NEWS: University Restricts Non-Tenure-Track Faculty’s Research Spending
MARCH 5, 2025 NINTH WEEK VOL. 137, ISSUE 11
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By NATHANIEL RODWELL-SIMON | Deputy News Editor
The University will no longer allow non-tenure-track faculty to pay for personal research expenses using “professional development” funding, according to an Office of the University Provost memo obtained by the Maroon. The Office of the University Provost announced the change to the faculty College Council on February 25 and has already communicated the updated guidelines to instructional faculty in several divisions.
“The advancement of a Lecturer’s own research agenda is not an appropriate justification for the use of professional development funding,” the memo reads. Instructional faculty are primarily tasked with conducting research into “methods and techniques for effective teaching of their subject matter.”
Instructional faculty will no longer be able to apply professional development funding toward “expenses related to original research activity,” according to the memo, which argues that original research is not a necessary part of “maintain[ing] subject matter expertise as their field changes,” a requirement for lecturers and other instructional faculty.
Previously, professional development funds could be applied toward attending conferences where instructional professors presented their research, along with other expenses that “enhance the Lecturer’s pedagogy or subject matter expertise in their respective fields.”
For example, instructional professors can “use the funds to go to a conference and take in the research of others…. but they cannot use the money to present their [own] research,” according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
“Original research in the field of their engagement… falls outside the typical duties assigned to a Lecturer,” the memo reads. “While the University expects each Lecturer to maintain subject matter expertise as their field changes as part of their professional development (and oneninth of a full-time Lecturer’s position is typically assigned to this), maintaining such expertise and knowledge does not require conducting original research.”
“Attending a conference on genetics to learn about recent results in the field in order to incorporate these results into revised syllabi and course materials is an appropriate use of professional development funds,” the memo continues. “But attending a conference to present a paper with original research on genetics will not generally be considered appropriate and is not justifiable solely on the basis that the research will ‘inform’ the Lecturer’s teaching.”
The change will also limit instructional professors’ ability to travel for the purpose of accessing archives or conducting research, according to a source with knowledge of the matter.
The change will only apply to faculty covered by the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) ratified by Faculty Forward in November 2024, which is still being finalized according to a union representative who spoke to the Maroon. Those faculty include non-tenure-track academic appointees, non-supervisory senior lecturers, teaching fellows, and others, collectively referred to as in-
structional professors (IPs) or instructional faculty. The change will not apply to tenured and tenure-track faculty, distinguished service faculty, research faculty, and other faculty members not covered by the CBA.
In an email, a representative of Faculty Forward told the Maroon that “[union] members are reviewing the new guidelines to make sure they’re consistent with the language of the new CBA negotiated between the union and management last year.”
On March 3, Faculty Forward posted a second statement on X indicating their opposition to the new guidelines.
“Given the current national political climate and attacks on higher education and the university’s historical stance on belittling their non-tenure track faculty, Faculty Forward is not surprised that the university released guidelines last week prohibiting unionized faculty from engaging in original scholarship when attending conferences on professional development funds,” the statement read.
“While the Union is also deeply concerned about these attacks, and stands in solidarity with those who fight for our
students and our mission as educators and scholars, we are unwilling to abide by the university’s edict that unionized faculty must avoid engaging in individual scholarship while attending conferences on their professional development funds,” the statement concluded.
Under the new CBA, covered full-time faculty members receive a minimum of $2,500 in professional development funding annually. Other faculty members, including writing instructors and some lecturers, receive $1,700.
When applying for professional development funding, the previous CBA instructed faculty members to identify “how such activity will enhance the Lecturer’s pedagogy or subject matter expertise in their respective fields, how the activity advances the University’s teaching mission and the Lecturer’s performance of their teaching duties.” It did not include examples of what fell within those categories.
Now, the provost’s memo provides lists of expenses that will typically be permitted or denied under the new guidelines and argues that original research is
CONTINUED FROM PG. 2
not required for building subject matter expertise.
According to sources with knowledge of the February 25 College Council meeting, the decision was made unilaterally by the University and originated in University Provost Katherine Baicker’s office.
Faculty members and union representatives were not consulted, and the change was not a direct part of the collective bargaining process.
The College Council is a body composed of elected and appointed faculty members charged with legislating admissions, instruction, examination, and grading, among other matters within the College.
Sources with whom the Maroon spoke believe the change is likely a direct consequence of the recently renegotiated CBA, which emphasizes the role of instructional professors as teachers rather than researchers. Although most instructional professors also conduct research in their respective fields, University officials present at the Council meeting indicated that the University wanted to create what one source called a “brighter line” between research and teaching.
“This is less consequential than it is humiliating and punitive,” one tenure-track faculty member said. “I think it’s insulting. [The University has] a twotiered system [for faculty]. This kind of rubs [instructional faculty’s] nose in the two-tiered system.”
According to one source, that change will be relatively easy to circumvent. Instructional professors who want a research presentation covered by professional development funding may only need to attend another lecture at a conference for their attendance to qualify as educational rather than as research-related.
“I’m glad that I think it will not be materially consequential, but I’m deeply disappointed for how shabbily IPs are being treated,” a tenure-track faculty member told the Maroon. “This will retard the research that IPs do.”
The University’s decision follows several moves by the Trump administration
“expenses related to original research activity.”
to cut funding for colleges and universities, although sources with knowledge of the Council meeting indicated that the changes were not directly related to those cuts. However, federal funding cuts could put additional pressure on a budget currently in crisis.
During a November town hall, Baicker and Enterprise Chief Financial Officer of the University Ivan Samstein said that UChicago’s deficit had been reduced to $221 million, down from $288 million in the previous budget cycle.
Per Baicker and Samstein’s presentation during the town hall, “expenditure cuts came from debt refinancing, paring down central administrative expenses, and moderating academic units’ spending by limiting faculty and staff compensation increases,” the Maroon reported at the time.
Sources with knowledge of the matter believe that the cuts and changes will generally make it more complicated for faculty members to spend the money allocated to them, allowing the University to recover unspent allocations at the end of each fiscal year. According to the CBA and the provost’s memo, professional development funding is allocated on a yearly basis and does not roll over.
“It could be the case that making it more difficult to more fully utilize the funds at the end of each fiscal year [means that] whatever’s left on the table, the University can claw back,” one source said.
“This [change to IP funding] was not simply to clarify a definition… it is an attempt to nickle-and-dime [sic] the University out of [its] deficit. Solutions in search of a problem don’t suddenly appear. There’s always a reason why [they appear] now,” a professor familiar with University policy processes told the Maroon.
In a statement, the University clarified its position on the changes to professional development funding and how the new guidance would impact the work of instructional faculty
“The Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the University and Service Employees International Union, Local No. 73, reached after months of
negotiation, included substantially expanded professional development (PD) funds for Lecturers and Instructional Professors. The recent guidance from the Office of the Provost provides consistency in administration of PD funds for Lecturers and Instructional Professors across schools and divisions. This is not related to cost savings; on the contrary, the CBA expands the availability of PD funds.
“The University enthusiastically supports the use of PD funds for a wide range of activities related to the instructional responsibilities of Lecturers and Instructional Professors. This may include travel and expenses for conferences related to their instructional work at the University, or purchasing academic books and
journals related to the individual’s instructional area. Expenses related to original research are not eligible for PD funding unless the Lecturer or Instructional Professor has been assigned original research as part of their duties. The University supports the technology needs of all its employees through other funding sources, not as part of PD.
“As the parties discussed at the bargaining table, the University has the sole responsibility to manage funds allocated to PD. While for many units the guidance represents little or no change, it was important to align practices across the university.”
Zachary Leiter contributed reporting.
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By OLIVER BUNTIN | Senior News Reporter
The Institute of Politics (IOP) hosted a forum titled “The Future of the Democratic Party” on February 19. The event, moderated by IOP Founding Director David Axelrod, featured a discussion with former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Washington Representative Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, and Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb at the Rubenstein Forum.
Axelrod opened by emphasizing the importance of getting young leaders’ perspectives on elections, saying, “Hilariously, Pete Buttigieg is the old man here.” He began by asking each panelist to describe what message they felt voters had sent in 2024.
Gluesenkamp Perez emphasized her unique perspective as a red-district Democrat. “I represent a triple-Trump district, so he’s carried it three times now, but I do think I am representing my district,” she said. “This is my family, my team, my community.”
She continued by criticizing the Democratic messaging around democracy and the party’s failure to reckon with voters’ rejection of the argument.
“I think one of the things that’s frustrating to me is… you get the answer to the question that you ask, and people have been asking the wrong questions. They ask the question that delivers the kinds of answers they want to hear, that doesn’t indict them in any way,” she said.
“A lot of the narrative and discussion—it’s almost disempowering for people to say our entire world is based on one vote. Democracy persists in all of these small things; it’s how well you know your neighbors, it’s who comes to your house, it’s who’s teaching shop class—those are all the things that build a strong nation. And a lot of times it feels like the national agenda is just this industrial complex of consultants that want to sell the same TV ads in Ohio as in Washington.”
Buttigieg emphasized his concern that Democratic messaging simply wasn’t reaching people.
“The thing we’re not talking about enough while we talk about what we have
to say is where we say it,” he said. “I think that’s become a huge gap in the way that our party has approached politics.”
“People aren’t listening to [Joe] Rogan because they view it as being of the right,” he added. “They’re not looking for politics. They’re looking for… an interesting podcast, and politics finds them… And I think we really need to be much smarter about taking this conversation to places where it’s not reaching folks.”
Gluesenkamp Perez also discussed her proposed REPAIR Act, inspired by issues farmers in her district faced with their John Deere tractors, which is emblematic of her political emphasis on stewardship and autonomy. The policy would require manufacturers to provide buyers with access to parts and information for repairs.
“Imagine having a $600,000 piece of yard art and you can’t open it up to fix [it] without voiding the whole warranty. So, you know, people lose their [crops],” she said. “And what we’re saying with right to repair is that we have the right to fix our own shit, we are not just consumers. We are stewards. We don’t want this black box that we have no agency in.”
Gluesenkamp Perez noted that she had found a number of Republicans receptive to Right to Repair and argued that nonpartisan issues can help swing-district democrats build trust with voters.
Axelrod then asked Bibb for his explanation of the Democratic Party’s declining vote share among Black and Hispanic voters. Bibb emphasized messaging, saying, “I think our party, in many ways, has overintellectualized our values, to where we’ve forgotten how to have a very focused, singular message on what we stand for.”
Gluesenkamp Perez jumped in to emphasize the need to connect messaging and policy to tangible local issues.
“It’s like we have moved away from a system of representative government, where there’s accountability and a placebased politics, and moving further and further towards hegemony, where power exists nowhere and everywhere,” she
said. “Without a fierce loyalty to place, representative government fails, and it becomes captured by these very abstract ideas. When we turn environmentalism into a commodity that you can buy at Target, you lose [it]. That is a flaccid argument in the face of what is an urgent necessity.”
In a similar vein, Buttigieg criticized the proceedings of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) elections on February 1, arguing its focus on identity-based categorization alienated voters by failing to connect the party to substantive issues.
The New York Times reported that the event “devolved at times into almost a caricature of left-wing litmus tests on inclusivity. Candidates were asked to pledge to expand transgender representation, add a new Muslim caucus and affirm that racism and misogyny had contributed to former Vice President Kamala Harris’s defeat… [while] departing D.N.C. chairman, Jaime Harrison, labored to explain the party’s dizzyingly complex gender-parity provisions: ‘Our rules specify that when we have a gender nonbinary candidate or officer, the nonbinary individual is counted as neither male nor female and the remaining six officers must be gender-balanced.’”
“It was a caricature of everything that’s wrong with our ability both to cohere as a party and to reach those people who all agree with us,” Buttigieg
said. “And we cannot go on like that. We cannot.”
“I also think that we believe in the values that we care about for a reason, and this is not about abandoning those values. It’s about making sure we’re in touch with the first principles that animate them,” he continued. “What do we mean when we talk about diversity? Is it caring for people’s different experiences and making sure no one’s mistreated because of them, which I will always fight for? Or is it making people sit through a training that looks like something out of Portlandia? [That] is how Trump Republicans are made.”
The event concluded with audience questions, the last of which asked Buttigieg to share what he believed the Democratic Party represented in three words.
“For me, it’s always been about freedom, security, and democracy,” Buttigieg said. “I mean not just freedom from an overbearing government but things the government should do to secure your freedom from anybody else who can threaten your freedom, from a corporation to your neighborhood. Security on everything from aviation safety… to national security, to democracy.”
“And democracy in a rich sense of the term,” he continued. “Not just the formalities of voting in elections but living in a society where people are empowered to know that the government works for us. That’s what I think we’re about.”
By OLIVER BUNTIN | Senior News Reporter
Content warning: This article contains descriptions of violence and sexual violence.
Maroons for Israel hosted Gal Cohen-Solal, a survivor of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel, during a “Faces of October Seventh” event on February 24. Approximately 27 students, along with deans-on-call, gathered to listen to his account.
Cohen-Solal was a cosmetics company manager living on Kibbutz Re’im, located less than 4.5 miles from the Gaza Strip. On October 7, Hamas fight-
ers attacked the Kibbutz for around eight hours before Israeli soldiers arrived to help its residents escape, Cohen-Solal said.
Cohen-Solal described his experience during “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’s name for the attack. The attack spanned over multiple Israeli bases and kibbutzim outside of Gaza on Shemini Atzeret, a Jewish holiday.
Kibbutz Re’im, to which Cohen-Solal’s family had moved on October 1, 2023, was subjected to particularly sustained assault due to its strategic location near a
road junction, according to Cohen-Solal.
He described “hearing lots of sirens” early in the morning, waking his wife to arrange an evacuation suitcase, and preparing to leave the kibbutz.
“It was very difficult and hard to get out because there were lots of sirens, and we started to hear lots of gunshots,” Cohen-Solal said. “My wife asked what it was, and I said the terrorists were probably firing rockets.”
“At 7:30 a.m., the guy in charge [of the kibbutz] gave me a call, and I told him we wanted to leave, [because] there was a [hole] in my safe room.” However, he was told to stay in his safe room “or die.” He
credits this information with saving his life, recalling burnt corpses in cars on the road leading out of his village.
Cohen-Solal showed a video of Hamas fighters pulling up to the kibbutz gate in a convoy of white pickup trucks and forcing their way through the gate. As residents attempted to flee down the road, “they were shot like ducks in a range,” he said.
But he noted that the distraction they provided may have saved his family, which “[he] will think about until the end.”
As the Hamas soldiers began to enter the kibbutz, “they got distracted trying to shoot people, like, fleeing from the Nova [music] festival, so they were distracted from their mission,” he said.
Cohen-Solal showed video footage of fighters leading two hostages out of the kibbutz to vehicles at 8:15 a.m. According to Cohen-Solal, only “six armed guys” in the kibbutz were left to fight against “about a hundred terrorists.”
By this point, Cohen-Solal knew more about what was going on, having received updates from the kibbutz WhatsApp group chat.
“When the terrorists entered our kibbutz, they knew exactly where to go,” Cohen-Solal said. “They had pictures.… Some of our workers were from Gaza and took pictures.”
Cohen-Solal recounted his feelings from when he huddled in the safe room as Hamas fighters drew closer.
“You just sit and wait for your own death. Simple as that.… So we start to hear all the shooting coming towards me, and I start to hear them by my house. At some point… the bullets started to hit my house.… I was 100 percent sure I was going to lose my life. The only thing that I thought about was how I was gonna keep my family safe,” he said. “There was a vent in my safe [room], where they could just throw in a hand grenade from outside… and I thought, I will jump on that grenade so I will save my family’s life.”
“We heard them laughing, and shouting [outside], my kids started crying and screaming, but we had to get them to stop.” Cohen-Solal continued. “My wife put her hands on [their three-year-old’s] mouth.… He didn’t understand why he
“If
needed to be quiet.”
He then related how the fighters attempted to break into his residence before seemingly giving up, leaving them to hide until Israeli forces retook the kibbutz.
“Eventually, they tried to enter the house.… They just tried to open the door… and [they] started to shoot at our door from the outside,” he said. “At this point in our safe room… there was no food or water.… I had to crawl to the restroom [for water]…. It was like that until 2:30 when the army finally arrived.”
Cohen-Solal described how fighting continued until 6:30 p.m., when, after 12 hours in the safe room, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) entered the house to check for fighters.
“After that [the IDF] went to [my neighbor] Ben’s house…. Ben forgot to
lock the door, so the terrorists threw a hand grenade in his living room. But it didn’t explode, and this is what saved [his family’s] life,” he said.
He then described moving to another house late at night and only emerging to safety the following morning. “In some kibbutz the war ended in a few hours, in ours it took 24.”
“They literally burned all they could... Maybe they thought if the smoke entered our safe rooms we would get out [or] get strangled by the smoke,” he said.
Cohen-Solal also said the army brought in tanks to hit houses with fight ers holed up inside and uncovered bodies of rape victims as well as graffiti left by Hamas fighters.
He also showed a video of a house where escapees from the Nova music festival had been burned alive.
He ended his testimony by dedicating
the talk to his former IDF commander, killed by Hamas on October 7, and a he said. “In the beginning, when there were protests inside campuses… I think
Since its publication 10 years ago, the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression—commonly known as the Chicago Principles or the Chicago Statement—has become a touchstone for the debate over free expression on college campuses.
Over 100 U.S. universities and colleges have adopted or endorsed the Principles, praising them for avowing an ethos of higher education. Amid student protests last spring, students and faculty criticized the report for hindering the very freedom of expression the document claims to promote—enabling administrators to sidestep difficult questions in the name of institutional neutrality.
In drafting its report, the Committee consulted a second text at the heart of discourse on academic freedom. The 1967 Report on the University’s Role in
Political and Social Action, or the Kalven Report, recommends that UChicago maintains neutrality as an institution on most political and social issues to allow. This allows its members the fullest freedom of individual expression, the report says.
Though oft-cited, the Kalven Report and the Chicago Principles are little read. As a result, the intricacies of both reports are frequently overlooked in favor of their broader statements.
In reporting on the documents, two facts became clear. First, the authors of both the Chicago Principles and the Kalven Report intended to write living documents for future generations to reassess—an objective their adopters have sometimes disregarded. Second, both documents contain unresolved tensions and fail to answer questions the drafters could not foresee. Academic freedom, as
many have argued, is increasingly a privilege not afforded equally to all members of our community.
With this special insert, we hope to renew the dialogue around a pair of documents that have hardened into a creed.
The insert opens by revisiting the Kalven Report. The Maroon annotates the 1967 document by drawing upon hundreds of pages of committee chair Harry Kalven Jr.’s papers and an interview with his son, journalist Jamie Kalven.
You will also find reflections from members of the Chicago Principles Committee; conversations about the complications of free speech in the digital age and in medicine; and discussion of the danger of pre-emptive self-censorship and institutional timidity in the face of attacks on higher education.
With the reelection of President Don-
ald Trump, the very mission of higher education is at stake. The Trump administration has targeted federal research funding and diversity, equity, and inclusion educational programs, stifling expression and scholarship. At this crossroads, the University has the opportunity to set an example for other institutions once more by demonstrating its commitment to academic freedom.
In a 1967 letter to fellow committee members, Harry Kalven Jr. calls the report a “stimulus for discussion.” We welcome readers to the Chicago Principles Special Insert, a point of departure for dialogue.
Anushree Vashist, 2024–25 managing editor
Celeste Alcalay, Grey City editor
The Maroon drew upon an interview with journalist Jamie Kalven, son of the eponymous Harry Kalven Jr.
By ANUSHREE VASHIST | Managing Editor and CELESTE ALCALAY | Grey City Editor
In 1967, University President George Beadle appointed a faculty committee— chaired by First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr.—to prepare “a statement on the University’s role in political and social action.” The resulting report articulates the University’s commitment to institutional neutrality. By abstaining from speech about political and social issues, the report says, the University allows its individual members the fullest freedom of expression.
Journalist Jamie Kalven, Harry Kalven Jr.’s son, sat down with the Maroon to walk through the Kalven Report. In the 14 years he spent edit-
ing his father’s manuscript on the First Amendment and the American tradition of freedom of speech, Jamie Kalven reviewed hundreds of Harry Kalven Jr.’s papers to familiarize himself with his father’s thinking.
An annotated version of the 1967 report based on our conversation, along with the interview itself, can be found on the Maroon ’s website.
Providing context on his father’s writing, Jamie Kalven argues that we, now in a moment of attacks on academic freedom and higher education, should return to “the point of departure” the document provides.
Reading from a letter addressed to the members of the drafting committee, which you’ll find publicly available for the first time on the Maroon ’s website, Jamie Kalven discusses where his father decided to “spend the emphasis” in the report. Harry Kalven Jr. concluded that, in 1967, stating the general principle against collective action was more important than foregrounding the exceptional cases in which collective action may have been appropriate.
Still, there will be exceptions, moments when the “very mission of the University and its values of free inquiry” are under threat.
Jamie Kalven believes that, today, we find ourselves in one such moment.
Scan the QR code below to scroll through the annotations and follow along with Jamie Kalven’s audio commentary.
A decade after the Principles were published, its authors discuss the future of the debate over free expression at the University.
By CELESTE ALCALAY | Grey City Editor
The Chicago Principles were published in 2015 after then-University President Robert Zimmer and Provost Eric Isaacs appointed a committee to author a statement articulating the University’s commitment to “free, robust, and uninhibited debate and deliberation” among its community members. The Maroon asked members of the original committee to reflect on the report, which has drawn controversy and praise alike over the last decade. (Six of the seven members responded; Mark Siegler, Lindy Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Medicine and Surgery, was not available for an interview.)
The Committee convened in 2014 due to “recent events nationwide that have tested institutional commitments to free and open discourse,” according to the report.
In a season of protest, campus activists across the country were calling for controversial commencement speakers to cancel their scheduled visits. The advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) filed lawsuits against four universities in an effort to force them to revise policies FIRE claimed had restricted some forms of speech. At the University of California, Berkeley, marches against police violence swept across campus, blocking traffic in both directions on Interstate 80.
“There was a general sense that expression was being restricted on college campuses in various ways,” Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences Amanda Woodward told the Maroon
“I do remember, in particular, the controversy around freedom of speech at Yale was one of the things we looked at,” Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Kenneth Warren recalled.
In January 2014, Yale’s administration made the controversial decision to shut down Yale Bluebook+, a student-generated course catalogue that used university material to rank courses, due to con-
cerns about improper usage of licensed material. Yale’s own policy on freedom of expression emerged from the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression at Yale in December 1974.
For much of the 20th century, free speech was a rallying cry for the left to defend communists, pacifists, and anarchists, writes Sophia Rosenfeld, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania. More recently, the political right took up the mantle of free speech, while the left endeavored to protect minorities against hate speech. The roles reversed once again with last spring’s nationwide pro-Palestinian encampments, as protestors demanded their universities protect the speech that conservatives were denouncing.
“I think that in 2014 what was thought of as objectionable came from a different part of the political spectrum,” said Gerald Ratner Distinguished Service Professor of Law David A. Strauss.
Within the walls of the University, the Committee was not focused on the political issues of the day, the report said. Although they resided in different academic corners of the University, Committee members agreed on their thesis: a commitment to free speech and inquiry is essential to the University’s mission.
“We had the experience of ourselves growing up in the culture of this place,” said Woodward, who has spent most of her professional life at the University.
Committee members described the influence of free speech principles on their own lives.
“I lived the Title IX issue, let’s put it that way, and it was not pleasant to have male faculty say that women should not do theoretical physics, which they did say,” said Provost of Columbia Angela Olinto, who was an astrophysics professor at the University in 2014. “I would love to be able to stifle that kind of expression.”
However, Olinto argued that in many
instances, engaging in dialogue is the most effective response to speech one doesn’t agree with. “You have to argue the case,” she said.
Like Olinto, Committee Chair and Edward H. Levi Distinguished Service Professor of Law Geoffrey Stone holds an almost religious belief that freedom of expression in a public forum leads to change over time.
“We have changed our mind about many things over many years, whether it’s about race, about racial discrimination, about gender roles, abortion, sex, sexual expression, partly because we’ve been exposed to competing ideas,” Stone said. “And so that’s an essential part of a democracy, and it’s an essential part of a university.”
Woodward witnessed and practiced free inquiry in her routine teaching and research duties, so much so that, at the very beginning of the drafting process, she struggled to recognize that faculty new to the University weren’t as deeply embedded in the same culture.
“I didn’t really understand that there was a kind of urgency [here] around reflecting on the importance of free expression, and that the University of Chicago’s values weren’t obviously shared… and they certainly weren’t necessarily shared by other university communities,” she said.
Notably, the Committee was writing for the immediate University community, not for a national audience.
“I have to say, when we wrote the report, we were not thinking about anybody else adopting it,” Stone said.
Its task, the Committee felt, was to reflect on the unique culture of freedom of expression that had long been upheld at the University.
“We didn’t invent the Chicago Principles,” Woodward said. “In fact, if you look at the document, it’s a set of quotes, beginning with the first president of the University of Chicago and going through to the present day, quoting president after president, faculty leader after faculty
leader,” she said.
The University of Chicago is known for welcoming free exchange of ideas of the most radical sort: In 1932, students invited Communist Party presidential candidate William Z. Foster to speak at the University. In his speech, Foster called for the abolition of capitalism. In 2017, Stone declined neo-Nazi Richard Spencer’s request to speak on campus but noted if another member of the University chose to invite Spencer, he would have defended Spencer’s right to speak on campus. In an oft-referenced 2016 incident, the University sent a letter to incoming students decrying safe spaces and trigger warnings.
Strauss reflected on the negative connotations that have accompanied the University’s absolutist philosophy of free speech and defined its reputation.
“Some people think… that [UChicago] is a place where people are kind of nasty or even abusive, and then they justify that by claiming, ‘Well, I’m just presenting an idea,’” Strauss said.
The University of Chicago community is well-positioned precisely because of that association to dispel the notion that freedom of expression is synonymous with vitriol, he said. “We have the ability to show that that’s all wrong. We can model exchanges that demonstrate that there is no inconsistency between taking ideas seriously, engaging in vigorous debate, and treating people respectfully.”
More than 100 universities have adopted versions of the Principles, and the drafters say it is sensible for each school to follow an individual process of reflecting on their set of values.
“Not all academic institutions share the same values, and some of them may well think that it’s inappropriate, for example, for students or others to say things that offend other people—and that would not be consistent with the First Amendment as it currently exists,” Stone said.
Stone’s reading of the Chicago Principles, like the First Amendment, allows for
“I felt it could be turned into a kind of club to beat other institutions with.”
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very limited exceptions in which speech might be curtailed.
The drafters also reiterated that the document only serves its intended function when an underlying culture of commitment to the principles persists.
“They’re principles, and they aren’t going to give you specific answers to specific issues that come up on campus. So what follows from that is that the culture that the university creates [around expression] is really critical,” Strauss said.
While they didn’t call the Principles a cure-all, some of the Committee members said that they had worked well in concert with the 1967 Kalven Report to guide the University in its response to the campus unrest in the past year. But not all members of the University agree: In his Chronicle of Higher Education op-ed, “The Chicago Principles Are Undemocratic,” professor Anton Ford called University President Paul Alivisatos’s decision to end the encampment “a flagrant violation of freedom of expression.” Alivisatos claimed that students’ demands for divestment violated the University’s core principle of institutional neutrality, articulated in the Kalven Report.
Woodward described the report as “saying the University as a corporate entity, as an institution, has to stay well out of the way of infringing on the rights of faculty and students to express, develop, and chase their ideas where they want to take them. It’s sort of the institutional neutrality that is in service of preserving free expression, which is the engine of what makes us a university.”
She recalled that the Kalven Report laid the foundation for the Principles. “A debate we had about writing the report was whether the Kalven Report had said it all,” she said.
This past spring at other institutions, trustees and donors were enraged that the presidents of these institutions did not speak out more forthrightly against what they called antisemitism on campus. These attitudes affected their philanthropy; protests last spring led to Harvard’s donations decreasing by 15 percent, according to CNN.
At the University, the Kalven Report, reinforced by the Chicago Principles, “helped forestall the demand that
trustees [would] expect the University to make a certain position on an issue that was highly controversial and highly, highly painful,” Warren said.
“I find the Chicago way—the combination of the Chicago Principles, plus the Kalven Report—really helpful for unpredictable situations like the one we’re living,” Olinto said.
Last year, the Anti-Defamation League gave the University a failing grade on its campus antisemitism report card, calling out University leadership for their silence following Hamas’s attack on October 7. The University responded, citing the Kalven Report as the reason behind its decision not to publicly condemn the attack.
The members concurred that the Principles were never meant as a onesize-fits-all solution.
“The Chicago Principles are not a recipe. They’re not a set of instructions for what to do in any particular situation, right? It’s a statement of ideals,” Woodward said.
To that effect, in 2014, Strauss worried that the Principles would be interpreted as more of an answer than intended, which he called a “mistake.”
“When you commit yourself to the principle, you’re tempted to think, ‘Okay, I’ve solved the problem for all times and in all places.’ And, of course, you haven’t,” he said.
Beyond the University, the Principles have entered the national discourse through many channels, invoked not only at other schools but for political causes, including a recent citation in a Republican-backed bill encouraging all higher education institutions to adopt the Chicago Principles.
In certain instances, the Principles have been used in support of causes diametrically opposed to the freedom of expression the document intended to champion, Strauss said.
The report has set the stage for state legislatures to impose themselves on decisions that should be made by universities, said Warren, calling the bill a case in which the Principles are being utilized to silence voices, a line of thought that the committee drafters disagree with.
Warren called it “a grotesque irony” that one of the earliest champions of the
Chicago Principles was Ron DeSantis. He called DeSantis’s changes to the university system in Florida an “encroachment on all the matters of freedom of expression.”
“So, yes. The document allows for problematic and erroneous interpretation,” