemporary challenges with moral courage, intellectual rigor, and pragmatism.

As we commemorate the anniversary of the pro-Palestine encampment, intellectual honesty demands rigorous critical reflection regarding our institutional response and commitment to substantive reform. We must resist the instrumentalization of the Kalven Report as a rhetorical insulation against moral responsibility or an excuse to remain silent about the preventative mortality of one population, especially after condemning similar actions against a different population. Instead,

we must employ the report as an explicit mandate to fulfill the University’s highest purpose: fostering the development of social and political values through uncompromising inquiry and principled engagement with the ethical questions of our time.

Let us honor not merely the letter but also the animating spirit of the Kalven Report by transforming our institution into the university it envisions itself to be. Only through such institutional metamorphosis can we legitimately claim to conduct our affairs with the honor and intellectual integrity that constitute the true foundation of academic excellence and corporate accountability. Let this moment

spur our leadership to indeed stand beside other universities and communities willing to do the same at this moment in history. Most importantly, this nationwide and, indeed, global solidarity can create a pathway to eliminate the structural violence that leads to direct violence, for the betterment of all.

Tanya Zakrison is a trauma surgeon and professor of surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. This analysis reflects personal scholarly perspectives and should not be construed as representing the institutional positions of the University of Chicago Medical Center or the University of Chicago.

Pledging Allegiance: Brotherhood, Beer, and the Making of Men

We ought to properly discuss our campus’ cesspool of fraternity culture.

By SHAWN QUEK

This piece is the second of two installments, the first of which appeared in the last print issue of the Maroon. The article is published in its full form on chicagomaroon. com.

Iron Key Society (formerly Delta Upsilon) is best described as Schrödinger’s frat. It is both dead and alive; it is a frat and isn’t. Until one revisits the past, it remains a paradox.

Delta Upsilon (DU) appeared in a 2012 article titled “Fraternal failings,” in which the Maroon wrote, “[They] created a public Facebook event for a party titled ‘Conquistadors and Aztec

Hoes.’”

It gets worse. DU, in their response letter, wrote, “It was never our intention to offend or hurt any minority groups.” Yet, the event description asked partygoers to bring out “an unlimited need to conquer, spread disease, and enslave natives.”

As the 2012 Maroon Editorial Board wrote, “Some might claim that such incidents are not malicious, but are exaggerated or done in irony and jest; however, no matter their intended effect, they just come across as stupid.”

As if the “Aztec hoes” debacle wasn’t enough, in 2018 DU faced allegations of drugging students with Xanax. Nothing screams their code of “Character, Liberal

Culture, and Justice” quite like roofies.

A 2018 Maroon article discussing the drugging reported: “When contacted by phone… the president of DU at UChicago would not comment on the allegations and referred the Maroon back to the international organization. When asked why the chapter didn’t report the allegations to the international organization, [the president of DU] said, ‘I’m going to go now’ and hung up the phone.”

Then came the 2018 DU Sex Position Quizlet, a set of flashcards leaked of DU brothers’ favorite sex positions, including “punishment” and “as long as I’m in a bootyhole,” along with

other more disturbing items.

“The representatives did not address ... whether winter pledges were asked to memorize the document as a hazing assignment,” wrote the Maroon in a separate 2018 article.

Not long after, the Chicago Police Department investigated a report of sexual assault in DU’s fraternity house. As of 2019, the investigation remains open.

In 2022 came the article “Delta Upsilon Fraternity Charter Revoked.” The international chapter board explained its decision in its letter to chapter alumni. “‘For more than five years, the chapter has not met the expectations set forth in the Fraternity’s Men of Merit Chapter

Standards Program.’” The Maroon elaborates, “The Chicago chapter had accumulated more than $60,000 in debt… and had been the subject of multiple hazing complaints.”

What power did the international chapter have at all?

As Atilla Newey highlighted in our interview, “there are things even that [frat brothers] are like, ‘National chapters can’t find out about [that].’ There’s a disconnect between what happens on campus and who the frats report to.”

Liabilities such as debt, hazing, racist public relations, drugging allegations, and sexual assault allegations meant that

“The

fraternity brother who commits sexual assault today

may be the donor who funds a new building tomorrow.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 15

DU was kicked out of a international fraternity chapter and had to reinvent itself. Alternatively, “the brotherhood which existed as Delta Upsilon reorganized itself back [sic] to The Order of the Iron Key.”

Enter the reborn Iron Key Society. Schrödinger’s frat: still a frat, but not. The “frat,” detached from the international chapter, is no longer held to international guidelines. How the new organization holds itself accountable remains unclear, but its new Sexual Misconduct Policy is lackluster at best.

In a 2023 Thanksgiving article “What We’re Thankful For,” the Maroon Editorial Board expressed gratitude for the following: “Iron Key Society, for teaching us how real phoenixes rise from the ashes—even when they really shouldn’t.”

This case study confronts the reality of what is overlooked in the name of tradition or community. Though, as anyone with a shred of ethical consideration will tell you regarding Schrödinger’s cat and frat alike, the whole experiment should have been euthanized years ago.

When I asked S.B. about the relationship between fraternities and sexual assault, he admitted, “Fraternities are known for supplying alcohol to underage students at events. I’m not gonna bullshit. Of course it happens.”

A 2017 Maroon article, “UChicago Greek Life,” reported, “UChicago’s fraternities banded together to create the Fraternities Committed to Safety (FCS) policy… ‘a baseline of procedures aimed at preventing incidents of sexual violence.’ All 10 fraternities signed the document initially. However, members of the Phoenix Survivors Alliance have reported violations of the FCS

policy by several fraternities.”

It’s worth noting that the FCS policy was signed in 2017—just a year before DU made headlines. In 2018, a fraternity brother was expelled a week before graduation for “verbally abus[ing] and sexually assault[ing] a female student.” The trend continued in 2019, when sororities suspended events with a fraternity, citing reports of “date-rape drugs.”

Is prevention a problem of implementation or neglect? Despite being a brother formerly in a leadership position, S.B. said, “I’m sure procedures have been written up, but again, I was never privy to them.”

Why does the University itself not take action against the harm these fraternities cause?

Caitlin Flanagan argues fraternities provide off-campus spaces where underage drinking can happen, and where liability is outsourced. When the inevitable scandals occur—instances of hazing and violence—the University can respond somewhat predictably, with plausible deniability.

Not recognizing fraternities is not a moral stance. It is a legal maneuver. The University is “unaffiliated” with Greek life, and thus remains silent. Silence, we know, is rarely neutral.

In 2016, former Dean of the College John Boyer acknowledged the simple fact that many of the University’s biggest donors were fraternity alumni: “A lot of alumni leaders that I know were part of Greek life, they feel very strongly and protective of that. That’s undeniable.”

It is an open secret that Greek life produces financiers, and financiers fund universities. Byron Trott (A.B. ’81, M.B.A. ’82), a former Goldman Sachs vice chairman, was a fraternity man. So was UBS Wealth Management’s Bernard DelGiorno (A.B. ’54, A.B. ’55, M.B.A. ’55). Harold “Jeff” Metcalf (A.M. ’52), whose name adorns the University’s prestigious internship program, was a fraternity man.

The University claims not to recognize fraternities yet benefits from them. The fraternity brother who commits sexual assault today may be the donor who funds a new building tomorrow. The administration has, one imagines, made its peace with this compromise.

This is not a failure of policy. It is policy. The University of Chicago, like all elite institutions, has mastered the art of selective ignorance. It knows what it must know and unknow depending on convenience. Fraternities continue to brand their members, haze their pledges, assault their guests. The University continues, pretending with perfect sincerity, to be surprised.

Who considers the fraternal history of hazing, misconduct, and toxic masculinity, and says, “This is the brotherhood I’ve been searching for?”

Despite the extensive research that exists on the danger frats pose, they are permitted as unchangeable—a collegiate cultural staple. Fraternities exist persistently because they

are a place where problematic practices of masculinity among brothers thrive and persist unapologetically.

The stereotypical archetype of a fraternity brother is akin to those that philosopher Amia Srinivasan describes in her sardonically titled feminist essay, “The Conspiracy Against Men”:

“These disgraced but loved, ruined but rich, never to be employed again until they are employed again, prodigal sons of MeToo: they and their defenders are not outraged by the falsity of women’s accusations. They are outraged by the truth of those accusations. They are outraged, most of all, that saying sorry doesn’t make it all better: that women expect them, together with the world that brought them to power, to change. But why should they? Don’t you know who the fuck they are?”

Perhaps fraternities are not all monoliths of misconduct. Like other organizations, each fraternity has a different type of branding, values, and members. M.D. said, “Fraternities, by nature, attract different kids and have different pledgeships and have very different characters in them, and ultimately, have very different problems, some much bigger than others.”

