NEWS: Photo Essay: First Day of Class at UChicago
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The Chicago Maroon
OCTOBER 8, 2025
SECOND WEEK VOL. 138, ISSUE 2
University of Chicago Professor Arrested at Anti-ICE Protest
By KALYNA VICKERS | Deputy News Editor
University of Chicago comparative human development professor Eman Abdelhadi was arrested by the Illinois State Police (ISP) on October 3 during a protest outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Broadview, Illinois, the Maroon confirmed.
According to the Associated Press, protestors raised concerns about escalating ICE enforcement and inhumane conditions including overcrowding and lack of access to food, water, and medical care, while also contesting the use of chemical agents against demonstrators.
Abdelhadi has been charged with aggravated battery to a police officer
and resisting and obstruction of peace, according to an ISP public information officer, though the events leading up to her arrest are currently unknown.
Abdelhadi could not immediately be reached for comment.
Posts on X and Bluesky show she was present at the demonstration. One post on X that has since been deleted stated she was placed in a Cook County Sheriff’s Office (CCSO) van following her arrest and “hasn’t been read her rights.” Bluesky accounts reported heavy police presence, barricades, and protestors being tackled or pushed back. ICE, meanwhile, has characterized demonstrators at the Broadview facility as activists defending
convicted criminals.
CCSO directed the Maroon to other law enforcement agencies present at the protest when asked for information about Abdelhadi’s arrest.
Law enforcement presence at Broadview was significant, with ISP, CCSO, and federal agents responding as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino visited the site.
The Broadview ICE facility has been the focus of protests against deportation practices, with recurring protests led by groups such as Organized Communities Against Deportations, Jewish Voice for Peace Chicago, and Raices.
In recent weeks, demonstrations there have intensified amid allegations
of excessive force by federal agents, including the use of tear gas and pepper balls against protestors and journalists, according to reports from Block Club Chicago. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that chemical agents were not used at the Friday demonstration.
These accounts have not been independently verified.
Cook County officials have confirmed Abdelhadi was discharged from custody on October 4. Her next court date is scheduled for this week.
The University of Chicago has not yet responded to requests for comment. This is a developing story.
Nathaniel Rodwell-Simon contributed reporting.
HUM Staff, Writing Instructors Raise Concerns over Staffing, Communication during Writing Program Overhaul
By ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | Head News Editor and SOPHIA LIU | News Reporter
Concerns about understaffing, pay, and faculty workload have surfaced amid the University’s ongoing overhaul of its undergraduate writing curriculum.
The University launched its new stand-alone Core writing course, Inquiry, Conversation, Argument (ICA) this fall, which is being piloted in all Human Being and Citizen (HBC) classes and taught by eight newly hired instructional professors (IPs). ICA is designed to replace the existing writing seminar model, which runs concurrently with the humanities Core sequence.
Seminary Co-op Booksellers Union Demands Living Wage as Negotiations Stall
This rollout has already led to the layoffs of seven writing specialists this July and left some humanities Core courses without dedicated writing specialists to teach their writing seminars, according to humanities Core instructor Stephen Todd.
Todd explained that several non-HBC humanities Core instructors—himself included—were asked to “volunteer to teach without a writing specialist” this fall. Instead, humanities Core instructors could work with one of the new writing IPs to “develop alternate forms of curricular support” so that their students could still
fulfill their Core writing requirement. But this arrangement, Todd said, excluded many of the traditional responsibilities of writing specialists—such as grading assistance and leading the actual writing seminars—without offering additional compensation to humanities Core instructors. The Maroon could not confirm what writing instruction would look like in sections with this arrangement.
In a September 3 email to its members, viewed by the Maroon, the executive committee of Faculty Forward, UChicago’s non-tenure-track faculty union, speculated that “the University has laid off too many members [of the writing staff], leaving the rest to pick up the slack” and urged
humanities Core instructors to refuse requests to forgo writing specialists.
Todd was one of several who declined to volunteer and will continue working with a dedicated writing specialist this year. Had he agreed, he said, it would have meant a “significant increase in [his] workload.”
“A [humanities Core] instructor could keep their syllabus unchanged but would then have to do double the amount of grading because they would not have the grading labor of the writing specialists,” Todd said. If an instructor chose to modify the syllabus, “there would be significant labor involved in retooling the syllabus to be workable without a writing specialist.”
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Seminary Co-op Booksellers Union Demands Living Wage as Negotiations Stall
By JINNY KIM | News Reporter
Last Monday, unionized Seminary Co-op Bookstore booksellers picketed outside the bookstore on South Woodlawn Avenue, gathering signatures in support of their demand for living wages ahead of their next negotiation—marking 15 months without a revised contract.
The workers at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore and 57th Street Books began organizing after multiple failed attempts at negotiating a wage increase, according to the Hyde Park Herald, and after 15 months, in May 2024, they announced the newly formed Seminary Co-op Booksellers Union (SCBU), the only booksellers’ union in Chicago.
Since its founding, the SCBU’s main
demand has been a living wage. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in Chicago with no dependents would need to make around $25 per hour to cover their basic needs. Currently, bookseller Findlay McCarthy earns $18.90 an hour, and some of her coworkers make $17.60 or less.
“We’re really trying to get our wages to cover rent and food, because it’s really shameful that I work full-time here and I’m eating myself out of house and home,” McCarthy said.
In June this year, SCBU members stopped working for an hour, citing management’s failure to come to an agreement that would “match our priorities
for a living wage,” bookseller Elizabeth Pence told the Hyde Park Herald.
In an email to the Maroon, Kevin Bendle, the bookstores’ executive director, wrote that management “genuinely value[s] our booksellers and are committed to providing fair wages, benefits, and employment conditions that compensate employees appropriately for their work.”
While the Seminary Co-op Bookstores are not directly affiliated with the University, its board of directors includes several UChicago administrators and faculty members, and the University owns the Woodlawn Avenue building that houses the Co-op.
SCBU is also demanding that the Coop management and the board terminate their employment of attorney Jenny
Goltz, who is representing the bookstores in contract negotiations.
Goltz, who specializes in labor and employment law in Chicago, previously represented Northwestern University in a lawsuit filed in 2014 by a university police officer accusing the university of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
The union is also requesting that management provide financial information from its previous fiscal year before the next negotiation meeting.
“We really like it here. We want what is best for the stores,” McCarthy said. “A big part of what is best for the stores is compensating the people who know the most about them and do the most work for them.”
Philosopher Jonathan Lear Dies At 76
By ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter
Jonathan Lear, the John U. Nef Distinguished Service Professor in the Committee on Social Thought and faculty member of the Department of Philosophy, passed away on September 22. He was 76 years old.
A member of the University of Chicago faculty since 1996, Lear served as the Roman Family Director of the Neubauer Collegium from 2014 to 2022. He was known for his scholarship on Aristotle and writing on psychoanalysis.
Lear taught courses including Aristotle’s Ethics, Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, and Reading Kierkegaard.
In a message to Lear’s colleagues, Social Sciences Dean Amanda Woodward and Arts & Humanities Dean Debbie Nelson recalled his 2024 Ryerson Lecture, “Gratitude, Mourning, Hope, and Other Forms of Thought,” and described his scholarship as “remarkable, wide-ranging, and impactful.”
Lear authored numerous books on psychology and philosophy. His works include: Aristotle and Logical Theory (1980), Love and Its Place in Nature: A
Philosophical Interpretation of Freudian Psychoanalysis (1990), Happiness, Death, and the Remainder of Life (2000), Freud (2005), Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (2006), A Case for Irony (2011), and Wisdom Won From Illness: Essays in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis (2017). His final book, Imagining the End: Mourning and Ethical Life (2022), explored the ethics and psychology of grief and mourning.
He received the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award in 2009 for his work on human imagination.
Lear also delivered UChicago’s 2009 Aims of Education Address, in which he reflected on the roots of the University’s intellectual vitality.
“It is actually easy to say what [makes] this university great: conversation. In this community we not only have some of the best minds in the world—leading experts in virtually every field of inquiry—but we also value talking things out with each other. There is a shared understanding that if, in this brief time we are alive, we are
going to figure out anything genuinely worthwhile, it will be through conversation. Each of our individual ideas needs to be tested against the countervailing thoughts of others; but even more important, it is the imagination of others that sparks our own.”
Prior to coming to the University, Lear taught at Cambridge and Yale, where he served as chair of Yale’s Department of Philosophy from 1988 to 1990 and the Kingman Brewster Professor of the Humanities from 1995 to 1996. He graduated from Yale University with a B.A. in history cum laude in 1970 and received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Chicago in Philosophy in 1976, receiving first-class honors. He received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rockefeller University in 1978.
In the first of a series of lectures which were developed into Imagining the End , Lear discussed mourning in relation to the Greek notion of kalon, or moral beauty: “I would like to close by suggesting that mourning is itself kalon It is not only good, but wondrous and marvelous that there should be mourning. As we have seen, mourning is a distinctively human way of responding to
loss. It is a special manner of expressing grief: an insistence that what happened was no mere change. The loss is testament to our previous attachments—love and hate, care and entanglements—and constitutes us as beings with a history, a history that continues to matter.”
We ask anyone who has memories they want to share about Professor Lear to please contact us at editor@chicagomaroon.com.
Professor Jonathan Lear. courtesy of the department of philosophy
“‘[C]ommunication has not been the healthiest’ between the administration and writing specialists during the restructuring process.”
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Poetry and the Human Core Chair Sarah Nooter wrote in an email to the Maroon that her sequence had conveyed a “collective refusal” to the administration.
“[We] felt that allowing some of our students to go without the support of writing seminars and [dedicated] specialists would be wrong, because some students then would have had no writing course and no writing seminars—i.e., no formal pedagogy in writing at all,” she wrote.
When asked about the possibility of understaffing, Executive Director of the Writing Program Abigail Reardon told the Maroon in an October 3 email: “The Writing Program is appropriately staffed to support the instructional needs of this academic year.”
“Every instructor teaching a section of HUMA Core is partnered with a fulltime instructional staff member from the Writing Program to support the students in, and specific curricular writing goals for, their section(s),” Reardon continued.
Todd and Sarah Osment, the writing instructor representative on Faculty Forward’s executive board, said there are some humanities instructors who agreed to forgo writing specialists this quarter, but the structure of writing instruction in their sections remains unclear.
In a September 12 interview with the Maroon, Sarah Osment, the writing instructor representative on the executive board of Faculty Forward, said that University administration had not directly communicated the situation to writing specialists, leaving them to find out by word of mouth from humanities Core instructors. She also noted that “communication has not been the healthiest” between the administration and writing specialists during the restructuring process. Osment said at the time that she had not yet received her assigned humanities Core sections or even been told which sequences she would be teaching. “Typically we would get provisional assignments in late August, and then by around Labor Day or so, those assignments are confirmed,” she said. “I use this time to try to update my materials and read up if it’s a new-tome sequence, to try to understand how
that Core works and to read the key texts to be as prepared as possible. But we’ve received no information.”
In a later email to the Maroon, Osment confirmed that she received her teaching assignment on September 22, and that “most if not all” writing specialists had theirs confirmed by September 23—roughly a week before the start of the quarter.
Osment also explained that writing specialists were not meaningfully consulted during the actual restructuring process. Although they were asked to complete a survey “early on,” Osment said, the administration did not clearly indicate that their answers might be used to justify a complete overhaul of the Writing Program.
The results from this survey were later used by 11 faculty members to draft the “Report of the Committee to Review the Writing Program” in December 2022. The survey was distributed to writing specialists who had taught in humanities Core courses between 2020 and 2022. Reardon said that this report was the most recent entry in a long-term review process involving “multiple internal UChicago committees” that contributed to the administration’s decision to ultimately pursue restructuring.
Osment acknowledged that the report “could be correct in some ways about the current efficacy of the Writing Program” but questioned its “objectivity and authority,” noting that “only a few of [her] colleagues actually filled out the survey” because of how long ago it was given.
“There were a lot of inaccuracies in that report, and… some of the claims that were being made in the report lacked evidence or did not match the experience of the people who were actually doing the work of the teaching [and] writing,” she said.
Fellow Writing Specialist Elizabeth Fiedler echoed Osment’s concerns, explaining that she and others completed the survey under the impression that it was a standard pilot program review.
“[I thought], ‘This is the first time that we’ve had full-time staff teaching the writing seminars. They want to know how to improve it,’” Fiedler told the Maroon in
a September 12 interview. “If I had known [what the committee was for], I would have filled out the survey very differently. I’m not the only one who has said that.”
Humanities sequence and Core chairs were likewise not given the opportunity to provide input, according to Nooter. “I wish that there had been a true consultation program when actual decisions about the restructuring were being made—with faculty, and with those who… [run and work] in the hum[anities] Core,” Nooter wrote. “I believe that [humanities Core faculty] should have a say in this process, as we have historically had a voice in the hiring of instructors and the course of pedagogy at the University.”
Osment and Fiedler emphasized that their frustrations were with the transition process itself, not the University’s broader goal to deepen Core writing instruction.
“I do think it’s important to have a
dedicated writing course for students, because—especially in our increasingly AI-driven age—I think writing is a lost art, and I think writing is essential to critical thinking,” Osment said. “[But] I don’t know about the grounds for [the restructuring].”
“From my perspective, as a writing specialist, our job of teaching writing to undergrads needed some structural changes to begin with,” Fiedler said. “It’s always been really complicated to schedule our classes. The registrar won’t do it for us—we have to do it ourselves. So those are the kind of changes that I’ve been wanting to see for a long time.”
Osment stressed that she views how the University views the writing specialists as a deeper issue.
“I think one of the biggest hurdles is that the administration fought us for two years about whether or not writing spe-
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Still... the unanswered question remains how students will experience
writing instruction during these years of transition and staffing uncertainty.
cialists were even teachers,” Osment said. “The people who were actually doing the work of teaching writing are still formally considered staff, but we fought really hard… to get recognition from the University that we are teachers, so that we could join the Faculty Forward union.”
Writing specialists’ employment conditions fall under the protections of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between the University and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 73 on behalf of Faculty Forward and ratified in November 2024. Faculty Forward’s CBA negotiations were open to all union members, and representatives from both SEIU Local 73—which includes
several other groups of UChicago employees—and Faculty Forward were involved in bargaining.
In an email to the Maroon, Reardon said that the CBA negotiated between the University and SEIU Local 73 established a wide range of provisions and benefits for writing specialists in anticipation of the upcoming changes.
“These include severance pay, a stipend for health insurance, and guaranteed finalist-round consideration for any current writing staff member who meets the minimum qualifications and applies for one of the new instructional professor positions,” she wrote.
Despite this provision, of an estimated 11 writing specialists who applied for
the IP position, only two were ultimately hired. Of the 17 remaining specialists on staff this fall, seven hold Ph.D.s—a requirement for the IP position—according to Osment.
“I wish they had made an exception for people with master’s degrees who are already teaching in the program,” Fiedler said. “I understand the reasoning behind it from the administrator’s point of view, but they don’t know what phenomenal teachers they are and what they could really add. As someone who has been here and has been teaching UChicago students for a while, they’re missing out on a large pool of very experienced, wonderful teachers.”
Fiedler added that the University left open the possibility that additional posi-
tions might be created within the Writing Program in the future, including ones that might accommodate specialists with master’s degrees only.
Still, for both her and Osment, the unanswered question remains how students will experience writing instruction during these years of transition and staffing uncertainty.
“While I think it’s good that the University is transitioning to a model where writing is given its own focus, I am worried about the students this year that will not be given support in the form of a writing instructor or a dedicated writing specialist,” Osment said. “I wonder about the foundation that they’ll miss because of this administrative shift.”
Former UChicago Law Professor to be Named Head of Mormon Church
By ISAIAH GLICK | Senior News Reporter
Dallin Oaks (J.D. ’57), a former professor at the University of Chicago Law School, is expected to be installed as the 18th president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, colloquially known as the Mormon Church.
Oaks will formally take on the position following the October 7 funeral of Russell Nelson in Salt Lake City. Nelson served as president from 2018 until his death on September 27.
Previously, Oaks served as first counselor to Nelson and as president of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles (the primary governing body for Church affairs), having been a member of the Quorum since 1984. By custom, the longest-tenured member of the Quorum is selected as the new president of the Church.
The president of the Church, which counts more than 17.5 million members globally, is also responsible for managing a valuable asset portfolio. The Church has accumulated nearly $300 billion across its holdings, and was the fifth-largest private landowner in the United States as
of 2022. One analysis estimates that the Church receives between $5.5 and $6.5 billion annually in tithes from its members. The Church also disbursed $1.45 billion in humanitarian aid around the world in 2024.
According to the Church’s website, Oaks was born on August 12, 1932 in Provo, Utah. He graduated from Brigham Young University (BYU) in 1954 and the University of Chicago Law School in 1957, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Chicago Law Review. After clerking for Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren for the 1957–58 term and working in private practice, Oaks became a professor at the Law School in 1961. He served as associate dean in 1962, following former Dean Edward Levi’s appointment as provost, and became a full professor in 1964.
While at UChicago, Oaks chaired a committee responsible for disciplinary actions following a two-week sit-in in January 1969. The sit-in protested the University Committee on Human Devel-
opment’s decision to not reappoint professor Marlene Dixon, alleging that it was the result of her outspoken anti–Vietnam War views, gender, and criticism of Levi’s appointment to University president.
Despite facing widespread criticism from students and faculty for its lack of due process and transparency, the Oaks Committee ultimately expelled 42 students and suspended 57 of the 164 students brought before them.
In 1971, Oaks left UChicago to become president of BYU, which is affiliated with the Mormon Church. During his tenure, the BYU police force organized sting operations, surveillance, and bathroom patrols to target gay students, in conformity with an honor code that prohibited them from attending the school. Oaks reportedly told officers to target gay people off campus, with the police chief sending officers as far away as Salt Lake City. Following allegations from the ACLU, the school stated in 1979 that its police would cease such activities.
Oaks was also president when researchers at BYU carried out a study on “electric aversion therapy” on gay men,
otherwise known as conversion therapy, a practice that is banned in a majority of U.S. states. One of the 14 subjects, playwright John Cameron, was a devout Mormon driven to participate in the study by the Church’s no-tolerance policy toward homosexuality at the time. Cameron later said the experience left him traumatized.
Oaks has denied such studies were carried out while he was president, contradicting publicly available information.
In a memorandum written by Oaks shortly after he was appointed to be a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, he argued that the Church should oppose same-sex marriage because a “generation of homosexual ‘marriages’ would depopulate a nation, and, if sufficiently widespread, would extinguish its people. Our marriage laws should not abet national suicide.”
In 1981, Oaks was appointed to the Utah Supreme Court, on which he served for the next three years. He was also considered by the Reagan administration for an appointment to the United States Supreme Court. He has been first in line for the presidency of the Church since 2018.
An Interview with Presidential Nominee of the National Academy of Sciences Neil Shubin
By DEREK HSU | Deputy News Editor
Neil Shubin, the Robert R. Bensley Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy and associate dean of basic science research and academic strategy, was nominated on July 14 by the Council of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to serve as the next president of the NAS.
Shubin spoke with the Maroon on July 24 about how his experience as an educator at UChicago has helped shape his interest in science communication and his goal to make NAS reports readily accessible to the American public.
Shubin, an elected NAS member since 2011 and a UChicago faculty member for 25 years, will replace current NAS president, Marcia McNutt, following a ratification vote in December. Previously, Shubin has served as the chair of the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy in the Pritzker School of Medicine, provost at the Field Museum of Natural History, and interim co-director of the Marine Biological Laboratory.
The NAS, established by Congress in 1863, is tasked with advising the federal government on science and technology. The NAS, along with the National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Medicine, jointly manage the National Research Council (NRC), which reports on subjects ranging from space exploration to climate change. These studies can be performed either at the request of the federal government or determined by the NRC to be of public interest.
Shubin reaffirmed the importance of this mission of U.S. scientific inquiry in the midst of the intense scrutiny on science and academic research marked by federal funding freezes and cuts.
“It’s an extremely challenging time for science within institutions and sci-
ence funding, and I feel like this is quite a propitious moment to step up and support many of the values that are important and [much] of the work that has been so transformative for our society,” Shubin said.
Science, according to Shubin, has the capacity to address the need for impartial, nonpartisan evidence in decision-making. He views science as a relief to an increasingly partisan American public.
“The challenge may be… that almost everything in our society is interpreted through a partisan lens,” he said. “Nowadays, I mean, the brand of car you drive [or] the type of insulated mug that you drink out of is viewed through a partisan light.… But I do believe one thing that does appeal to our higher nature is the importance and power of evidence in higher decision making.”
As NAS president, Shubin hopes to expand public-facing science communication. He described the NAS’s work as a process that “approaches the main problems of our society, which are strictly evidence based.” He sees the NAS as being in a unique position to make science more available by sharing the consortium’s reports to the public.
For Shubin, communicating science topics to a wider audience will require presenting information in an easily digestible way. This may be as simple as redesigning the home page for NAS’s website.
“If you go to [NAS’s] web page, it’s like [going on] the internet in 1998. There’s so much there, but you can’t find it. It’s like [it was made] pre-Google,” he said. “We want to basically allow people to navigate and find… relevant information [from] reports we’ve done for the government over the past decades, which can really bear
importantly on people’s lives.”
Shubin also believes the NAS’s strategy for conveying its reports to the public has to adapt to new channels of communication. “[We need to] digest what we’ve done for our reports to the government [for] new media… like Tiktok, Reddit, YouTube, and podcasts,” Shubin said. “A lot of it is re-rigging much of the communication apparatus” so that the National Academy can meet the information age.
An emphasis on “meeting [Americans] where they are at,” he said, goes back to his experience as an educator at UChicago. Shubin’s research over the past 25 years has included fieldwork in Canada and Antarctica, requiring him to bridge different perspectives and approaches between the field and the lab, he explained.
Having diverse audiences has made Shubin a more informed educator. “My research, teaching, and administration has taken me all through the different tendrils of UChicago relationships, and it just shows the power of interdisciplinary thinking and the power of developing relationships with different kinds of organizations,” he said.
In particular, Shubin sees parallels between his topics course for non-biology majors, ‘Your Inner Fish’: The Deep History of the Human Body, and what he plans to prioritize during his tenure as NAS president.
“These [non-biology-major] students are approaching material that matters to me for the first time, and so learning to communicate that material to this kind of audience is just a [powerful] laboratory to test and develop… your own skills as a communicator, to tell the stories of science, [and] to help distill science in a way that will stick to them years after the course,” he said.
Likewise, the NAS can use the class-
room as a theater of learning for younger audiences. “One of my most immediate goals is a simple one: bringing NAS members into classrooms around the country,” Shubin said. “Then I’d want to work with the NAS on one side, and the National Science [Teaching] Associations on the other, to work to develop experiences that teach the process of science more fully in the classroom.”
Shubin intends to continue teaching his Core biology course, The 3.5–billion Year History of the Human Body, in 2026 as he transitions to his new role at the NAS. He will end his tenure at the University and fully transition to his role as president at the end of the 2025–26 academic year.
Making the transition won’t come without its own challenges. Reflecting on his move to the capital with the current political climate, Shubin said, “It is, of course, easy to joke that the survival lessons in the extreme environments of Antarctica and the Arctic may help me weather D.C.”
Photo Essay: First Day of Class at UChicago
By DAMIAN ALMEIDA BARAY | Staff Photographer
The University of Chicago began its 2025–26 academic year on September 29, as students filled the main quad under the bright, early autumn sun. Groups
of friends, new students, and visitors strolled across the quad full of excitement for the new school year.
Maroon Staff Photographer Damian
Almeida Baray captured scenes of the day, from eager first-years exploring campus to returning students reuniting with their friends.
Neil Shubin has been nominated to be the next president of the National Academy of Sciences. courtesy of neil shubin .
A student works at the tables near the UChicago Bookstore and Café.
A student works on one of the benches in the middle of the main quad.
A student relaxes on a bench in front of Joseph Regenstein Library.
A student speaks to another student on the main quad.
A group of students walks across the main quad towards Harper Memorial Library.
A large group of students line up to take their first-day-of-class photo in front of Hull Gate.
$16.6 Million in Terminated Federal Research Grants at UChicago, Visualized
The Maroon used publicly available data to track millions of dollars in research grants that were terminated at UChicago last spring as the Trump administration cut funding for universities nationwide.
By CELESTE ALCALAY | Grey City Editor, GABRIEL KRAEMER | Head News Editor, and NOLAN SHAFFER | Head Arts Editor
The Trump administration made sweeping cuts to federal research funding for universities nationwide last spring. Since then, some researchers have initiated lawsuits against the federal government, arguing that the terminations were illegal. Other researchers are brainstorming ways to move forward by seeking alternative sources of funding, scaling back, or discontinuing projects altogether.
Approximately 65 grants at UChicago have been terminated since January, according to a University spokesperson.
The Maroon identified 31 terminated grants using publicly available data from federal databases and through speaking to researchers directly.
The 31 grants amount to nearly $24.9 million. After accounting for $8.2 million delivered to researchers before the terminations, the net losses total roughly $16.6 million. Terminated multiyear National Institutes of Health grants due to be renewed in future years could have yielded an additional $5 million.
The University received $543 million total in federal grant money in 2024, amounting to 18 percent of total operating revenue, according to July bond issuance documents.
At least two previously canceled grants were reinstated during the Maroon’s data collection process: a large, multiyear study of chronic conditions in minority populations on the South Side and a syphilis prevention study, which are valued at $18.8 million and $457,300, respectively.
The two grants would have added roughly $4.8 million to total losses, after accounting for outlays.
This article is part of an ongoing project to document the extent and impact of the grant terminations at the University.
Previous reporting focused on the stories of four researchers who lost funding. The Maroon asked those researchers how the cuts have affected them, their projects, and the populations they were studying. Additionally, the Maroon asked researchers about their plans for moving forward.
For the full story and data methodology,
We ask anyone who has information about additional grant terminations at the University to please contact us at editor@ chicagomaroon.com. Your name and contact information will only be seen by the paper’s executive editors and the reporters of this story.
Terminated Federal Grants Identified by the Maroon
Individual grants are outlined and sorted by category. Amounts delivered to researchers pretermination are highlighted. Total losses are the faded areas. Data accurate as of October 3, 2025. nolan shaffer .
Students and Faculty Advocate for Pedestrian Safety on Campus, With Attention on the Midway
After continued concerns about the safety of Midway Plaisance, students and faculty are calling for a comprehensive campus mobility plan.
By JINNY KIM | Data Editor
Woodlawn Residential Commons opened on 61st Street in 2020, bringing 1,298 new beds to the south side of campus. The addition of a new dorm meant more people would be crossing Midway Plaisance on a daily basis.
When students and faculty returned to campus after the COVID-19 pandemic and moved in to Woodlawn, they began to notice that cars on the Midway rarely stopped for pedestrians.
“It’s 8 a.m., I’m trying to go to my class, and I’m risking my life, [almost] getting hit by a car, basically every single day,” second-year Nicholas McNamara said in an interview with the Maroon “I’m always wondering if the car’s actually going to stop or if the car is going to hit me,” he continued. “It just always feels like I’m playing a game of chicken.”
The heightened attention to pedestrian crashes on the Midway post-pandemic coincided with an increase in traffic accidents in Chicago, as well as a national uptick in reckless driving. According to the Chicago Department of Transportation, traffic fatalities across the city peaked in 2021 over the last decade at 186 deaths. This number is up from 120 deaths in 2019.
However, Midway Plaisance’s dangers precede the pandemic, according to Chicago Department of Transportation data. The number of traffic crashes—defined as a vehicle colliding with another vehicle, pedestrian, bicyclist, or another non-passenger roadway user—on Midway Plaisance was 25 in 2018 and 28 in 2019.
Last year, the Midway—along with 57th Street, another busy two-way road— experienced the most crashes—15— among east-west roads on campus. Experts say that the Midway’s perils are a result of the road design.
“The road design signals that it is for
fast traffic. It has the classic signs of a limited-access highway,” Kavi Bhalla, an associate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at the University of Chicago, told the Maroon. “You’ve got only two lanes moving in the same direction, and, as you look ahead, you see an open road with no congestion.”
Policymakers often prioritize easy transit for cars without as much consideration for cyclists and pedestrians, according to Bhalla. “We do live in a world where people who control transportation are biased toward moving cars fast and not toward walking and bicycling,” he said.
Pedestrian safety is more complex than what the accident data captures, according to Karlyn Gorski, an assistant instructional professor in the Harris School of Public Policy who teaches a course on transportation.
“It’s not just that I haven’t been in a crash that matters, but also how many times I have to go sprinting across an intersection because vehicles aren’t slowing, or how many times I have to just stand around at a crosswalk, especially on Midway Plaisance, because drivers don’t stop for me even though they’re supposed to,” she said. “The stuff that’s more difficult to see in quantitative data like this is what makes up so much more of the experience.”
In the spring of 2023, the city installed raised crosswalks on Midway Plaisance, intended to slow down vehicle speeds and improve pedestrian visibility. Bhalla cited that information in a study he conducted to evaluate pedestrian safety on the Midway reviewed by the Maroon. However, Bhalla found that the crosswalks are not high enough to be effective.
When he measured car speeds on the Midway at the elevated crosswalks clos-
The total number of crashes reflects all incidents that occurred on east-west roads within the area bounded by South Cottage Grove Avenue and South Stony Island Avenue. For example, counts for 56th Street include every crash along the stretch from Cottage Grove to Stony Island. These boundaries align with the university’s campus map. jinny kim .
est to the Harris School of Public Policy and the Logan Center on November 11, 2023, he found that one-third of cars exceeded the 25 miles per hour speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour before approaching the crosswalk. On average, cars drove through the elevated crosswalks at 32 miles per hour. Pedestrian impact with a car driving at 30 miles per hour results in significantly higher
risk of severe injuries than those hit by a car at 25 miles per hour, accoridng to multiple studies.
Concerns about pedestrian safety eventually led 65 faculty and staff members to write a letter to President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker in June 2024.
Current efforts by the administraCONTINUED ON PG. 9
“Just to continue to have this car-centric [street] feels like a scar on what could be a beautiful park space and public infrastructure.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 8
tion were “limited to piecemeal, remedial, low-budget improvements such as painted crosswalks and tree trimming,” the letter stated.
A new plan “would demonstrate the University’s stated commitments to community and civic engagement, safety and security, public health, and sustainability through greenhouse gas reduction... Further co-designed solutions would allow for collaborations between faculty, staff, and students.”
Emily Talen, co-signee of the letter and a professor on the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization called the University’s response vague. “I sent a follow-up six months later,” she said. “That one didn’t get any response.”
The University did not comment when asked about its response to the letter.
In April, a group of students and faculty members held an event called “Transforming Mobility: A Summit on Campus Transportation.” In response to their requests for more engagement from the University, Assistant Vice President for Campus Planning and Sustainability Alicia Berg, who attended the summit, said that the lack of partnership was due to the University’s fiscal challenges.
“[Taking] incremental steps is kind of the approach we can achieve right now, given the fiscal realities of the institution,” Berg said.
However, given the University’s influence and relationship with the city, Gorski said that it can advocate for changes in the South Side neighborhood, such as having more raised crosswalks, curb bump-outs, and well-maintained sidewalks.
In 2000, the University and the Chicago Park District developed “The Midway Plaisance Master Plan.” The aim was to transform Midway Plaisance into a community amenity and a connector between the north and south sides of the University campus.
One of the visions laid out was to change Midway Plaisance “from expressway to ‘stroll’ way.” The plan from more than two decades ago arrives at a similar diagnosis as present day: the biggest concern about Midway Plaisance for community members is the high volume and speed of traffic.
It identifies solutions such as pedestrian lighting, bulb-outs, distinctive paving at crosswalks and even closing traffic entirely on weekends to create a “pedestrian-friendly zone,” which has yet to be attempted.
“I just think that it’s such a missed opportunity that this vision has been around for decades, but real change has not come. Just to continue to have this car-centric [street] feels like a scar on what could be beautiful park space and public infrastructure,” Gorski said.
Students and faculty at the University also say that there needs to be a more comprehensive approach to mobility that addresses issues such as walkability, bikeability and access to public transit.
“Why do so many people drive to campus? Why isn’t there better attention paid to traffic demand management?”
Talen said. “We started realizing a lot of campuses do mobility plans, especially if they say they’re focused on sustainability.”
Talen considers the Oregon State University’s (OSU) campus plan to be the “gold standard,” because it ties together different types of transportation and incorporates input from students and staff, as well as community members outside the school.
According to its “Sustainable Transportation Strategy,” OSU aims to reduce drive-alone commute trips by 20 percent by 2030 by implementing different strategies, including working with the
campus and providing more connections between campus shuttle routes and local transit stops.
While UChicago has not released a public plan regarding mobility and transportation, it responded to an email from the Maroon with planned improvements on the Midway.
To improve pedestrian safety, the University said in correspondence with the Maroon that it is working with the city to add yellow flashing crosswalk lights, speed feedback signs, painted areas with bollards and concrete bumpouts—a traffic calming design where sidewalks are extended into the road to make it easier for drivers to see pedestrians.
Although bump-outs encourage drivers to slow down, students and faculty have previously raised concerns that the current level of parking along Midway Plaisance may limit the effect of bumpouts on pedestrian visibility.
“I feel like there’s a lot of ambiguity in the relationship between the campus administration and the student body, because they’re not very transparent,” McNamara said. “[University officials] need to be better at communicating with the student body [about] what they’re doing and how the student body could affect
At “Transforming Mobility: A Summit on Campus Transportation” in April 2025, participants commented on pedestrian safety on and around Midway Plaisance. jinny kim .
A combination of concrete bump-outs and painted areas with flexible bollards were added to Midway Plaisance during summer and fall 2025. jinny kim .
VIEWPOINTS
Academic Workers Will Defend Free Inquiry
The AAUP, Faculty Forward, and the GSU swear to fight for the humanities in the face of continuing attacks.
Who Will Defend the Humanities?
This summer, we witnessed a dramatic challenge for the humanities and arts at the University of Chicago. This challenge demanded faculty intervention. Since taking power in January, the Trump administration has cut federal aid for higher education and made policy changes that challenge the ability of colleges and universities to teach humanistic content, recruit a diverse faculty and student body, and maintain intellectual autonomy. Faced with these financial, political, and policy challenges, the University of Chicago’s leaders appear to have already conceded defeat. Across the University’s divisions, dramatic cuts are being made, affecting undergraduate and graduate education alike. The administration has argued that these reductions are financially unavoidable and a means of “protecting” the humanities at UChicago. Yet its actions and rhetoric tell a different story.
For example, on June 17, the dean of the Division of Arts & Humanities (AHD), Deborah Nelson, announced an initiative to consider a major reorganization of the division, including the potential dissolution of departments, closure of academic programs, and an immense reduction in the scope of graduate education. In meetings with faculty, the dean identified potential budgetary shortfalls as the immediate reason for the reorganization but also insisted that streamlining the Division had intellectual grounds. To this end, the dean appointed five faculty committees tasked with proposing
ways to increase efficiency and cut costs in five areas: divisional organization, Ph.D. education, M.A. programs, language instruction, and teaching within the College. These committees were given approximately six weeks to gather data, deliberate, and produce reports containing “concrete recommendations” for making major changes to the Division. As stated in the committee charges, the dean’s report to the provost’s office was planned to be sent the week of August 25–29.
Unsurprisingly in such circumstances, the process initiated by the dean’s office was rushed and under-resourced, creating confusion while skirting norms of faculty governance and transparency. Members of the committees expressed concerns about the lack of clarity of the charges and the insufficient time for them to collect data needed to generate informed recommendations. The charge sheets given to each committee nevertheless asked them to consider drastic changes such as dissolving departments, closing degree programs, ending instruction in languages and subjects, and imposing minimum class sizes—moves that should be properly considered and debated in departments and organs of faculty governance such as the University Senate. The dean’s office convened a town hall to discuss the reorganization process only after committee documents were shared with faculty and the media, which meant that many faculty found out about the proposed changes only after the process was well underway.
In the absence of a clear vision
or plan on the part of University leadership, the faculty of the Division spent the summer months outlining their own vision for the arts and humanities at UChicago, reflected in the committee reports recently submitted to the dean’s office. These reports affirm the value and contributions of humanistic disciplines and departments, recommend against many of the suggested large-scale cuts, and urge the administration to allocate the appropriate time, resources, and deliberation before making major decisions regarding the future of the Division. The reports articulate the same values and commitments affirmed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) in its open letter of August 20 to the administration, which was signed by hundreds of faculty members within and outside the division. Yet the fate of the committees’ recommendations is still unclear: the dean has yet to share concrete details regarding the manner and timeline according to which her office will make decisions and implement changes (or the extent to which faculty and staff will be informed about the process).
The pause on Ph.D. admissions in the Division gives additional cause for concern. On August 12, without waiting to receive the report from the aforementioned faculty committee tasked with making recommendations for Ph.D. programs, the dean announced a complete pause on admissions in eight out of 15 Ph.D. programs, allocating greatly reduced admission slots among the remaining seven programs. Faculty across depart-
ments organized and, in a demonstration of solidarity, submitted a counter-proposal to the dean asking that any pause be applied in a global and equitable fashion. The dean’s office agreed and has since rescinded its decision, instead implementing a pause on admissions in all but two programs.
Reflecting on the experience of the summer, it is apparent that collective faculty organization in the AHD changed the course of events. When consulted, the faculty overwhelmingly and forcefully rejected the more drastic measures suggested by the administration and argued persuasively for a more considered and far-sighted approach. The lesson, so to speak, is that faculty must guide the University’s decision making and, in order to do so effectively, they must organize.
What next? Will the University administration seriously consider the recommendations of the faculty committees and pursue representative and transparent consultation with faculty, staff, and students in the future? Or will it move forward with its own (and largely unstated) plan for the humanities and arts, as we have been warned remains possible?
We appeal to the provost and the president to make explicit the plan for the humanities and arts and to consult with faculty, staff, and student workers in order to understand the stakes and effects of that vision. Over the summer, the dean’s office oscillated between various logics for downsizing the humanities, alternately citing financial, demographic, and intellectual rationales. At
some points, it argued that cuts to federal funding have made this downsizing inescapable; at other points, it suggested that an imminent decline in enrollments across higher education makes the humanities as we know them unsustainable; at yet other points, it has proposed that humanities disciplines, as currently taught at UChicago, are obsolete and must be transformed. At the same time, the University administration has shared financial information in a manner that is highly selective and at times misleading. In some communications, it warns that an imminent financial emergency requires us all “to fall in line”; in other communications, it appears to reassure us that the situation is perfectly in hand and therefore faculty, staff, and students have no reason to ask questions or protest. Which of these two radically different scenarios is the case?
As the administration’s austerity measures expand to encompass the rest of the University, we must insist on transparency and shared governance and remind the administration of its responsibility to ensure the future of research and teaching in all disciplines. The faculty in AHD made their voice heard, but colleagues in other divisions may not have the same chance.
At this moment of crisis, the AAUP appeals to faculty across divisions and ranks to join the push for substantive faculty governance. While we share with the administration serious concern regarding ongoing threats to higher education and educational spending,
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“...[T]he
Arts & Humanities Division
must not be the
next scapegoat
for years of administrative mismanagement.”
CONTINUED FROM PG.
we do not believe that humanities faculty and students (or their counterparts in other divisions) should accept the diminishment and dissolution of their fields as inevitable or as a fait accompli achieved by the Trump administration within eight months of taking power. More than ever, the humanities and arts need spokespeople, representatives, and leaders who will assert the integral value of the humanities and defend them from short-sighted impositions of austerity. To our colleagues across the University, we urge you to join and get involved in our chapter of the AAUP, our organ for democratic deliberation and advocacy of our shared interests. The faculty, staff, and student workers of UChicago are now leading the defense of the humanities, and of the broader enterprise of the research university—will the administration join us?
AAUP Arts and Humanities Working Group
Graduate Students United Calls for No Merges, No Pauses, No Cuts
Dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities Deborah Nelson has already announced a pause in Ph.D. admissions for half of the departments in the division—the same half the University of Chicago administration will likely seek to either merge or dissolve by the next academic year. What’s more, the University aims to drastically reduce the total number of Ph.D. students admitted to the division in the coming years.
As graduate workers whose teaching and research remain essential to the University’s commitment to rigorous inquiry and field-defining research, we know what these measures ultimately
mean: the disappearance of our jobs and fields of study. The administration’s proposed defunding of the division would be the end of serious teaching and research in the arts and humanities at UChicago.
The University administration claims these measures are a response to current political and financial crises—but it is clear that higher-ups are taking advantage of the national political uncertainty to enact cuts to fields they deem expendable. The proof? The University’s endowment tax burden under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act remains unchanged. Already 85 percent of the value of undergraduate students’ tuition goes toward servicing the University’s debt, and the AHD must not be the next scapegoat for years of administrative mismanagement. University endowment records reveal a business model that prioritizes reckless spending and experimenting with new investment strategies over its mission and its workers—leading to catastrophic financial decisions that faculty, staff, and graduate workers never had a hand in.
These proposals threaten the existence of entire disciplines and the project of higher education as a whole, contributing to a broader crisis of happening at universities across the country. If the administration aims to drastically reduce the number of Ph.D. students in the division, this means that our departments—already small—will soon no longer exist. Moreover, merging departments undermines the fields those departments represent. Such measures worsen an academic job crisis that is already accelerating towards its breaking point. Fewer distinct, specialized departments mean fewer professorships, both tenure-track and contingent. Less language instruction means less language learning, further endangering fields focused
on non-English languages and cultures.
No amount of administrative rhetoric can obscure the ways the University of Chicago is putting our current and future livelihoods in jeopardy. Admission “pauses” are hiring freezes. “Restructuring” signals the end of independent area studies programs. “Reducing” language teaching means jobs slashed and diversity of knowledge diminished. Shrinking the AHD will not save the University. It will only lead to the dissolution of UChicago’s intellectual community and of the very fields upon which this University once proudly built its reputation. UChicago could continue its legacy as a space for rigorous humanistic inquiry; instead, it is cowering to this era’s iteration of anti-intellectualism—a shameful capitulation to attacks on democracy.
As the Trump administration attacks higher education, UChicago is using this moment of crisis as cover to accelerate austerity measures that have been in the works for decades—aiding and abetting the Trump administration in destroying our universities. These cuts are not simply a consequence of recent federal policy changes but of decades of mismanagement by University administration. Graduate workers refuse to bear the brunt of this crisis. We demand that University administration live up to its mission, not in empty rhetoric but by dedicating itself to protecting the workers whose labor turns these words into reality.
The University’s administration has made it clear that we cannot expect them to uphold commitments to academic excellence and scholarly inquiry without pressure. The power of this University lies in the students and workers that make it function every day, and it is incumbent on us to demonstrate our collective power
to defend our communities, our workplaces, and our livelihoods. As graduate workers mobilize to resist these cuts, we call on students, faculty, alumni, and all workers across the University to act in coalition to oppose the defunding of higher education.
Executive Board, GSU-UE Local 1103
Do Not Hollow Out the Core of the University
The future of the arts and humanities at the University of Chicago is under grave threat. The threat comes not from the dedicated research and instructional faculty who produce world-class scholarship and provide outstanding teaching, nor does it come from the thousands of students who are drawn here specifically for our phenomenal arts and humanities departments and programs. It comes, rather, from the Board of Trustees and upper University management, and from their reckless and ideologically motivated decisions.
These attacks fly in the face of the University’s admirable, long-standing commitments to the humanities, which, until very recently, were central to its core educational mission broadly and to its undergraduate instruction in particular. Indeed, the University of Chicago boasts a proud history of being a pioneer in undergraduate education. Since the introduction of the Core curriculum by President Robert Hutchins in 1931, the University’s emphasis on deep intellectual inquiry and disciplinary breadth has been a part of its identity—its educational hallmark provides students with the foundational knowledge of humanities and arts, mathematics, and sciences that would “cultivate in [them] a range of insights, habits
of mind, and scholarly experiences.”
Faculty Forward, the union of non–tenure track faculty at the University of Chicago, has always shared this mission. Whether we teach courses in biology, history, languages, literature, mathematics, or studio art, all of our members contribute to the core mission of the University: education. We hold an attack on the labor and fair working conditions of any part of our membership to be an attack on all of us and on the fundamental mission of the University. Make no mistake—the hastily announced plan to “restructure” the AHD is just that. The ostensible reason for these actions is “budgetary pressures,” but it is difficult to take this explanation at face value. Not only is the AHD of central educational importance, it is also clearly not a primary drain on the budget. The University has taken on a huge debt load to finance massive capital projects—such as the Rubenstein Forum, with an approximate cost of $100 million— and to create new institutes and schools—like the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering—while grossly mismanaging its endowment. The budget crisis was not caused by a glut of professors of literature or languages, and thus it cannot be fixed by cutting their departments.
One major tool at the University’s disposal in addressing this crisis of management’s own making is its enormous fundraising capacity, but its strategies here lack coherence and likewise do not appear motivated by its avowed core principles. Take, for example, the recent anonymous $100 million gift intended to advance the work of the University’s Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression. It is troubling that the University accepts this particular tribute to its “un-
“A forum on free inquiry and expression is meaningless if the University turns its back on the education that supports such freedom.”
paralleled history of devotion to upholding free inquiry and expression,” as President Paul Alivisatos put it, while University leadership simultaneously decimates the educational spaces in which those values are enacted. The humanities classroom is a crucial training ground for our students to practice the habit of discernment; to learn to express their viewpoints with integrity; to challenge each other’s ideas respectfully; and to work toward the goal of finding better answers to their shared inquiries. Our language curricula, moreover, ensure that our students are able to extend those conversations globally. A forum on free inquiry and expression is meaningless if the University turns its back on the education that supports such
freedom.
Even more alarmingly, these cuts can only have a chilling effect on the very idea of academic freedom at the University, something our union fought hard, successfully, to expand in our most recent contract. In the much-lauded Chicago Principles, former University President Hannah Holborn Gray is quoted as saying that “universities should be expected to provide the conditions within which hard thought, and therefore strong disagreement, independent judgment, and the questioning of stubborn assumptions, can flourish in an environment of the greatest freedom.” As it considers drastic cuts to entire departments, centers, and master’s programs, the University instead creates conditions in which faculty must ask
themselves if their teaching and research are sufficiently aligned with the ideological standpoint of the Board of Trustees and the provost’s office to be spared the chopping block. This is not an environment of academic freedom.
Since the University has been far from transparent about budgetary matters, we can only speculate about the actual motivation for the administration targeting certain units for budgetary punishment. Perhaps the University Board of Trustees (none of the 48 members of which—aside from President Alivisatos—have any visible background in higher education) does not share the values of a classical, broad-based education and believes the University should concentrate on training for immediately applicable skills.
It’s possible that the trustees are ideologically aligned with those who declare that “the professors are the enemy.” We know that some of them have participated in the attacks on federal government programs like Social Security. Decimating the core of an educational institution is part of the same program, particularly because a workforce taught to think critically about the world is not a pliant one. The arts and humanities were early bases of support for both Faculty Forward and Graduate Students United, and it does not escape our attention that the departments and programs under threat right now are those that have been centers of worker power for students and faculty.
We call on our colleagues across the University to stand to-
gether to oppose these headlong and capricious cuts. We invite all students to express their opposition to the decline in the depth and diversity of language curricula and other offerings that these cuts are sure to bring. And we urge all alumni whose education was enhanced by the University of Chicago’s excellent arts and humanities instruction to contact the UChicago Alumni office and Provost Katherine Baicker and let them know your thoughts. The life of the mind cannot be fully realized without the arts or humanities, and we will do everything in our power to defend the ideals that have animated this University for over a century.
The Executive Committee of Faculty Forward
Information and Misinformation about the University of Chicago’s Budget
Clifford Ando addresses recent financial communications from the University, analyzing institutional priorities, spending choices, and faculty composition.
By CLIFFORD ANDO
On September 17, the provost and chief financial officer (CFO) of the University of Chicago circulated an email to faculty, other academic appointees, staff, and postdocs whose subject was “Information about the University’s finances.” The document offers disparate facts about the University’s debt and deficit, endowment, and investment in education and scholarship.
As with any attempt to address a complex problem in a brief email, their representation of the
University’s finances raises many questions. On some topics, further data would be helpful. In general, the email presents facts either in isolation from historical data or their relationship to other facts. This essay represents a small effort to assist the community in understanding both the provost and CFO’s email and the situation of the university.
In this essay, as in all my writing about the University, I rely on data provided by the University. Financial information, in particular, derives from the University’s public financial statements and its
tax returns. I will cite other sources as relevant.
For simplicity’s sake, in what follows I focus on the University alone, in isolation from the Medical Center and Marine Biological Laboratory. Basic data for these units in distinction from each other may be found on the closing pages of each year’s financial statements—for example, pages 53–56 for (FY) 2024.
The Endowment and Deficit
The provost and CFO provide a figure for the value of the endowment at the close of FY24:
“$8.7 billion for the University itself.” This datum occludes an important fact. The value of the endowment at the close of FY24 was actually smaller than that value had been a few years before. In the financial statements, the endowment was valued at $9.484 billion in 2021 and $8.725 billion in 2024. (The close of FY21 represents the peak value for the endowment among public financial statements.)
The decline in value is surprising, given what the provost has characterized as record-breaking fundraising. (Fundraising is the
subject of item four, below.) Publicly available data don’t allow us to know the precise composition of the University’s investments. The role of decline in the value of investments in shrinking the endowment is therefore hard to assess. In the absence of that information, we might cite as an interpretive framework the change in value over the same period of a standard index of publicly traded equities. Between the start of FY22 on July 1, 2021, and the close of FY24 on June 30, 2024, the S&P 500 grew by just over 26 percent.
“...[T]he University has diminished the future purchasing power of the endowment to make the annual deficit look smaller.”
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Of course, even if the endowment moved in lockstep with the market, its value does not rise or fall with the markets alone. Among other things, the University draws on the endowment to fund operations. But these draws are intended to be guided by a formula that is printed every year in the financial statements (for example, page 35 in the financial statement for FY24); the “objective [is] a 5.0 percent average payout over time,” with an eye to preserving the future purchasing power of the endowment.
One answer to the mystery of the shrinking endowment is that the University has been making larger draws on the endowment than its formula suggests since at least 2009. It’s not simply that we have been making draws at the peak or very high end of the specified range, such that our 16-year average is far above the 5 percent target. Nor is it that we have been taking extra draws to support strategic goals, as the formula allows. We have also made extra draws to support operating expenses. The result of these persistent actions in violation of the trustees’ formula has been a decline in the value of the endowment and a substantial weakening of the University’s financial position.
This brings us to the deficit, which the provost and CFO (and page 54 in the financial statement for FY24) identify as $288 million in FY24 (“excess [deficiency] of operating revenue over expenses”). When writing about the University, I have preferred the figure “net cash used in operating activities”—negative $504 million in FY24—precisely because endowment payout is counted as revenue for the purposes of yearto-year accounting.
In other words, the University’s annual “deficit” can be re-
duced—or be made to look smaller—by drawing on the endowment or, you might say, by liquidating savings. In this way, the future is paying for the present. In endowment talk, the University has diminished the future purchasing power of the endowment to make the annual deficit look smaller.
How to Count the Faculty?
The provost and CFO provide a figure for the percentage growth in the number of “faculty” and say that the “student-faculty ratio has been stable for most of the last decade and is a reduction from six students per faculty member in 2010.”
In my own writing, I have focused on the number of tenure-stream faculty. I do so because I endorse the claim of President Robert Zimmer, who in the University’s strategic plan of 2009 described the ratio of tenure-track faculty to students as part of “our core ethos as a University that places a premium on rigorous inquiry.” I have therefore computed and publicized the ratio of students to tenure track faculty over time: it has risen from 5.83 in 2011, to 6.13 in 2017, to 6.71 in 2023.
The figure for the number of students in the College derives from the registrar’s public data on enrollment. The historical data on the number of tenure-stream faculty derives from data provided by the University’s leadership to the board of trustees, and the current data derives from the Office of Institutional Analysis.
I do not contest that the University spends more on academic compensation than it receives in tuition. That is simply not a useful measure. Among other things, in any given year some faculty are on leave; some people who have only research appointments receive academic compensation; faculty
are also compensated for conducting research and performing administration. Academic compensation is a misdirection.
What is important, it seems to me, is the shift in the proportion of teaching in the College performed by different types of “faculty.” I have published a plan presented to the Board of Trustees by the provost in 2017 to drive down the marginal cost of instructing an expanded College by holding the number of tenure-stream faculty steady and shifting the burden of instructional labor in the direction of unionized instructional faculty. In the same article, I have also presented data, compiled by the University itself, to show how that plan was acted on. That we have hired some new tenure-stream faculty since then is not in any way a refutation of this.
Debt
The provost and CFO provided data about the University’s debt as of June 30, 2024, that is, in FY24. The University has in fact conducted at least two further bond issuances in 2025 and has indicated to the markets that it intends to borrow between $300 to $500 million more over the next two years. In other words, on current plans, between 2025 and 2027 our debt load will increase by as much as $650 million and perhaps more.
But let us proceed with publicly available figures. The total volume of the University’s debt increased from FY21 to FY24, from $4.324 to $4.867 billion. Since over that time the value of the University’s endowment shrank, the ratio of our debt to financial assets increased.
On the subject of the incidence of debt servicing to University operations, it is true that cash paid for interest in FY21 was $167.1 million, which was 6.5 percent
of operating expenses of $2.5524 billion, whereas in FY24 cash paid for interest was $183.7 million, or 5.5 percent of operating expenses of $3.3157 billion.
But it seems to me problematic to compute debt servicing as a percentage of expenses, not least when one is running a huge deficit. To put the matter bluntly, simply by overspending even more, one could further reduce the ratio of debt servicing to expenses— which is more or less exactly what we have been doing. That is why I have tended to illustrate the magnitude of the problem by citing the ratio of cash paid for interest to an estimate of College tuition. But one could also compute the ratio of cash paid for interest to total operating revenue, which would at least give a sense of the proportion of what the University pays in interest compared to what it actually earns. In FY21, this ratio was 0.0662; in FY24, it was 0.0607.
There has been some improvement, to be sure. But this may be a more realistic measure of where we stand.
Is Fundraising
“Record-Breaking?”
The University’s leadership has characterized recent fundraising as record-breaking in at least two town halls. I have had some trouble cashing out this claim.
Of course, a single figure from the financial statements doesn’t capture the full story. One could combine measures of private gifts in the categories of temporarily and permanently restricted assets, and surely there are other and probably better ways to do this. It is also possible that there are pledges of future gifts that cannot be recorded as income, not only because the money has not yet appeared, but also because it may not appear. Whether the
leadership’s characterization of its own success is accurate will depend on someone’s offering a full account of the figure they are using and a tabulation of the numbers from the financial statements.
Cryptocurrency
I am myself not troubled by the issue of cryptocurrency, except insofar as investing in it seems imprudent. There is also the fact that the University invested in cryptocurrency in a period when returns on the endowment overall appear to have been unimpressive. Nor have I investigated any of the reporting on the University’s investments in cryptocurrency. But for those who do not want to read the financial statements, these record cryptocurrency investments of $64.474 million in FY21 and $45.451 million in FY22. To the best of my knowledge, those are the only two years in which cryptocurrency figures in the financial statements.
On several occasions in recent months, I have been advised that writing publicly about what the University actually does is harmful to the University’s reputation. By contrast, I am firmly of the belief that transparency leads to more honest and more careful deliberation. This seems to me particularly true of the University of Chicago, which has long prided itself on open discourse and data-driven policymaking. We should strive to live up to this legacy so that together we can chart the future of the University.
Clifford Ando is the Robert O. Anderson Distinguished Service Professor in the Departments of Classics and History at the University of Chicago and an Extraordinary Professor in the Department of Ancient Studies at Stellenbosch University.
Pigs and Pandas in American Higher Education
Recent reorganization plans in the humanities and social sciences suggest certain fields risk joining the ranks of endangered species.
By ZHAO FANG
I had a nightmare: I walked into a special exhibition at the Field Museum titled “The Most Wonderful Extinct Species.” There were giant dinosaur skeletons, a model of a running dodo, and a Bramble Cay melomys that was seemingly still feasting on a glowing coral reef. At the end of the exhibit stood a large, several-meter-tall copper statue resembling the Michael Jordan sculpture at the United Center.
The difference was that this statue was dressed in a slightly over-the-top academic cap and gown and the museum label read: “This is the last Ph.D. graduate in the humanities from the University of Chicago. Name and dates of birth and death unknown. The museum would be grateful for any information regarding his/her life.”
I sincerely hope this is nothing but a nightmare. This summer quarter—a time of year when most students and faculty are gone, or at least not at full capacityr—the University of Chicago announced a series of major policy changes, starting with a reorganization plan for the Division of the Arts & Humanities (AHD) and the pausing of admissions for many Ph.D. programs in the humanities, social sciences, and Harris and Crown Schools.
As of September 1, President Alivisatos and Provost Baicker made a few announcements to the faculty and staff of the University on their budget cut plans. These communications included a letter addressed to the faculty, a letter to the University staff, a letter from the provost, and an FAQ page. After these announcements were made, the
dean of the Division of the Social Sciences (SSD), also sent an email to faculty, staff, and Ph.D. students in the SSD regarding these University-wide changes and offered some details on how the SSD in particular planned to implement these changes.
The recent announcements from the University have helped us, as members of the University community, better understand the specific measures of the school’s upcoming fiscal budget reduction plan. This is a commendable move. However, for most doctoral students, M.A. students, and undergraduates, the direct communications from the University remain few. This past month, I only received two emails about these major policy changes, which was even fewer than the number of messages about the SSD building being flooded.
Many of my colleagues are surprised, anxious, and uneasy about these sudden changes. Others are simply bewildered, as they know little about the current financial crisis or the University’s developmental trajectory up to this point. This is why I feel compelled to write this op-ed. In this existential crisis for the humanities and social sciences at UChicago, and, more broadly, in U.S. higher education, how should we view and understand these changes?
I do not intend to wade into normative arguments about American higher education. These days, an alert reader can easily find endless discussions about what universities are, what they should do, and many ideas about how to save them since the Trump administration began its crackdown on
academia. As a history student, I’m more interested in making an interpretation of the underlying patterns of these events, and, in particular, placing the recent policy changes at UChicago within a historical context. Curiously, when I hear these discussions about the future of the humanities and social sciences in American universities, I’m always reminded of an article I read years ago by John McNeill (a UChicago Lab School alum), titled “Homogeneity, Heterogeneity, Pigs & Pandas in Human History.”
In this paper, professor McNeill proposes two different models for understanding nations, societies, and civilizations throughout history. The first, which he calls the “pig model,” is named for species like pigs, rats, and cockroaches, which are famous for their versatility and ability to adapt to environmental changes. The other he calls the “panda model,” for animals like pandas, koalas, and sharks, which have become so highly specialized to a particular environment that they become extremely vulnerable to extinction once that environment changes, as the panda did in southwestern China in the 19th and 20th centuries.
This pig–panda distinction might seem superficial and unproductive. Since human affairs are in constant flux, wouldn’t all “pig-like” societies be more successful in the long run? They would seem to be the inevitable victors of the Darwinian law of survival of the fittest. Could “panda-like” societies avoid the inevitable fate of being naturally selected out? Unless saved by humanity’s all-knowing and
all-powerful hand, at great cost, they would face the same end as the panda.
McNeill’s answer in the article is a resounding “no.” He points out that, for most of human history, “social formats” (a term he popularized in this article and his book Human Web: A Bird’s-Eye View of World History) with “panda-like” characteristics, not limited to any specific nation or civilization, appear to have been more successful.
From the emergence of Homo sapiens around 300,000 years ago, to roughly 5,000 B.C.E., “the band of 30–80 kin” seems to have been a globally successful “panda” model. Smaller groups tended to merge or go extinct, while larger ones tended to fragment.
This pattern only gradually changed with the global expansion of the agricultural revolution—but agriculture didn’t bring about a new “pig” model, but rather a new “panda-like” society (which he inclines to calls a “koala” society): the stable nation-state. This social model, which originated in Mesopotamia 5,500 years ago, spread across Afro-Eurasia. Despite countless upheavals, wars, revolutions, famines, and epidemics, it continued as the standard form of social organization from antiquity until the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It wasn’t until the successive collapses of the Mughal Empire, the Qing Empire, the Romanov dynasty, and the Ottoman Empire that this agrarian state—with an elite of intellectuals and military experts and a foundation of peasant farmers—ceased to be the social format in which the majority of the world’s pop -
sofia cavallone.
“In a relatively stable social environment, the strengths brought by this specialization are a survival advantage.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 14
ulation lived.
Of course, this “panda-like” social format was not universally more successful in all historical periods or at all levels of analysis. A notable exception is contemporary capitalist society—the cry of “the end of history” and the announced global victory of democracy over dictatorship in the 1990s seems a bit premature now. While the public may continually hope for a relatively stable social model, from a global perspective, the continuous and drastic changes of the 20th century have yet to produce a single highly specialized victor in terms of ideal social format.
If modern history is too short, a more convincing example of the comparative advantages of a “pig-like” social format might be found in the longue durée history of religion. As McNeill notes, religious sects that possess “a certain vagueness (extending to self-contradiction) allowing a vast range of interpretations” seem to have had more vitality over the long term than those that were “too morally stringent and consistent (Shakers, perhaps).” In other words, more “pig-like,” flexible, and adaptable religions appear to have more followers and longer lives, while religions or folk beliefs that worship specific beings or have specific purposes tend to lose most of their followers and become extinct when their social environment changes.
If you’ve read this far, I trust that you have found the connection between pigs, pandas, and the changes currently taking place in American higher education. Setting aside the a priori value judgments of what a university is, we can roughly divide those currently pushing for uni-
versity reform into two camps. One believes that the modern university must have sufficient “pig-like” characteristics, meaning it must continuously, flexibly, and almost unrestrictedly change to gain a competitive advantage against environmental pressures like finance, politics, and the market. The other group believes that a university should be more like a panda: it can also embrace change, but its changes are more in the form of a path-dependent specialization. In a relatively stable social environment, the strengths brought by this specialization are a survival advantage.
Looking at the history of modern universities, the proponents of “panda-like” university have gained the upper hand. We can provisionally call most of today’s elite American universities the successors to the Berlin, or Humboldt, model. Famous examples include the founding president of Johns Hopkins University, Daniel Coit Gilman; the series of reforms led by Charles Eliot at Harvard in the latter half of the 19th century; and, of course, the idealism, faith, and practical spirit of my alma mater, the University of Chicago, under the leadership of a young William Rainey Harper. If there had been a global university ranking from the early 20th century, one can almost say with certainty that for the entire century, with the exception of Cambridge and Oxford, most of the top-ranked universities—whether in North America, Europe, or Japan—adhered to some basic, “panda-like” characteristics of the modern university as designed by Wilhelm von Humboldt in 1810. These include academic freedom, the integration of research and teaching, an emphasis on both
the acquisition of natural science and the cultivation of humanism, relative administrative independence despite receiving state funding, and, last but not least, the establishment of a research-focused Ph.D. training system. In other words, they not only teach students but also train future scholars. When I was applying to the history Ph.D. program at UChicago, I still remember the self-introducotry slogan on the website: “At University of Chicago, we are the ‘teachers of teachers.’”
While in many of the current debates, a fair number of commentators (professor Clifford Ando, for example)—especially those from the pinnacle of the ivory tower, or who fancy themselves standing among the crowd in Raphael’s School of Athens—consider these “panda-like” characteristics to be the fundamental cornerstones of a university, this doesn’t mean the “panda-like” format is a perfect, ultimate solution.
As McNeill points out in his article, given a relatively stable environment, a “pig-like” society or institution can quietly transform into a “panda-like” one; while in a major crisis, the chance of a “panda-like” society rebuilding itself as a “pig-like” one is small, but not impossible—especially if we consider how American higher education has changed since the Reagan era. It has moved from its former role—as a think tank for national strategy and a hub for developing world-changing technologies— to become a modern King Midas, driven by neoliberalism to commercialize its work, patenting research and housing start-ups to turn everything into profit. Many “pig-like” characteristics adapted to this era have become increasingly apparent in Amer-
ican universities. Big libraries, odd machines in laboratories, eccentric scholars, and the hazy aura of “academic reputation” have all been pushed aside. Today, it is professional schools boasting the salary statistics of their graduates that serve as a university’s true credentials.
From this almost crude Darwinian perspective, every American university, under assault from an aggressive administration, shrinking budgets, disgruntled student bodies, and faculty members who never stop complaining about teaching and research loads, needs to make a choice. They must choose between embracing a “panda-like” identity or making “pig-like” changes. To be sure, reducing these complex political, cultural, and internal factors to mere pressures of natural selection is a simplification, but the results are similar: some departments, programs, research, and people will survive, while others will go extinct.
Although I have my own aesthetic preferences and judgments on whether American universities, and UChicago in particular, should be “pig-like” or “panda-like,” I am only a Ph.D. student. Unlike the faculty, I have not been granted the prerogative to decide the future fate of this institution. Seeing these messages from the SSD at the height of summer left me feeling the chill of a Chicago January wind; yet of course I am still grateful that the school has not canceled the stipends and tuition grants for current Ph.D. students.
In discussing this comparison of pigs and pandas, I also have no intention of stirring up a sense of antagonism, of suggesting that the departments and divisions currently being ordered
to adjust—such as the AHD, the Harris School of Public Policy, the Crown Family School, and my own SSD—are some sort of infinitely cute and defenseless species, while departments like the business school, molecular biology, and some other departments whose names have the prefix of a fund manager are the successfully evolved Napoleon-esque pigs from Orwell’s Animal Farm. This is neither the intention of this op-ed nor is it factual.
In fact, the financial reality is more complex than a simple “winner-takes-all” narrative. As professor Ando pointed out in a recent op-ed published in the Maroon, “Contrary to much vernacular opinion, faculty in humanistic fields and the interpretive social sciences are the only faculty in the arts and sciences who systematically pay for themselves.” This highlights that the departments often perceived as “less profitable” are, in fact, financially self-sufficient. We are all in it.
This analogy of pigs and pandas offers only a systematic, value-neutral, and easily understandable perspective. From this perspective, I hope that those who steadfastly support the “panda-like” university norms can reexamine the foundation of their values and consider the potential costs of this model, as well as the viable survival strategies in a time of crisis. For those who would rather see American higher education, or UChicago, become more “piglike,” I hope they will not portray the so-called externalities as a self-evident, unquestionable justification for change. By and large, as Marx put it, we generated our own gravediggers. Finally, this analogy may also serve
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as an antidote: that the rhetoric attempting to spin these major policy changes into a necessary and temporary sacrifice is not only deceptive but also despicable.
Every era has its own successes and failures, and historians will continue to provide new interpretations of the past.
From today’s perspective, the 1960s were indeed a golden age for American higher education— universities expanded, women and ethnic minorities began to
“A scholar is of no use whatsoever.”
enjoy the right to higher education, social movements surged on campuses, ideological clashes were constant but not always violent or counter productive, and government funding continuously increased.
But Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, written in 1962, offers a completely different picture. The middle-aged historian George and his dissatisfied wife, Martha, who is the daughter of the president of the liberal arts college where George teaches, along
with the new biology professor Nick and his wife Honey, engage in a chaotic and unpredictable conversation about life, scholarship, and existence. In it, the president’s daughter Martha complains, “What can a historian do? Just sit there and talk.” This echoes the ancient Chinese saying, “A scholar is of no use whatsoever” ( 百无一用是书生 ).
As a useless history scholar, then, I would like to offer a practical suggestion that can both alleviate UChicago’s current financial strain and significantly
increase the transparency of the ongoing fiscal reforms: in addition to dismantling academic departments and their Ph.D. programs, we should, like the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, establish a biodiversity extinction risk classification system for all departments and Ph.D. programs on campus, from LC (least concern) to a black and red EX (extinct)—or perhaps EL for “Eliminated” would be more fitting? And we should sell T-shirts printed with these
Caffeinated Criticisms
A response to the column “Cancel Caffeine Culture.”
classifications at the University bookstore, which, by the way, no longer sells many books. According to current school policy, the history department might be classified as CR (critically endangered), while anthropology and East Asian studies next door are already EW (extinct in the wild). I believe most of my colleagues would proudly wear these insignias on their chests.
Zhao Fang is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at the University of Chicago.
By SHAWN QUEK
It is late, and I am writing. My fingers tap the keys with, frankly, surprising precision, considering I’ve consumed enough coffee to power a small nation. At this point, I can’t decide if I’m thinking clearly or merely thinking quickly. Maybe that ambiguity is the charm of caffeinated productivity.
Let me be clear: I have no doubt that the author of “Cancel Caffeine Culture” meant well, even if I don’t agree with his characterization of UChicago’s caffeine culture as being “surrounded by bankers on Wall Street sniffing lines of cocaine.” Still, I understand the sentiment behind this dramatic proclamation.
I admire the author’s spirit, which shows concern for the well-being of students by highlighting the institution’s responsibility to manage the College’s caffeine consumption for the greater good. But here is where things start to unravel. Why, exactly, is it the institu-
tion’s responsibility to regulate the caffeine in our bodies?
The College’s caffeine culture is pervasive; this much is true. Walk into any student-run café and you’ll find the usual suspects in caffeine addiction: tables covered in laptops; books strewn about; and, of course, cups of coffee, matcha, or the occasional neon energy drink which—let’s be honest—never tastes as good as it looks.
What’s missing from the original article, amid the calls for action, the alarms about excessive energy drink consumption, and the anecdotes of students stacking Red Bull cans like trophies, is the humble possibility that caffeine consumption might just be a voluntary communal coping mechanism.
Perhaps our caffeine culture is a practical, if imperfect, tool for navigating UChicago’s undergraduate experience, where going to sleep at 2 a.m. is somehow the marker of productivity, and the ideal work–life balance involves espresso followed by an MMA match against a p-set
in the octagon we call “Canvas.”
But what exactly is the problem here? Is it caffeine? Is it the high levels of tolerance that the author addresses? Or is it the fact that we are engaging in a ritual of collective madness, a sort of commitment to “the bit” of academic life where, instead of stopping to question the culture we’ve built, we’ve just doubled down on more stuff to keep us going?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not celebrating caffeine overconsumption. As someone who, admittedly, has spent far too many afternoons between the pages of a book and the bottom of a coffee cup, I know what happens when you drink too much of the stuff. Still, doesn’t it feel a bit simplistic to point the finger at the substance itself, as though it is the true cause of our sleep-deprived, jittery condition?
In urging the institution to step in and regulate caffeine consumption, the author may be missing the point. If caffeine is the communal drug of choice
to survive the University’s intellectual storm, who are we kidding? It’s not the University’s fault. The institution could by all means put up posters warning of the perils of excessive caffeine. They could mandate Core classes on caffeine etiquette.
Yet I’m not convinced that caffeine is the villain here. Is it problematic? It certainly could be. The real question we should be asking is: Why, in a place that supposedly values intellectual freedom and critical inquiry, do we find ourselves driven by a culture of unrelenting productivity?
Maybe, instead of trying to solve the caffeine problem, we ought to question the larger academic culture that seemingly demands we grind ourselves into dust in order to prove our worth. If the University really wanted to protect us, it wouldn’t confiscate our caffeinated beverages; it would question why we need them in the first place.
Regulation without reflection is just decaf: technically
coffee, but missing what matters. But, of course, this all comes with a caveat. None of us are really going to change.
Honestly, tomorrow morning, I’ll probably make another cup of coffee without hesitation. Maybe you will too. The grind is too familiar and too delicious to abandon. That’s exactly the point: the drug is not just in the coffee; it’s in the culture that makes coffee indispensable.
We caffeinate not because we are weak but because we are obedient to a system that rewards sleeplessness and penalizes rest—one which often confuses exhaustion with excellence.
I’ll keep sipping my coffee, typing out these thoughts with jittery conviction, trying to remember if Heidegger said anything about being and time management. Probably not. But if he had, I bet he was drinking coffee when he wrote it.
Shawn Quek is a head arts editor of the M aroon and a second-year in the College.
ARTS
Long Live the Alley
Rock ’n’ roll isn’t dead—the proof lives with Mark Thomas, founder and owner of The Alley, Chicago’s alternative haven.
By AGATHE DEMAROLLE |
Fletcher Street in Avondale, Chicago is the postcard image of residential America, with pastel houses with porches and symmetrically parked SUVs. It is the postcard image, that is, except for the terracotta brick complex halfway down the street. Life-size plastic skeletons climb on its black, ironbar windows, and a gargoyle with demonic horns and a chain necklace overlooks the entrance from the roof. Welcome to The Alley, a “safe space for weirdos, freaks, misfits,” per its front door. Enter if you dare. Inside, it is hard to know where to look. Silver pendants hang from the walls. Baskets overflow with crystals. Dracula dolls “with official death certificate” lie in casket-shaped boxes atop the shelves. Racks of leather jackets extend endlessly. Pride pins and metal band patches decorate the counter as a banner depicting Led Zeppelin’s Mothership flies above a red pipe. That’s only the first room. The second is inaccessible, as there’s a sale today. Goths, punks, and other rock fans are packed in there, battling to get a discounted pair of the chunky Demonia platform boots displayed on the wall.
Stuck between two racks of kilts and Tripp pants, I am so stressed. Not because of the second room’s well-meaning, constantly apologizing crowd, with whom I share music and fashion tastes, but because I am about to interview Mark Thomas, The Alley’s legendary founder. “Do you have his phone number?” the cashier casually asks while managing the black-clad line.
A goth employee with facial paint opens an “Employees only” door and guides me down the corridor to Thomas’s office. As a student-journalist, interviews always intimidate me. Added to the mix today are the facts that I am a metalhead and Mark has dressed and embodied alternative subcultures in Chicago for the last 50 years while working with the likes of the Rolling Stones and Black Sabbath.
Mark, slightly limping, welcomes me with a smile and keen eyes.
Arts
Reporter
In his office, a Kiss portrait made of multicolored paint splashes watches over us. As the room warms up, Mark rolls up the sleeves of his The Alley sweatshirt, revealing a tattoo of an American flag crowned with the words “We the People” spreading over his right forearm. When asked about his motivation for getting the tattoo, he emphasizes this sole touch of color in his black-and-silver outfit by gesturing toward the tinted glass window above my head. I turn around, realizing that, from the office, he can observe the store’s life play out. Customers are still pressed against each other, trying on Demonias as vendors zigzag with shoe boxes in their hands.
Mark is decorated with jewelry, from silver biker rings to a lone earring to bracelets that melodically collide as his hands move to accompany his words. It makes sense for someone who started The Alley in the early ’70s by buying a jewelry factory as a high school junior. The price, roughly $2,000 at the time, came from U.S. savings bonds that he took from his mother’s drawer, which had been intended to pay for his college education.
With high school friends, Mark made jewelry, peace symbol accessories, and eventually roach clips out of castings. From there, bongs followed, and his biggest customer soon became a store called The Alley in Woodfield Mall. After giving it credit once, the store did not pay him. As a bold 20-year-old, he confronted the suit-and-tieclad owner by throwing everything on the owner’s desk onto the floor until he received the money. Although he recounts this with a jovial face and his short eyebrows comically raised, it is clear that Mark is not someone you want to upset. Putting this incident aside, the pair became partners until the owner disappeared two years later, leaving Mark to lead and expand The Alley.
It seems that Mark has sold everything, even marble-like gargoyles like the one that overlooks the printer. “If I couldn’t buy it,
I’d go find it. If I couldn’t find it, I’d make it,” Mark jokes. Women-centric erotic toys? Check. Cars? Check. Cigars? Check. Even today, The Alley shares the building with its rentable creative spaces that include 30 art and 70 music studios (such as The Art Colony and The Music Factory). “It wasn’t like we only understood how to do… rock ’n’ roll culture,” he explains.
In fact, The Alley’s specialization in punk-related subcultures seems almost coincidental. The 1979 Model Drug Paraphernalia Act, which restricted the sale of items related to cannabis consumption, forced The Alley to reinvent itself. Encouraged by Mark’s love for Sid Vicious and The Clash, as well as the demand for punk t-shirts, The Alley devoted itself to this subculture.
Mark could have had a very different life. He grew up in a wealthy family and attended the Latin School of Chicago, typically a springboard to an Ivy League school. This trajectory was interrupted when his parents got so caught up in their divorce proceedings that his tuition was not paid, and he had to leave for a cheaper Catholic school. Lacking money for clothes and shoes, he started hustling, buying and selling goods on the street. “We say we were born with a silver spoon in our mouths. They took the silver spoon out, and then they knocked out our front teeth,” he says of his siblings and himself, mimicking a punch.
Critics have blamed him for commercializing punk. But there is more to it than money; otherwise, he would not still be here, 50 years and more than 15 surgeries later.
Behind the tinted glass, a silver-haired man in a blue polo shirt waits for a teenage girl to try on a pair of colorful Demonia shoes. Mark points at them and smiles: “A kid used to get in trouble for going to The Alley, because we were the evil place and the devil-worship place. Now the parents are bringing their kids back and sharing the experience they had in The Alley.” It means a lot to Mark to see these young people in the shop who often tell him that their dads are
cool, perhaps because they represent an appreciation for alternative lifestyles passed down through generations and promise a future for The Alley.
People, from customers to employees to friends and family, are the reason Mark will continue to supervise The Alley until his health no longer lets him do so. It is also why, at around 70 years old, Mark still comes to his office daily, even if it is only for a couple of hours.
“We built a culture of acceptance of anybody,” he says, citing as an example the fact that The Alley used to be located at Broadway and Surf in Lakeview, home to an LGBTQ+ neighborhood, and was integrated within that community. More than acceptance, it is a culture of supporting others, whether that means donating clothing to nonprofits or using The Alley’s social media to promote local record stores. But Mark worries whether this culture will carry on. “I want to make sure I protect my legacy,” he says after a pause, his eyes returning from the past to meet mine.
Almost every major rock band you can think of can be tied back to The Alley and to Mark. The store’s visitors include “all the bands who really mean anything as they come through Chicago,” spanning countless subgenres and artists, from Rob Zombie to Ministry.
The Alley’s larger-than-life legacy has itself become a burden of sorts for Mark in his quest to find a successor. The ideal candidate would need to be “committed to the lifestyle to not destroy what the business is,” he says. “If I find somebody that understands retail, are they [going to] understand t-shirt printing? Are they [going to] understand jewelry casting?”
Currently, Mark is trying to streamline The Alley’s different activities to ease the future transition. Does this ideal candidate exist? Mark himself isn’t sure. “I don’t want my store to die, so I’m looking for the right person… and that may be an impossible thing to find; that may be difficult,” he says.
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“Subcultures need spaces to blossom, and The Alley is one such place...”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 17
The Trump administration’s tariffs on imports, and especially the tariffs on Asian countries, have added a layer of worry to Mark’s perception of The Alley’s future as a small business: “All of our clothing would be gone; the shoes would be gone. I mean, they would still be here. But is anybody [going to] pay that price? I don’t think so.”
Mark takes me on a tour of the store, which has now returned to a calmer Saturday activity level after the last pairs of Demonias have been sold. “I consider those people that are walking around this store
my extended family, and some of them are my close personal friends. I don’t want them to ever not have the privilege of walking into a store like this,” he says.
I understand his worry. We have been circling around the theme of legacy for the last hour and a half. Our whole exchange has been part of preserving the legacy of him and the store, a burden that now partially rests on my shoulders. Subcultures need spaces to blossom, and The Alley is one such place, separate from the deafening concert venues and bars. Where would we encounter people who also come to
life through this music—our music—if we woke up to find these places gone? Would our community survive if these stores, which helped shape our initial identity and soundtrack, disappeared?
As we return to the “Employees only” area, Mark takes out an imposing key ring. The Alley’s guardian sorts through the keys, trying to find the one that will take me to the beginning—the original jewelry factory. Once the door opens, the soft light guides Mark to a basket full of unfinished belt buckles behind a large machine I cannot name and a neighboring t-shirt press.
From among the rough silver metal, he picks two and gently hands them to me, saying he wants me to keep a souvenir from today.
In the menacing skull over two crossed meat cleavers and the Egyptian ankh with intricate inscriptions I receive, I read the end of an era for The Alley and its associated subcultures, but also the promise of a rebirth. Mark closes the door to the past and turns to me with a grin, his dark brown eyes sparkling: “My life could have been really different.… I don’t regret it. I think I won the lottery.”
Hibou Dishes Up Summer Nostalgia at Chop Shop
Peter Michel’s solo dream pop project freezes moments in time.
By SAROYA ORNELAS PAGNUCCI | Arts Reporter
Drenched in a violet haze and set against a backdrop of vibrant red lettering that reads “Hibou,” the back room of Chop Shop hums to life with the sound of youthful nostalgia. The converted 100-year-old auto body shop, with its exposed brick and ’20s ceilings, reverberates with the cheers of the crowd.
The solo project of songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Peter Michel, Hibou is a band where new wave rhythms meet guitar hooks and propulsive drums, ultimately creating a dreamy atmosphere in its music.
Hibou’s set at Chop Shop begins with the song “Eidolon.” Over chiming guitars and a gentle, pulsing beat, Michel’s airy vocals paint a picture of seeing a youthful eidolon reflection in the water, the title a Greek word meaning “phantom.” The lyrics linger on memory and loss, with “I wonder where you’ll hide away/ recollecting yesterday/ to a stranger in the wind” reflecting the familiar sense of outgrowing what one used to be, particularly in one’s youth.
Hibou’s music is often centered on being forgotten in time: the inevitable reality that the present turns to the past as we live through it. To bring this concept to life, Michel utilizes reverb and chorus to create a feeling of distance in his songs.
Born and raised in Seattle, Michel credits his recent move to the south of France
for the creativity of his latest music. In an interview with the Maroon, Michel said, “If I compare the most recent Hibou stuff to the stuff that I was writing during [the] tail end [of my] time in Seattle, I can very clearly hear that it’s more saturated with color and brighter.” This brightness is evident, eliciting an almost summer-like feeling in his music.
Michel’s newest album, It Seems To Me, broke new ground in more ways than one. He wrote and produced it throughout 2024 as he traveled to almost 20 countries. This created a unique process of simultaneously recording rough ideas, assembling instrumentals, and revising his work.
The band’s name, which means “horned owl” in French, comes from Michel’s experience in 2010 at his family’s cabin on Whidbey Island, just north of Seattle. “I was playing some music outside in the woods and this baby owl flew down and sat next to me for half an hour. It was a really cool moment and I was eager to tell all my friends about it.” Because of that story, one of his friends bought him a glass owl in Paris as a memento, and, on the tag, it said hibou. The rest is history. In a way, the name too, for Michel, encapsulates a moment in time, drawing on nostalgia for a youth he fondly remembers.
Besides Hibou, Michel releases music under two different aliases: one is called
Éclo, which is where he channels folksy, symphonic energy, and the other is Splending, which is where he channels his goofy, crazy self through EDM music. Michel treasures these outlets, since “it’s nice to have something where you don’t care how it is perceived, and you can just put music into the world.”
From the swirl of hazy guitar in “Dis-
solve” to the audience-requested “Valium,” the night is an exploration of the complicated beauty of memory. The vibrant sound meets deeply introspective lyricism, creating a powerful, nostalgic combination. It is a reminder that the bright moments of youthful summers are fleeting, but it is exactly that impermanence that gives this music its radiance.
Peter Michel leans into his guitar. shawn quek
SPORTS Concrete to Checkered: NASCAR’s July 5 Street Race— A Summer Game-Changer for Chicago
NASCAR’s most daring event to date left Chicago buzzing—and split— over its speed, spectacle, and future in Grant Park.
By KLARA BAGARIC | Sports Reporter
As the third annual NASCAR Chicago Street Race swept the streets of Chicago on July 5, engines roared through Grant Park. Months later, it is evident that this event is more than just a motorsport novelty, having emerged as a prominent feature of Chicago’s summer scene.
Van Gisbergen’s Historic Weekend Swap
Shane van Gisbergen, of Trackhouse Racing, made history by winning the Xfinity Series “Loop 110” on July 5 and the Cup Series “Grant Park 165” on July 6. His dominance on the difficult street circuit in Chicago was cemented with this uncommon doubleheader sweep. Because of the physical demands of back-to-back races, the differences in the setup and handling of the Xfinity and Cup cars—requiring drivers to quickly modify their approach and manner—and the particular pressure of racing on a temporary street course with limited margins for error, winning both races on consecutive days is an extremely impressive accomplishment.
Narrow and harsh street courses like Chicago’s are especially challenging, as one tiny mistake can make or break the race. Only one other driver—Kyle Busch in 2016—has ever accomplished a similar sweep. Moreover, van Gisbergen’s achievement is among the most remarkable in recent NASCAR history, as he is the first to accomplish it on a street track.
Drama, Debris, and Debates
Grant Park’s constrained layout proved to be tough on drivers. The 2.2-mile street course followed winding downtown streets with concrete barriers, sharp turns, and limited space for mistakes. It was one of
the most technically difficult tracks on the NASCAR calendar, requiring both driver talent and an advanced car setup due to bumpy pavement, elevation changes, and blind bends.
Although there were a number of incidents at the Cup Series Grant Park 165’s intricate street circuit, the most noteworthy was a spectacular Lap 64 pileup that included prominent competitors Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Kyle Larson, and Joey Logano, all of whom came into the weekend as real contenders for the victory. Former NASCAR Cup winners Logano and Larson were anticipated to compete for the top positions on Chicago’s constrained layout, while Chastain and Cindric were expected as challengers due to their previous impressive results. Bubba Wallace and Alex Bowman’s high-stakes race later on showed how the circuit’s tight corners and close margins may exacerbate tensions. The two fought for a spot in the top 10, coming dangerously near to hitting the wall with their aggressive actions. There was no room for error on the street track, which forced the pair to make quick decisions under extreme pressure. These moments nearly turned into race-ending situations for both drivers.
Due to NASCAR’s slow response times, particularly in the 30 seconds after driver Cody Ware lost control on the rain-slick course and crashed into a tire barrier, the race even triggered a new conversation about safety measures for street racing. Specifically, this race highlighted flaws in emergency protocols and track safety. Such a delay in emergency response is dangerous in NASCAR competitions, where accidents can happen at any second and on-track conditions can shift in an instant. Slow re-
sponses not only elevate the possibility of additional collisions but also cast doubt on safety teams’ ability to react in high-stress, urban street race situations.
Community and Economic Ripples
By July 7 and 8, the takedown process was advancing quickly. In the early hours of the morning, major routes started to reopen, and, by July 11, everything was back to normal. While the first year of Chicago NASCAR caused 43 days of street closures, 2025 yielded just 25. Yet, some locals and city officials criticized even that shortened schedule, claiming that weeks of restricted access to Grant Park and important downtown streets still disrupted summer events, tourism, and daily commutes, especially during the hectic holiday season.
Last year, the event brought nearly 53,000 unique visitors, a 29 percent increase in hotel stays from the previous year, and an estimated $128 million in beneficial economic impact. However, while local eateries, lodging facilities, and sellers celebrated the economic boom, locals expressed worries about street closures, noise, and disturbances over the hectic Fourth of July weekend.
Navigating the Future: Time for Change
As NASCAR and municipal officials assess the Chicago Street Race’s future, having already confirmed that the race will be paused in 2026 with a potential return set for 2027, many important topics from this year’s competition will influence future decisions. Although he has stated that he is open to reviving the race, Mayor Brandon Johnson has proposed delaying the race until after the Fourth of July weekend going forward to reduce the burden on law enforcement, city services, and citizens
who are already overburdened by holiday traffic.
Similarly, residents have expressed worries regarding extended street closures, disruptions to local customs like the Taste of Chicago, and restricted accessibility, despite the apparent economic boost.
Going forward, NASCAR needs to combine its fierce excitement with more open planning, more local involvement, and a more community-friendly schedule if it wants the race to transition from spectacle to tradition. Although NASCAR’s recent $5 million investment in youth programs and neighborhood projects is encouraging, the goodwill must be maintained if the race is to continue to be a part of Chicago’s summer landscape for many years to come. Most importantly, however, if NASCAR hopes to remain credible in an urban environment, it must also address concerns about safety procedures, especially those related to wet-weather racing and emergency response times.
Final Lap: Tradition or Tread?
This year’s Chicago Street Race demonstrated the world-class nature of racing. With the economic report and crowds to support it, Chicago must decide whether this is a genuine sporting tradition or just a Hollywood blockbuster. With a multi-year contract decision approaching after the expiration of the original three-year contract at the end of this year’s race, the future of these races hinges on whether the upcoming NASCAR weekend can bring about safer execution, more intelligent scheduling, and more meaningful community involvement. If those marks are missed, NASCAR’s presence in Grant Park may lose momentum. However, if standards are met, Chicago’s excitement this summer may fuel decades of future excitement.
CROSSWORD
I’m Dizzy
By CARTER OTIS | Crossword Constructor
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