Perhaps this is true. I’d like to imagine a world where Iron Key Society makes their members memorize feminist literature as opposed to a Quizlet of their brothers’ favorite sex positions. Until then, it would be best to accept that fraternities will continue denying responsibility and offloading it to others, crying “not all fraternities,” reminiscent of how men are quick to say “not all men.”

Yet, one does find “far too many women.”

I recall my source’s “consen-

sual” branding, the irony of his words painstakingly obvious. Unlike fraternity brothers who willingly receive a coat hanger oil burn scar on their ass or endure other hazing, not everyone subject to the power dynamics present at a fraternity has the privilege of deeming their experiences as “consensual.”

Just how unavoidable is the relationship between fraternities and sexual misconduct?

A 2007 study in the Journal of Student Affairs Research and Practice found that first-year college men affiliated with fraternities were 3.2 times more likely to commit sexual assault. This was the third study to replicate such findings.

Do fraternities select for rapists? It appears they instead create them. According to a 2020 analysis in Violence Against Women, “It was not men who had a prior history of sexual violence who gravitated toward fraternities. It appeared to be the fraternity culture itself that was responsible for a threefold increase in rape among fraternity men.”

A 2020 Maroon article, “Tracking Title IX,” investigated the relationship between fraternities and sexual violence across 33 universities. It concludes, “The two schools with no Greek life on campus reported the lowest rates of sexual assault.”

A 2019 study by the Association of American Universities (AAU) on the University of Chicago found that for undergraduate women, 39.4 percent of all non-consensual “sexual touching” occurred within a fraternity house.

The same study found that 30 percent of women reported some type of nonconsensual sexual contact. This is contrastCONTINUED ON PG. 17

A post uploaded to UChicago Sidechat. shawn quek .

“If a

CONTINUED FROM PG. 16

ed with the national average of 26.4 percent. Though the national average is outrageously high, it makes one wonder what makes the sexual assault rates of the University of Chicago rise 3.6 percent above it.

These findings may demonstrate how a trend of sexual assault at the Univeristy of Chicago runs beyond fraternities. In “A Special Problem,” the Maroon dove into the University’s long-standing issues with sexual assault, linking current trends to a dark history. The authors of the piece interviewed alum Christine Fair (S.B. ’91, A.M. ’97, Ph.D. ’04).

“Now an associate professor at Georgetown University, Fair has come to realize that her experiences at the University of Chicago were unique to the school. ‘Chicago sticks out as a real distinctive exception in terms of the hostile environment particularly for women… It is not cost-free to call these bastards out on their bastardry.’”

In “Something’s Rotten,” Sarah Zimmerman (A.B. ’17) wrote on the future of campus frat culture: “Banning all fraternities is a long-shot, especially on a campus with an administration as infamously reluctant as our own. There are undoubtedly upstanding members of campus fraternities… Unfortunately, these good apples still belong to a rotten tree; ultimately, such a tree needs to be cut down before it can do any more damage.”

One cannot expect a rotten tree to axe itself, though there may still be a path forward, a path that necessitates transformation from within. As the University is reluctant to take decisive action, the responsibility for meaningful change may rest with the fraternities themselves.

community tolerates unacceptable behavior,

is that a community worth keeping?”

Fraternity members must begin confronting the problems within their own organizations.

For many, fraternal brotherhoods promise to mend the patriarchal predicament of loneliness. Fraternities have an undeniably close-knit culture, a community that members know, as S.B. said, “has our back no matter what.”

Do all fraternity brothers have each other’s back no matter what? Are brothers willing to overlook anything, just because the brotherhood has been through everything together?

Correcting unacceptable behavior is difficult. After all, we men risk upsetting the community we have quested so hard for. I’ve personally paid the price of losing friendships after learning of unacceptable behavior. In those instances, I had to ask myself: if a community tolerates unacceptable behavior, is that a community worth keeping?

The myths of masculinity born of patriarchy are what render the male quest for a community such a dire one. Patriarchy limits men. It narrows our emotional range. It suppresses vulnerability. It distorts our relationships. It takes a mental toll.

Feminism is not a movement for women alone; it is for the liberation of everyone from the shackles of patriarchy. Men especially benefit from patriarchy, thus we must take responsibility for dismantling it.

The same power dynamics that enforce problematic ideas can serve to self-regulate for growth. This isn’t about grand gestures or heroic acts—it is about the persistent effort to challenge the culture one influences, leveraging privilege to confront the toxic masculinity that perpetuates patriarchy.

I know firsthand this call for

accountability is not just theory but praxis.

During my time as a lieutenant in fire and rescue , through vehemently correcting moments of misogyny, my colleagues and I made clear that such behavior was unacceptable in a culture we influenced—no exceptions. This example wasn’t about being a “perfect ally” or waving a flag of moral superiority, but about doing the uncomfortable work of reconditioning those around you.

Those who care should positively weaponize reinforcement and power dynamics to fashion meaningful change. If positive results can happen with conscripts, university students can certainly grow too. It’s about staying to work on cultures where change is possible, even if that means navigating discomfort and resistance.

Change doesn’t happen overnight but through consistent, thoughtful action.

If we men—fraternity brothers, classmates, and friends—can hold each other accountable, we will begin unraveling the deeply ingrained systems of patriarchy that govern so many of our spaces and relationships. That is where the real work begins against misogynistic indoctrination.

Misogyny requires indoctrination. Men, born to mothers, do not naturally hate women—rather, they internalize misogynistic values throughout their lives. To fight misogyny is to fight the culture of indoctrination that exists for men and women alike, wherever it may be found, through the disruption of misogynistic echo chambers.

Misogyny is not an instinct. It is an education. For many, fraternities provide it.

To examine the American

ideal of fraternity fun is to uncover an unavoidable truth: like the nation itself, this fun is made for a particular kind of person. The kind already accustomed to being centered—privileged, overrepresented, infantilized, spared from consequences.

Even in cases as clear-cut as People v. Turner, society turns to shield a “promising” young man. But where is its commitment to protecting promising young women?

Fraternities endure as cultural fixtures, offering men community and students alcohol. But these offerings come at a cost: the systematic indoctrination of misogyny. This is not incidental. It is a key transaction, one that all must reject.

Fraternities and the student body alike must renounce not just a certain kind of fraternity, but a certain kind of man— the one raised for entitlement, shaped by a grotesquely outdated masculinity, and emboldened by the injustices it permits.

Yet, many will trade their convictions for access to a space where underage liquor flows, as if the tuition for all-American college experience is paid for in moral compromise.

After all, what’s manifesting misogyny when the lukewarm beer is free?

It’s the fall quarter. The most solemn undertaking is about to begin. A fraternal branding ceremony is underway. A coat hanger bent into a Greek letter. Olive oil inside the cast-iron skillet. The stove is set to high. The pledges are lined up, with their left buttock exposed.

Outside on the street, two boys fight each other over a pothole, proving to a refereeing pledge that they aren’t sexual assault risks. Chicago wind cuts through the night, leaving first-

years shivering in “going-out tops,” strategically pulled down to improve chances of party entry.

This part of the intellectual experience certainly was not in the University brochure. After all, some lessons aren’t meant for the public syllabus.

Despite the mythos, the horrors, and the cautionary tales from those who came before, the new first-year students await entry to the party with excitement, in all their awkward, anxious glory.

For this frat house is their Berghain, the pledge at the door is their bouncer.

A lone first-year student stands at the foot of the house, a towering monolith of red brick and fragile masculinity. He stares at the men standing inside. Their jawlines all seem to have been sculpted from the same white granite block of privilege and ignorance.

His heart is pounding in his chest as he approaches the door—no, the gate—to the kingdom.

The door opens. The music is deafening. The floor is sticky with beer and sweat. The air is thick with the berry vapes and anxiety. This, they will tell you, is what brotherhood feels like.

This is the place where men are made, or at least where they think they are.

A pledge at the door stares him up and down. A lion eyeing a particularly foolish gazelle. He steps forward. It’s Judgment Day.

A question is coming. He already knows what it is.

“Name three brothers.”

He doesn’t know them yet. But he will.

Shawn Quek is a first-year in the College.

What Does the University of Chicago’s Silence Say?

By CLIFFORD ANDO

Every day, the headlines report further assaults on research and higher education. The University of Chicago has lost grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Health and Human Services; every single project at the University funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities has been terminated; the National Science Foundation may have just killed 200 grants in its education directorate. Researchers are losing their jobs; visa holders will have to leave the country. Seven UChicago students and alums have already had their visas cancelled. Foreign students cannot speak without fear.

The University is silent. What does its silence say?

Its leadership may hope that silence will allow it to negotiate the present moment, to emerge less compromised, less harmed, than might otherwise eventuate if it spoke out against these harms to its community and its mission. It may imagine that by compromising its values—suffering illegal actions in silence, allowing members to be cheated of education and their lives to be disrupted, accepting that free inquiry will be available at best only to some—it can husband resources and emerge stronger, or at least less poor, in five to ten years’ time. Perhaps we are making tradeoffs: some lose their education, some must be silent, and some research is terminated so that others may survive.

The predicate of such arguments is that, the storm weathered, we just might return to the world as it was before. But there is no going back. That world is gone. And one reason it is no longer available to be recovered is

The assault is already here.

that the leaders of our university consented to its destruction. For one thing our silence surely says is, “This is normal; this is ok. We have no values to oppose this attack.”

To clarify the stakes of what is going on, we cannot forget that the government’s actions are based tactically on the brazen abuse of power and substantively on lies. As regards the former, at the level of the interpretation of statute and adherence to procedure, the Trump administration is manifestly in the wrong. As regards the latter, the demands the government has made of universities in the name of eliminating discrimination range absurdly beyond any conceivable remediation of a civil rights issue. The aim is to seize control over every aspect of institutional operations.

For example, on February 14 the Department of Education sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to institutions of higher education, announcing its interpretation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The Department of Education demanded not only changes to admissions practices but also an end to programs that “teach” certain ideas. Even with regard to admissions, it went far beyond what the Supreme Court said. In casting the intellectual aspirations of DEI as illegal, the letter trammels on the First Amendment, to say nothing of academic freedom.

Where antisemitism is concerned, on February 28 the Justice Department’s newly formed Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announced that it would “visit” 10 university campuses that had experienced “antisemitic incidents.” Not long thereafter, Leo Teller, senior counsel to the assistant attorney

general for civil rights and the newly appointed leader of the U.S. Federal Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, said on Fox News, “We’re going to bankrupt these universities…. We’re going to take away every single federal dollar.”

On March 7, the Trump administration froze $400 million in grants to Columbia University. Three days later, the Department of Education cited the action against Columbia in its release of a list of 60 schools that were being informed of investigations into “antisemitic discrimination and harassment.” Funding has since been frozen to, in chronological order, the University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, Harvard, Brown, Cornell, and Northwestern. Both the form of action to wit, a massive funding freeze, and the procedure by which these actions were taken were illegal.

The demands made of Columbia were already insupportable, many having nothing to do with the ostensible cause of the government’s action. Nevertheless, recent reports show that the government is additionally seeking to impose long-term federal oversight over the university, via a consent decree. Harvard received a list of demands significantly more outrageous than those made of Columbia, which struck at the very heart of its autonomy as an academic enterprise. It elected to fight, which has spurred further penalties and far more invasive demands that particularly target Harvard’s foreign students. For its part, Columbia’s president has now announced that it will accede to no deal that compromises its academic freedom.

This background is necessary to understand the implications of the University of Chicago’s silence and, indeed, that of other univer-

sities. In my view, these silences involve significant forms of moral and strategic risk and enact substantial forms of self-harm.

One silence concerns the projects that have already lost federal funding, the students whose visas have been cancelled, and the postdoctoral fellows whose professional careers are being disrupted by the termination of federal funding. No communication to the University at large has been made about these actions, yet everyone knows they are happening. (The Dean of Students in the Physical Sciences Division did send an email to graduate students in that Division. Allowing that international students in particular might find the times “stressful and challenging,” it encouraged them to meet the challenge by “focus[ing] on strengths and purpose” and included the number for the therapist-on-call and a link to spiritual support.)

On the contrary, the surface level of university communications advertises research success—it broadcasts normality—in a fashion that ignores real suffering by individuals and both losses to knowledge and damage to careers via terminated research. That makes it hard to figure out what harms we would not be willing to paper over.

This is what I term a moral risk.

A second form of silence concerns the threats to Northwestern, among other institutions. Of course, one can imagine sector-wide responses. But where were Columbia’s peers and neighbors when Columbia was attacked? (Princeton’s President Eisgruber did write a public letter about the attack on Columbia twelve days after the $400 million was frozen, one day before the federal government’s deadline.)

Why did MIT not speak up when Harvard was attacked? Is there not a possibility that in remaining silent, we are assenting to attack as an ordinary course of events?

That is what I term a strategic risk.

These two forms of risk come together in an almost surreal way on the main pages of the websites of the targeted universities: Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, and Princeton. Nothing on these pages suggests we are not in some antediluvian world of prestige and calm. The dissonance between that content and what every literate person in the world knows is, I suspect, not helpful. My own communication with students and colleagues at these institutions suggests profound disappointment bordering on a loss of faith, that their leaders turn out so to lack conviction about the enterprise as not to speak in its defense.

A third silence concerns the assault on higher education and advanced research as global projects: the ideal of the free movement of persons and ideas, the aspiration to educate everyone who wants to come, the belief that we can only be excellent if we recruit and converse with the best we can find, wheresoever they might be. At one time, the University of Chicago’s leadership understood that “[our] ability to engage with members of the international community is of fundamental importance to fulfilling our highest aspirations in education, research, and impact.” Messages to this effect about both DACA and the curtailing of visas were sent by President Zimmer and Provost Lee to the entire university community throughout 2020. The letter from the Department of Homeland Security

“We will

CONTINUED FROM PG. 18

to Harvard on April 16 goes much further than simple travel bans in its threat to the very ethics of the research university. It seeks to transform Harvard from victim to instrument in a xenophobic and nationalist enterprise. We must abhor this. We must denounce it.

A final silence concerns the broad acquiescence of university leaders to the Trump administration’s spurious characterization of DEI in its letter to universities. (A welcome contrast to this silence may be found in the resolution of the University of Virginia’s Faculty Senate.) The failure of universities to defend diversity as

not rally the present... through timidity or silence.”

an intellectual good or inclusion as fundamental to free inquiry, to say nothing of the epistemic aims of DEI, is worrisome in itself. That record of silence is even more troubling, given the track laid down for future action by the President’s executive order on “Defending women from gender ideology extremism.” Silence on these issues entails self-harm to essential academic enterprises. We need to beware of being the agents of our own falling short. If we break our silence, what should we say? What should we do?

I return to the claim that there is no going back. We must create

With

By GABRIEL WINANT

The University of Chicago has a long tradition of valuing dissent, at least rhetorically. The 2014 Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Protest and Dissent, for example, underscores that dissent and protest are crucial to the cultivation of two qualities essential to the mission of the University: a robust intellectual climate and the cultivation of members of our community as “citizens of a democracy.”

These are rousing principles. But it is not always easy to recognize our institution in them. It is often said that the university is not a democracy, and the relationship we bear to it—as students, faculty, staff, or community members—is not that of citizenship. I have heard this point presented many times as self-evident, as though it were sufficient to end an argument about university governance. But if a major purpose of our institu-

the world we wish to inhabit. This requires the clear articulation of the values we espouse and the contribution we make and a resounding denunciation of the positions we oppose. If we are not strong, if we are not loud in the defense of freedom, openness, and inquiry, what do we stand for?

Many parties, both inside and outside academia, have urged the leaders of America’s colleges and universities to act in solidarity and speak with one voice. Indiana’s and Emory’s faculty councils have recently joined this number. A letter in Fortune magazine, signed by 80 (mostly former) college and university

presidents—none from Chicago—and published on April 15, was an important, unifying step. In addition, the American Association of Colleges and Universities published on April 22, “A Call for Constructive Engagement,” signed by many current leaders in higher education—once again, Chicago was silent. It’s a start, but a very timid one.

What is needed as well is a joint statement from the leaders of the Ivy Plus universities not under attack—CalTech, Chicago, Dartmouth, Duke, MIT, and Stanford—declaring the value of academic freedom and standing firm with their peers. That means

Who Governs the University?

denouncing the attacks on them in the strongest terms. Such a statement might come from all universities in the Association of American Universities. But we are the ones under assault; we are the ones whose courage or cowardice is on display. We will not rally the present nor win the future through timidity or silence. Speak up.

Clifford Ando is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Classics and history and in the College, as well as Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch University.

authoritarian threats looming, our campus needs democracy.

tion is to cultivate the habits of democratic citizenship, after all, then it would seem paradoxical that these habits cannot be applied to our own institution. If democracy and the critical thinking and deliberation that underpin it are only for away rather than home games, then members of the university community might reasonably conclude that the institution doesn’t believe in these values in the way it declares. Why, indeed, is the university not a democracy? Why should we accept that we are not its citizens? The common justification, that the university is an aristocracy of knowledge, is insufficient in two ways. First, it’s perfectly possible, though not always easy, to combine democratic self-government with expert knowledge. This has been a major area of study and discussion in political theory and constitutional and administrative law for decades, even centuries, as well as an actual site of political experimen-

tation: one thinks for example of the famous “brain trust” of the New Deal, a moment of high tide of democratic participation in American society, with a coterie of Ivy-educated lawyers and academics in the lead, building dozens of new federal agencies to represent the people’s will through social science–informed policy. Second, and more importantly, the university is not an aristocracy of knowledge. It’s an aristocracy of the more literal kind—one of wealth. Our Board of Trustees is notorious for lacking even a single member who has spent a career as an academic researcher or educator, despite its unusually large size.

This is not an idle academic matter. In fact, it is of the greatest urgency, not only for our university, but for all of higher education and perhaps American democracy itself. Academia is being remade rapidly from above. Many have been shocked by the demoralizing spectacle of

Columbia University and soon no doubt many others capitulating to the extortion of the federal government to repress certain kinds of research, teaching, and, of course, protest.

Yet as university leaders in these cases have themselves acknowledged, external pressure is not the only cause of recently adopted repressive policies. There are elements within these institutions that have greeted the demands from the Trump administration as an opportunity to carry out changes they already wanted to make. Where is the Department of Education getting its list of demands for each institution? The answer, of course, is that it is coming from inside the house. At some of our peer institutions, trustees and administrators have decided, partly on their own account, to carry out an academic purge of unwanted ideas and their thinkers and advocates—a flagrant set of violations of academic free-

dom as well as religious freedom and freedom of expression—and even apparently to participate in the deportation of their own students.

There is no compelling reason to believe this could not happen at the University of Chicago. Columbia, too, has embraced institutional neutrality and the Kalven Report, the same principled commitments that supposedly protect us. Why should any of us on campus have confidence in our Board of Trustees, a body that is accountable to us in exactly zero ways? Indeed, one of our own trustees, Antonio Gracias, is currently working for DOGE, one of the federal entities most aggressively targeting university research and teaching, with particularly devastating consequences in the sciences. And our institution is certainly unusually sensitive to financial pressure, given its structural deficit. Not wishing to get caught in

“We don’t need permission to cultivate the habits... of democracy.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 19

the contradiction between its stated principles and its economic vulnerabilities, the administration seems to have adopted the policy, “If we don’t move, they won’t see us.” Perhaps, but this cowering posture represents a failure to live up to the obligation imposed by the Kalven Report to actively defend the values of free inquiry. It implicitly asks all of us to self-censor to avoid the rougher treatment involved in being censored more coercively. And worst of all, it seems predicated on the fantasy that academic freedom could survive here while being extinguished all around us, as though we would not then live on a knife’s edge, obliging us into ever more cautious thoughts, words, and actions. Students here have already been arrested, pepper-sprayed, evicted from housing, and subjected to severe discipline for protest activity. It is

not hard to imagine more serious repression arriving even without a formal ransom note from the government—sacrifices offered willingly and unprompted to propitiate the capricious White House.

It is comforting to imagine that the current onslaught can be ducked and evaded—that if we sacrifice some democracy internally, we will prove a less attractive target in an increasingly authoritarian national environment. But this is self-serving rationalization, and such evasion is fast becoming little more than a form of collaboration. The alternative—resistance—is, to repeat, not merely a nice idea but an actual obligation described in the University’s own policies. But UChicago need not carry out this obligation suicidally. Rather, it should attempt to help organize collective action across higher education: coordinated

noncompliance by hundreds, even thousands of institutions. (An open letter of more than 100 law school deans denouncing the disintegration of the rule of law notably did not include Thomas Miles, dean of our law school.) UChicago should work with the national organizations of students and faculty also seeking to coordinate noncompliance. (It is not.) The failure to meet this obligation is a sign of how far the institution has drifted from its own stated values, itself a consequence of its undemocratic governance.

As if to illustrate this drift, President Paul Alivisatos told the Wall Street Journal last year about his experience growing up under the Greek military dictatorship and seeing the repressive effects of the junta in limiting expression and freedom of inquiry at Greek universities. “I don’t know if I shared with you this

other aspect of it, which was right after the junta fell and democracy was restored, within about a year, it turned out that students started to periodically take over the university, and they shut it down sometimes for months on end. And that in my view was an awful thing where protest was disruptive in such a way that it prevented people from learning.”

This story leaves out something crucial: the student uprising at Athens Polytechnic began not after the brutal military regime fell but while it still held power. In fact, the student movement played a decisive role in the freeing of the university from the repressive control described by Alivisatos and, indeed, in the establishment of modern Greek democracy itself—despite the deaths of dozens of students after tanks rolled onto campus on November 17, 1973. The regime fell the next year; November 17

became a national holiday. (Is it surprising that some campus turmoil followed this heroic, wrenching event? Would it have been better if the students had stayed quiet?) The lesson here, quite close to the spirit of the 2014 report, may be other than what the president appears to believe.

If we cannot have confidence in our official leadership, then we must turn to each other. Hopefully, we won’t have to face down tanks, but there’s little doubt that serious difficulties lie ahead. Fortunately, we don’t need permission to cultivate the habits and skills of democracy. In our own organizations of students, faculty, and staff, we can do it ourselves, starting now. There’s no time to waste.

Gabriel Winant is an associate professor of history and the College.

Tuning Out of Our Phones and Into Our Lives.

We must try to face life head-on with no technological crutches to protect us.

By JESSICA ZANG

In my first year of college, I learned to do something I deemed necessary for my social survival: walk through campus zoned out. This entailed never focusing my eyes on the people that passed me; on my way to class, I would refuse to look hard enough to recognize anyone. In my mind, looking clearly meant the danger of recognizing, and recognizing meant facing the ever-present, ever-painful dilemma of whether or not I should say hi to a kind-of acquaintance. I avoided all this dreadful struggle and strife by simply putting on my headphones, shuffling my go-to playlist, and checking out. Accompanied by music, I could

walk to class completely in my own world. I used to think this habit of mine was both quite funny and a rather perfect solution to my fear of navigating college’s vast and intimidating social world. Now, I think it might’ve been the cowardly way out.

There’s this phenomenon running around on social media, “rawdogging,” that describes experiencing any liminal period—sitting on the bus, walking to class, and, most commonly, taking a flight— without music, books, or social media doom-scrolling as life. A walk to class without music, a train ride without a book, or a wait for the next train without a phone to scroll on—all of these are examples of this phenomenon. And, while a

crude description, it holds its own truth. My most important airplane essential, surpassing even comfy clothes or a neck pillow, are my headphones. I cannot imagine undergoing the four-to-four-anda-half hours of my life from SFO to ORD with nothing to distract me. I mean, what am I supposed to do— look at the clouds? In any liminal state, like riding a plane, standing in a long line, or any other momentary time we spend waiting for something to end or begin, we’ve become so bored with ourselves that we automatically seek other spaces to retreat into. Whether it be music or short-form video, digital entertainment is our easy way out. What has made life so dull, so unbearable, or so scary that we

can’t simply experience it as it is?

Why do we need a metaphorical condom between ourselves and the world around us?

The age of the internet is the age of distraction. We live in the era of the attention economy, in a world that monetarily rewards anything that can attract our notice and grasp it for any amount of time it can muster. Algorithms induce anger and fear because these effects keep us scrolling for longer than joy does. Every single digital platform includes its own shortform content—even platforms as silly as LinkedIn Video and Handshake’s “videos for you”—to satiate our ever-shortening attention spans. These apps have gotten so good at this dance that they’ve

tricked us into thinking we need them. We’ve become so reliant on outside sources of entertainment to occupy our consciousness that we’ve become afraid of living without them. Sometimes I wake up and my first inclination is to put on a YouTube video so I can get dressed, as if getting to choose my outfit for the day is not sufficiently engaging on its own. My friends and I have a Holy Trinity routine: TV, homework, and chat, as if anything fewer than three things at once would leave us hopelessly bored. We watch 30 reels in 30 minutes and turn our phones off, not remembering a single one. Overstimulation has been normalized, and distraction has

“This life is stimulating enough, if only we... lift up our heads and look.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 20

become an essential accessory to our sanity, without which we feel incomplete.

The issue is not only that distraction has become comfortable, but that digital realms have become alternatives to living in the real world with its real people and real interactions. Retreating into the realm of our phones is comforting and addicting because it allows us to duck away from our surrounding social environments, from any situation in which we must wave hello to the wrong person or make awkward small talk. Headphones on means, “Don’t talk to me”; texting means, “I’m busy.” As we wait for a class to start or a friend to join us for coffee, we scroll on our phones to publicly convey that we have things to do, places to be, and people to catch up with. A phone screen is a social shield with a clear message: I promise I am not just some idle loser! I have friends, I am doing things, I do not need anyone to approach me, to save me from my own scarcity of substance! Perhaps the clearest illustration of technology as our favorite crutch is the pretend phone call, always on speed dial when we want to steer clear of daunting interactions. The dark screen pressed against our ears

is proof of a performance you’re acting out, for really no one at all.

What should scare us most is not our vulnerability to social situations and judgment, but that we need such artifice to ease it. Our fear of appearing fallible is so great that we cannot stand being seen alone with no company or agenda to corroborate our existence, as if it doesn’t have meaning and purpose all on its own. In fact, what bothers me most about my zoning out isn’t that I’m not present in the moment, but that I am taking an easy way out of the regular interactions I might have as a social agent on campus. UChicago is a vast, complex, and interconnected web of social connections—for better or for worse, we are a community. The more we deliberately avoid any interaction that makes us socially fallible, the more we lose our unique, important role in this community.

Our generation is more socially anxious than any of its predecessors, yet our coping mechanisms are what fostered that anxiety in the first place. The tricky thing is that taking the easy way out is slippery: the more we lean on these crutches, the more difficult it is to walk without them. But in reality, what is so scary about saying hi to the wrong person? What is so

horrible about waiting in a queue without scrolling through your phone? For a few seconds you might whistle and tap your feet. For another few you might actually look around and notice the sidewalk and the people around you. Maybe after those seconds you’d spark up a conversation with the person behind you in line. Maybe the conversation is awkward and stilted, and you turn around thinking, “That was weird.” Or maybe you realize you love the same artist, you laugh at the same jokes. Humans are social creatures—maybe you become friends. Forcing ourselves to be out in the world unprotected—“rawdogging” life—is the only way we open ourselves up to rejoin the spontaneous, interconnected, wonderful society we inhabit. And peeling ourselves away from the tempting distractions of online entertainment can prove to us that what the world offers to us is enough to keep us entertained. This world we live in—whether social or sensory— does not have to be scary, and it does not have to be accompanied by doomscrolling or a soundtrack to be bearable. Perhaps this everyday ennui, the fact that there are quiet moments between the loud ones, is an essential component of the human experience. If I don’t

have music or dialogue streaming into my ears, I can leave room for my own thoughts to spring out and speak to me or others instead. Valuable connections arise, whether within ourselves or with others, when we do not patch over our boredom. Retreating into ourselves to keep us safe from mortification or mundanity only limits the amount of life we are able to fully experience. There is value in walking to class with no music on, in sitting on a park bench with no phone to check time, and in waiting in line without a friend to call. If we just rest our digital crutches, we can become alive to the world around us and the people that

UChicago Must Protect Its Community

bring it to life. The world is living, breathing, and constantly revealing its special secrets to us: the pop of fuchsia from a bush’s first bloom of the season, the whirring of a hummingbird’s wings, the crunch of uneven gravel under a worn sole, the kindness of a stranger who tells you that you dropped your keys. This life is stimulating enough, if only we are willing enough to lift up our heads and look. If I stop zoning out, I can be entertained by all that effortlessly unfolds before me—this time without anything to distract me.

Jessica Zang is a third-year in the College.

The University must take concrete steps to protect its community from unjust federal actions.

By MAROON EDITORIAL BOARD

On April 9, the wave of visa revocations that has rocked the country’s institutions of higher education hit UChicago. Seven members of the UChicago community—three current students and four recent graduates—found out that their F-1 visas under the

Student and Exchange Visitor Program had been terminated by the federal government.

UChicago’s response to the revocations, and to the federal government’s recent attacks on universities as a whole, has been too quiet. In a statement to the Maroon, a University spokesperson said that the Office of International Affairs (OIA) “has offered to

connect the affected individuals with immigration attorneys.” An OIA email on April 4 notified the community that “OIA will begin hosting virtual office hours to address any questions or concerns you may have.”

These are valuable resources for the University to be offering, but they are not enough. More is possible—and called for, as actions

that other institutions have taken show.

We are now at a moment in which scholars are hesitant to travel abroad for fear of being unable to return, young scientists are changing their plans and studying and researching outside the U.S. instead, and projects can lose their funding on a whim. Under these conditions of uncertainty,

the University must take concrete steps to protect vulnerable members of its community, and ensure that they are secure enough to continue their scholarly activities and personal lives free of fear.

We call on UChicago to commit to the following:

1. Guaranteeing funding for affected international scholars to

sofia cavallone

“Seeking

and producing knowledge can only happen in an environment where scholars

CONTINUED FROM PG. 21

access immigration lawyers;

2. Publicly supporting due process for those whose visas have been revoked by the government;

3. Not taking preemptive conciliatory actions in an attempt to avoid direct targeting by the Trump administration;

4. Not capitulating to any Trump administration demands impacting the running of the University, such as placing certain academic departments under receivership, giving the government power to audit various aspects of the University, or revising the University’s admissions processes;

5. Not taking punitive actions against faculty (such as firing, demoting, or reassigning) based on their research or expression of support for perspectives of which the government disapproves;

6. Maintaining and supporting the demographic and intellectual diversity of its student body.

We recognize that there are limitations to what a single institution can do to resist antagonistic actions from the federal government, and that a number of factors may lead the University to act cautiously. On April 14, the government froze $2.2 billion worth of federal funding to Harvard University within hours of its refusal to cooperate with demands such as reforms to leadership, admissions, and student discipline processes.

The costs associated with refusing to comply are all too clear. On top of its relatively small endowment of $10 billion in fiscal year 2024, UChicago is facing serious financial pressures—it had a projected budget deficit of $221 million in fiscal year 2025. It’s unclear to what extent our endowment could replace substantial federal funding due to legal restrictions and donor ear-

are... able to inquire, investigate, and debate freely.”

marking. Due to its hospital and medical school, UChicago also receives a significant amount of federal funding—$338 million in National Institutes of Health (NIH) funding 2024, as compared to $58.4 million in 2024 for Princeton University, which receives the least NIH funding among Ivy League institutions. This funding is crucial to maintaining the life-saving and globally impactful education and research that happens at UChicago.

However, these financial hurdles do not relieve the University of its duty to protect its community.

By refusing to comply with the Trump administration, UChicago would indeed risk losing a substantial portion of its funding—a dire threat to the University’s core mission to seek and produce knowledge. Yet complying would threaten the very same mission in a slower and more insidious way, and the University would have betrayed its core value of upholding academic freedom. A student cannot pursue their education properly if the threat of being detained or deported hangs over them; a faculty member cannot pursue their research properly if they fear being fired over where they look or what they find. Seeking and producing knowledge can only happen in an environment where scholars are secure and able to inquire, investigate, and debate freely.

We believe that our proposals consist of concrete and meaningful actions that the University can take immediately. Some actions may be more costly and difficult to carry out than others. It is up to the University to determine which are worth pursuing.

In making its decision, UChicago should consider the fact that yielding to the Trump administration’s demands would set a

dangerous precedent. If it bows now, even in seemingly minor ways, drawing a line in the sand will likely become increasingly difficult under more demands and greater pressure. An open letter to Harvard’s president, signed by around 2,000 of the university’s alumni by April 19, warns, “We cannot appease the Trump administration – it always asks for more.”

UChicago does not act in a vacuum. Universities will be stronger when they stand together against an administration that runs roughshod over the Constitution. If UChicago wants to be a leader among higher education institutions, it must have the courage to take a stand when it matters.

Guaranteeing Funding for Affected International Scholars

UChicago should guarantee financial support for international students to access immigration attorneys. Offering a connection to legal resources, as the University has already done, is a start— but when 50 percent of UChicago’s student body receives some form of financial aid, that support may remain largely inaccessible without financial backing.

Nicole Hallett, a UChicago Law professor and the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic director, emphasized in an interview with the Maroon the importance of making legal support financially accessible.

“It’s very expensive to hire a lawyer in this country, and many students are not in a position to pay very much money to a private lawyer to take their case, and there just simply are not enough nonprofits out there to represent people pro bono,” Hallett said.

If the legal counsel UChicago offers to connect students with remains out of their reach due

to prohibitive expenses, then the University’s gesture is ultimately a hollow one. The University must actively stand behind students with tangible support.

Publicly Supporting Due Process

The University needs to publicly support the members of its community that the Trump administration targets and do its utmost to ensure that they receive the due process to which everybody, citizen or noncitizen, in the United States is constitutionally entitled.

As of April 18, over 1,550 international students and recent graduates across 240 institutions of higher education have had their legal status changed by the Department of State, according to Inside Higher Ed. The response from many university administrations has been markedly muted.

However, one notable exception has been Tufts University. Tufts released a statement after Rümeysa Öztürk, a doctoral student from Turkey, was taken into custody by masked Department of Homeland Security agents on March 25 as she was leaving her apartment. The statement requested that Öztürk receive the due process rights to which she is entitled and was filed as a declaration of support in Öztürk’s case.

Tufts’s Office of the Provost has communicated openly about its policies on a page titled “Answers to Community Questions,” including stating its policy regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) presence on campus. In line with the attorney general of Massachusetts’s recommendations, “[w]ithout a court order or warrant signed by a judge, immigration officers cannot compel [a school] or their officer[s] to comply with their requests,” the

policy reads.

In stark contrast to Tufts’s public response, Columbia University has said shockingly little, even as the Trump administration deports its students and seeks to take control of its administrative decisions.

In a March 10 email to the Columbia community, two days after ICE agents took Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil into custody from his university-owned apartment, then Interim University President Katrina Armstrong acknowledged feelings of “distress” brought on by the presence of ICE agents around campus. Armstrong did not address Khalil’s arrest. In recent days, a U.S. judge ruled that the Trump administration can deport Khalil, despite his status as a permanent legal resident who has not been charged with a crime.

UChicago should follow the example of support and transparency Tufts has put forth.

Avoiding Preemptive Conciliatory Actions

Beyond immediate steps, UChicago must also resist the impulse to preemptively take conciliatory actions in an attempt to avoid being targeted by the Trump administration.

Since Trump’s election last November, the University has scrubbed diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) language from its public-facing websites, starting even before the Department of Education issued a directive to end DEI programs. That the University made this decision preemptively is deeply regrettable and akin to self-censorship.

As recent events at Columbia have shown, such preemptive actions will not save the University from any potential targeting by the Trump administration. Co-

“The

lumbia established a task force on antisemitism in late 2023, which published two reports in 2024. Columbia’s University Senate also voted in February 2025 to pass a resolution “to combat antisemitism and all forms of hate.”

Despite the decisive steps Columbia took, it still had $400 million in research funding frozen last month. Even after it yielded to a list of demands sent from the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism last month, which included expanding its internal security force and placing its Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership, it still had an additional $250 million of NIH funding frozen.

Many Jewish groups have argued that Trump’s instrumentalization of the fight against rising antisemitism has done nothing to truly address the problem. A coalition of 10 Jewish groups convened by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs publicly rejected the “false choice between confronting antisemitism and upholding democracy,” and warned that the government’s push to deprive students of due process risks undermining the rule of law. In an open letter to Trump, Jewish Harvard students argued that Trump’s funding cuts, taken in the name of protecting Jewish students, instead hurt them and the community they care about deeply, as internships and research opportunities are canceled.

Preemptive actions attempting to appease the Trump administration are untenable and have proven ineffective. Nor do they fall under the principle of institutional neutrality—conciliatory action in anticipation of federal pressure is not neutrality, but submission. Collapsing the distinction between neutrality and appease-

University must

act decisively in defense of its community and higher education.”

ment only legitimizes the trend of federal overreach.

UChicago must refrain from taking that path.

Not Capitulating to Demands

Despite what it stood to lose, Harvard refused to accept demands made by the Trump administration to do what Alan Garber, the university’s president, characterized as “control the Harvard community.” The letter of demands included requirements to “to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity,” reform hiring and admissions processes to be “merit-based,” stop admitting international students “hostile to… American values and institutions,” and immediately discontinue all DEI programs.

“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. Neither Harvard nor any other private university can allow itself to be taken over by the federal government,” lawyers representing Harvard wrote in an April 14 letter.

Although the government has not yet presented it with similar demands, Princeton’s president has also publicly committed to not making any concessions.

UChicago could be the next to face such a list of demands. Before it does, the University should, like Princeton, preemptively commit to not making concessions.

And if and when a list does come, UChicago must, as a university that claims to champion free inquiry and expression, join Harvard in refusing to accept such demands. That means resisting external pressure to place departments under receivership, submit to invasive audits by the government, alter admissions policies to align with ideological demands, or any other action that would com-

promise its academic freedom.

Avoiding Punitive Actions for Research and Expression

UChicago must refuse to discipline any member of its academic community based on research they have done, viewpoints they have expressed, or other scholarly activities they have conducted that fall outside of the Trump administration’s approved boundaries.

Harvard did well in its refusal to accept the Trump administration’s demands. However, it had also dismissed the faculty leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies on March 26. The center had faced allegations that its programming was antisemitic and “failed to represent Israeli perspectives,” according to an article from the Harvard Crimson. In an email to center affiliates announcing the dismissals, Harvard did not give any explanation for why it forced the faculty members from their positions. That left its community to guess, and some landed on the explanation that the firings were because Harvard had decided “only particular narratives are worthy of study,” as one student wrote in a Crimson op-ed.

Such actions, especially when left unexplained, lead to an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear and create a chilling effect on academic inquiry and practice. UChicago cannot let itself be complicit in spreading this atmosphere. It must maintain its commitment to safeguarding academic freedom on its campus by refraining from taking punitive actions against those expressing perspectives which the government deems unsatisfactory or threatening.

Maintaining a Diverse Student Body

If the University truly believes, as it often claims, that di-

versity is “critical to the process of discovery,” then it must act like it by maintaining access programs and actively defending the full spectrum of DEI initiatives. Specifically, the University should maintain and build on the robustness of programs like its Center for College Student Success for first-generation and low-income students, its resource groups for students from underrepresented backgrounds, its Student Disability Services, and more.

It should also continue to meet 100 percent of demonstrated need for financial aid and ensure that each pool of accepted new students is diverse geographically, culturally, economically, ethnically, and intellectually. It should maintain the same diversity among its faculty and teaching staff.

The Trump administration purports to fight for “viewpoint diversity” in higher education. Yet it has punished international students, such as Öztürk, for exercising their First Amendment right to voice perspectives with which the government does not agree.

The Trump administration is also attacking programs and research that serve demographically diverse groups. It has called DEI initiatives, such as on-campus cultural centers and mentorship programs that make higher education accessible to students from low-income and historically marginalized backgrounds, “divisive” and “exclusionary.”

The government has cut funding for researchers across the country because their work includes trans people, addresses sex differences in health, or tackles illnesses that predominantly affect minority groups.

If UChicago caves to government pressure to roll back its diversity programs, the diversity of

thought and perspectives on campus will suffer, hurting the process of intellectual inquiry vital to the University’s mission. Scaling back these programs would also have downstream effects that will shape academia for years to come. Student bodies grow into the next generation of scientists, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, and their diverse backgrounds ensure that their work will serve entire communities without leaving people behind.

Conclusion

The University must act decisively in defense of its community and higher education.

The loss of government funding will undoubtedly reshape and weaken universities. However, the alternative would be ceding power to the government. Without its independence, the University as we know it will cease to exist.

The University has historically prided itself on its commitment to free expression, invoking the 1967 Kalven Report in justifying its decisions on whether to speak or remain silent on social and political issues. The report leaves no room to doubt the right course of action in a moment such as this.

“From time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.”

That time is now.

Editor’s Note: This article was first published online April 19. The Trump administration has since restored many of the visas it had revoked and said it is working on a new policy regarding students on F-1 visas in the U.S.

ARTS

The Legend of Ochi Hesitates but Charms

Head Arts Editor Nolan Shaffer reviews A24’s latest film.

By NOLAN SHAFFER | Head Arts Editor

How serious are fairy tales? In his latest release, The Legend of Ochi, director and screenwriter Isaiah Saxon answers with a charming shrug.

The Legend of Ochi takes place on the lush, mountainous island of Carpathia, where reclusive, intelligent creatures known as Ochi are hunted by humans who loathe them. The film’s sweeping landscapes, foggy forests, and anachronistic costumes and props all fall solidly within the genre of fantasy. The plot is no exception: when Yuri (a wideeyed, tenacious Helena Zengel) finds a young, injured Ochi, she becomes determined to eschew all rules and bring him home. Over the following 95 minutes, rule-breaking, path-blazing, self-discovery, and all of the other typical elements of a coming-of-age story ensue.

However, that’s not to say that firsttime feature film director Isaiah Saxon doesn’t have tricks up his sleeve. The Legend of Ochi surprises the audience with its captivatingly nostalgic 1980s aesthetic. Its alluring, toyish, mystical effects are the result of an intensive production

process—little to no CGI was used. The Ochi are operated by a team of puppeteers, and hundreds of miniature matte paintings serve as backdrops for the set. These handmade effects are striking, but the film’s uncanny visuals seem to have caused a number of users on X to question whether artificial intelligence was used in the making of the film. Saxon has said explicitly that no AI and little CGI was used.

However, the nostalgic design choices, like the rest of the film, are confusing. Time and place become abstract concepts as a mélange of disparate elements—guns and spears, horses and cars, down jackets and vintage soldier gear, and multiple languages—flickers through the film. In theory, these ambiguities would further the feeling of mystery and fantasy, but in practice they leave the viewer uncertain of the film’s genre.

The script is especially confusing. Its tone is that of both a drama and a satire, at the expense of both. Moments of comedy and absurdity are scattered inconsistently through the film and oftentimes

disrupt deeper, emotional scenes. A hilarious grocery store called Kurkamart, absurdly minimalist and topped with a massive chicken, undermines the tension of the high-stakes chase scene that happens inside. What might have been a tear-jerking moment of reconciliation between Yuri and her father is sabotaged by an admittedly funny joke about having passed off a gas-station knife as an ancestral relic.

The film’s disregard for genre does work in some places. A brutish Willem Dafoe, playing Yuri’s father, Maxim, does his best with the script, committing hard to everything and pulling it all off— his ridiculous Spartan armor included.

Composer David Longstreth nails the soundtrack’s shifts from playful to dramatic, suffusing the film with fantasy and wonder.

The Legend of Ochi has charm. Yuri’s moments of discovery and recklessness, accented by tight shots and the Ochi puppetry, are genuinely youthful and curious. The ending, though clichéd, did leave a smile on my face.

Despite hiccups in finding its identity, The Legend of Ochi is enchanting. It is a

An Unhinged Upheaval

rare A24 film for children. Saxon’s vision is proof that a $10 million budget—especially small given the film’s high-profile actors—can work wonders when it forces principled artists to get creative. If only The Legend of Ochi ’s wonder were consistent.

Associate Arts Editor Shawn Quek experiences Sinners by Ryan Coogler, a beautifully unhinged period drama crossed with supernatural horror that includes gospel blues, vampire killers, and fighting the KKK.

By SHAWN QUEK | Associate Arts Editor

Sinners is director Ryan Coogler at his most unhinged—and perhaps his most inspired.

Imagine The Social Network ’s twin-tech trickery meets Inglourious Basterds with a pinch of Get Out , and you’re somewhere in the ballpark of

Sinners . Michael B. Jordan is Arnie Hammered (à la The Social Network) into two roles—Smoke and Stack, twin brothers and ex-mobsters—who swap their tommy guns for hospitality and head home to Mississippi in 1930 to restart their old life.

There, the brothers open a juke joint for the Black community with Irish beer, Italian wine, and gospel-turnedblues on stage. Their venture is part defiant entrepreneurship, part cultural remix, and fully romantic in Coogler’s unique fashion.

Enter Sammie Moore (Miles Caton, a breakout star), a preacher’s kid with

calloused fingers and a voice that can almost raise the dead. He’s roped into the brothers’ juke joint plan as their house guitarist. For a moment, the film hums like an alternative historical ode to Black artistic ambition. As the film settles into something like Southern magical realism, there’s rhythm, hope,

The film poster of The Legend of Ochi courtesy of a 24.

“Sinners

... bites off more than

CONTINUED FROM PG. 24

and even space for joy. Then come the vampires.

Yes, actual vampires. Bloodsuckers turn Mary (Hailee Steinfeld), Stack’s ex-girlfriend, into a vampire, descending on the juke joint and flipping the entire film on its head. In a genre swerve so abrupt it practically reboots the movie, the narrative detours into fullblown bloodbath horror. Limbs fly. Gore splatters. The tone fractures. Suddenly, we’re watching Michael B. Jordan fight… vampire Michael B. Jordan. It’s either ridiculous or genius, and somehow, Coogler makes a strong case for both. It’s outrageous, and it works. Coogler doesn’t treat the genre shift as

it can chew and somehow still swallows it.”

a gimmick—he leans into it. The film mutates into horror without losing its core, using pulp violence to expose something deeper: the predatory systems lurking beneath America’s surface.

And just when you think it can’t get any wilder, the Ku Klux Klan shows up. It turns out the juke joint was always the Klan’s target in a carefully orchestrated trap designed to wipe out the community in one night. When Michael B. Jordan guns down a dozen Klan members, the audience breaks into thunderous applause. Horror meets history meets allegory and not in a subtle way.

But subtlety isn’t the point. Sinners, maximalist by design, bites off more

than it can chew and somehow still swallows it whole. Coogler threads together a wild tapestry of themes: musical heritage, Black spiritual resistance, interracial exchange, colorism, and the enduring terror of white supremacy.

Sinners is messy. It’s audacious. But it’s also the kind of mess only a confident filmmaker could attempt. Underneath the genre acrobatics, there’s a master at work. In less capable hands, Sinners could have been a disaster. Instead, it’s a bloody, beautiful, genre-mashing, hysterical, and historically informed miracle.

Sinners dares to be too much, and that’s exactly why, against all odds, it works so well.

David Mamet’s Henry Johnson Misses the Mark

Mamet is, throughout Henry Jonnson, precise and unsparing in his criticism of society’s quiet acquiescence to sin,

though he could stand at times to be more overt in the rendering of his judgment.

By ZACHARY LEITER | Senior Arts Reporter

At Victory Gardens Theater in Lincoln Park, Relentless Theatre Group’s production of David Mamet’s Henry Johnson falls short despite an intriguing concept and plentiful cynicism. During the tight hour and a half (including an absurdly unnecessary intermission), the fall of middle-aged Henry Johnson plays out. It begins when Johnson is ensnared and arrested for attempting to illegally aid a college friend in his trial for rape and murder. In jail, Johnson again falls prey to a purported ally—his cellmate convinces Johnson to use the prison doctor to smuggle a gun into the jail. For hapless Johnson, it’s only further downhill from there.

It should be stated up front that Mamet—among America’s most famous playwrights—has come under criticism in recent years for his politics. In 2022, the Glengarry Glen Ross author told Fox News’s Mark Levin that “teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.” Mamet has also publicly questioned the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. On the night this reviewer at-

tended Henry Johnson, 20 protesters stood outside in the rain demanding to know why Victory Gardens Theater had chosen to produce the work of an unabashedly conservative playwright.

This play is, if not politically conservative, certainly aesthetically so. Despite innovative material—a simple yet smart arrangement of scenes, the bizarre plot to get Johnson a gun—the play as a whole feels a couple decades past due. And despite Mamet’s willingness to frankly present human beings’ proclivity for profanity and gross sexuality, Henry Johnson rambles right past discussions of rape, abortion, and sin. (Mamet has also been accused of misogyny in his writing; this play does not shy away from men abusing and exploiting women.)

Victory Gardens’s production does the script few favors. Mamet’s dialogue is famously dense, complex, and philosophical, and—unaugmented by changes in blocking and lighting in Henry Johnson—often falls flat. Edward Torres’s direction struggles to unite a play split cleanly into four very different two-person scenes. And, during

clunky transitions and the aforementioned unnecessary intermission, Henry Johnson loses the momentum it has built—and the sense of inevitability that the tragic helplessness of its titular character creates.

That is not to say that Henry Johnson is uninteresting, merely that it is most interesting at first glance and somewhat lacking after. Mamet has crafted a touching, if pessimistic, story about a man who is so blinded by his need to be liked that, to his death, he doesn’t realize everyone around him is playing him for a fool. “You are the little boy and she’s the ice cream vendor in this seduction,” Henry’s cellmate Gene remarks of the former’s relationship to his prison doctor. Gene is, of course, also taking advantage of Henry.

And Henry, blind to it all, comes across as the victim—but the victim of his own childlike daze. Daniil Krimer, as Johnson, says very little, though he is the only member of a four-person cast who is present in every scene. He mostly sits there, on a little metal excuse for a bench, acting through his gut and shoulders. Krimer, as he sweats, wipes his brow with an ugly brown-and-redstriped tie. He paces. “What should I do?”

he asks prison guard Jerry (an able Keith Kupferer). “Do what you want,” Jerry replies. “People generally do.” And yet Henry does not know what he wants.

Krimer is, as Henry, rather intentionally outshone by Thomas Gibson, of Criminal Minds fame, as Gene. Gene, already imprisoned for who-knows-what, reels Henry and the audience in with a series of oily, rolling monologues on gender, wisdom, and justice.

Mamet is, in this reeling-in and throughout Henry Johnson, precise and unsparing in

The film poster of Sinners courtesy of warner bros pictures

Gene (Thomas Gibson) lectures Henry Johnson (Daniil Krimer) about gender, wisdom, and justice. courtesy of michael brosilow

“On the whole, Henry Johnson has an almost there quality to it.”

CONTINUED FROM PG. 25

his criticism of society’s quiet acquiescence to sin, though he could stand at times to be more overt in the rendering of his judgment.

On the whole, Henry Johnson has an almost there quality to it. The set is intriguing but a little too perfect in its supposed disarray. The final image of each act is moving but not quite permitted to settle. The dialogue, though witty, is too frequently left empty by a production lacking consistent style. There are payoffs, certainly, in Henry Johnson—chiefly a realization at the end of the first scene as to the nature of Henry’s situation and a long, unsettling Snow White allegory delivered by Gene—but they cannot make up for a play that fails to sufficiently ensnare. Like Henry Johnson, the audience is pulled in, then left confused, charmed, then left to die.

Relentless Theatre Group’s production of David Mamet’s Henry Johnson is at Victory Gardens Theater through May 4.

Prayer for the French Republic Is Dark in Mood but Warm in Tone

Prayer for the French Republic is, in its quiet insistence on work and secular hope, as much reminiscent of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya as it is of Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt

By ZACHARY LEITER | Senior Arts Reporter

In Skokie, Northlight Theatre and Theater Wit’s production of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic is dark in mood, warm in tone, and beautiful throughout. The play, which runs a surprisingly brisk three hours with two intermissions, follows five generations of a Parisian Jewish family as they perennially wrestle with whether they feel themselves safe in France. In 1944, the elderly couple Irma and Adolphe Salomon wait for news of their sons and daughters-in-law, who have been arrested and sent to concentration camps in Poland. And, in 2017, the Salomons’ great-granddaughter Marcelle, her husband Charles Benhamou, and their twenty-something-year-old children Elodie and Daniel contemplate moving their family to Israel. That only one of Irma and Adolphe’s sons—Pierre—survives the war, and that the Benhamous end up leaving Paris for Israel is not the point of Prayer. This is a play about uncertainty and faith in the face of fear. Prayer ’s three acts are each bookended by narration from Marcelle’s brother, the sardonic Patrick (played by a charmingly salesman-like Lawrence Grimm). Patrick pops back up throughout the play, squabbling with Elodie at a Passover seder, playing the piano that is the family’s prized possession, or explaining the long history of European antisemitism. In a lesser play, Patrick’s narration would be a cheap expositional tactic; in Prayer, it is a clever way to pull the audience back in and to orient their

viewing of the struggle of French Jewry through an avowedly atheist lens. In all, Prayer is a surprisingly secular play, though do not mistake that to mean this is a play about prejudice, hatred, and community. Prayer has broadly applicable themes, certainly, but it is a play that is heart and soul about the Jewish diaspora.

Prayer is also, crucially for the play’s warmth, about a family that feels real, focusing on their day-to-day life much more than it does on the beliefs for which they stand or the ideas which they debate. There are hints of caricature, but they are few and far between; the characters’ wildly divergent views on how to respond to antisemitism and anti-Zionism develop naturally from fully imagined personalities—a real accomplishment in a play that allows itself to indulge in a number of very philosophical conversations on Israel, God, and the Holocaust.

There is a warmth that permeates Northlight’s production of Prayer, which won the 2022 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play during its off-Broadway run. In particular, J. R. Lederle’s lighting design manages to unite soft, robust interior lighting with bizarrely entrancing disco lights, window-shaped gobos, and a massive Eiffel Tower that appears out of a black background above the family’s apartment. Mara Blumenfeld’s costume design is simple yet effective: among a sea of browns, grays, and whites, Elodie, Patrick, and Molly—the

play’s three most countercultural figures— stick out. For instance, the manic-depressive Elodie (played sweetly and sincerely by Rae Gray, A.B. ’14) wears a delightful black blouse embroidered with pink, green, red, and white flowers to the play’s climatic seder. And everything about Prayer feels lived-in, from the ease with which Marcelle, Charles, and Patrick yell at each other to the large, well-worn set that includes chairs, tables, a couch, and bookshelves. Characters drink, eat real food, smoke, actually play the piano and a guitar, and roll and cut out real donut dough for Hanukkah.

Alongside Grimm and Gray, Janet Ulrich Brooks excels as Marcelle, the family matriarch and the core around which everyone else in Prayer ’s modern-day scenes orients themselves. Brooks switches capably between the practiced outward candor with which Marcelle treats Molly and Elodie and the disorientation she, at times of real vulnerability, shows her husband, brother, and father. Marcelle’s struggle is, in many ways, Prayer’s struggle: How does one know when antisemitism has crescendoed to a point of no return? When does one pick up one’s family and leave? It is shown with the Salomons in 1944 that they waited too long, but that is, of course, far easier to say with hindsight. In 2017 (and in 2025) it is too early to say whether the Benhamous are wise to leave France after Daniel is beaten in the street for wearing a kippah.

Prayer is, in Daniel’s beating—which is among the play’s first scenes—and throughout, deeply dark. It weathers that darkness

largely through humor, and this production is wisely unafraid to splice together scenes of death and partying, dread and romance. A lot of Jews committed suicide to avoid being killed by Peter the Hermit during the “People’s Crusade,” Patrick tells the audience at one point. “So we can’t blame Peter for everything.” Prayer is matter-of-fact in its discussions of antisemitism and the Holocaust, and that manages to save even a strange fourth wall break by Irma on the occasion of her passing. Prayer is also, in its quiet insistence on work and secular hope, as much reminiscent of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya as it is of Stoppard’s Leopoldstadt Prayer for the French Republic is not a perfect play; as so many three-act plays do, it drifts and stalls a little in the second act. Nor is this production a perfect production; there’s a touch of cartoonish sappiness in the relationship that develops between Daniel and Molly, and some of the play’s diegetic sounds don’t quite come from the right place. But this is a play full of life, and life is imperfect. In those little moments of beauty interspersed in between bloody handkerchiefs and discussions of Marine Le Pen—where a disco bar appears out of the darkness or where Daniel pops up on a balcony above the stage singing Bob Dylan— we see the hope that has kept Jews alive for centuries.

Northlight Theatre and Theater Wit’s production of Joshua Harmon’s Prayer for the French Republic is at Northlight Theatre through May 18.

Maroon Musings

What should be on your radar this week?

By MAROON ARTS

Want arts recommendations and don’t know where to look? If the answer is yes, you’re in luck—you can check every print edition for “Maroon Musings,” where your arts editors (and a special guest) each recommend one thing that should be on your radar over the next two weeks. Included in this week’s selections are recent art exhibitions and new releases to be in the know about. This week’s guest is Haebin Jung, chief production officer of the Maroon.

EXHIBITION

Frida Kahlo’s Month in Paris

Through July 13, Art Institute of Chicago. Free with UChicago ID.

The first Art Institute exhibition of Kahlo’s work features her encounters with the French Surrealists and innovative bookbinder Mary Reynolds.

Elizabeth Eck, associate arts editor

EXHIBITION GO TOGETHER

April 25–June 9, First Presbyterian Church of Chicago. Free.

A fresh new residency at the First Presbyterian Church of Chicago showcases South Side artists’ works with a variety of mediums and themes.

Nolan Shaffer, head arts editor

FILM

The Wedding Banquet

Verging on cheesy but definitely heartwarming, this rom-com is currently playing in theaters.

Miki Mukawa, head arts editor

LITERATURE

An Afternoon of Poetry with Wayne Scott and Richie Hofmann May 2, 4 p.m., the Seminary Co-op. Free.

Scott and Hofmann read from their recent and forthcoming books on marriage, eros, and desire. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.

Emily Sun, associate arts editor

SPORTS

SINGLE

“What Was That” by Lorde

Lorde returns in full stride with a lead single from her upcoming fourth studio album navigating the aftermath of a breakup.

Shawn Quek, associate arts editor

MUSICAL

Hadestown

Showing May 6–18, CIBC Theatre. Tickets starting at $88.

Anaïs Mitchell’s lyrical reimagining of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice takes place against the backdrop of an unforgiving industrial world.

Haebin Jung, chief production officer

Recent Results Upcoming Games

Baseball played two doubleheaders against NYU (N.Y.) over the weekend, splitting both sets of games.

Lacrosse extended their winning streak to seven games with a 25–6 win against UW-Eau Claire (Wis.) on Saturday.

Softball narrowly dropped both games of a doubleheader against UW-Whitewater (Wis.), moving to 15–19 for the season.

Men’s Tennis advanced in the UAA Championship game with wins over Rochester (N.Y.) and NYU (N.Y.) earlier this weekend before falling just short of the title with a 4–1 loss against Case Western Reserve (Ohio).

Women’s Tennis claimed their fourth consecutive UAA Championship, defeating No. 45 Rochester (N.Y.), No. 10 Wash U (Mo.), and No. 2 Emory (Ga.) in quick succession over the weekend.

Track and Field competed in the UAA Championships over the weekend. Both teams had a strong showing, with the men placing second and the women placing third.

Baseball

Chicago at Concordia-Chicago (Ill.), 3 p.m. Wednesday, Apr. 30.

Softball

Chicago at NYU (N.Y.), 2 p.m. CDT Friday, May 2.

Chicago at NYU (N.Y.) 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. CDT Saturday, May 3.

Track and Field

Billy Hayes Invitational hosted by IU (Ind.), Friday, May 2.

See athletics.uchicago.edu for more information about upcoming games.

CROSSWORD

90. The Chemistry Department’s Worst Nightmare

By PRAVAN CHAKRAVARTHY | Head Crossword Editor

Prefix for “half” that becomes another prefix for “half” when its first letter is replaced with an “s”

Instagram-linked app that doesn’t have tweets

45-Across 65 Wrath

66 McKinsey competitor

67 The Hōryū-ji temple in Japan, for one

Slippery swimmer

69 With proficiency

70 High as a kite

1 OR denizens

2 60-Across’s network 3 ___ Cixin, author of “The ThreeBody Problem” 4 On home plate

5 With 42-Across, assortment of options 6 Important person’s helper 7

Cute canine, jocularly

Band with hits such as “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight),” “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,”

“Money, Money, Money”

57 Leaves with tears?

58 Pesky insect

“___ luck?”

62 Word before appetit or voyage

63 Suffix after Gator-

Marlin from “Finding Nemo,” e.g.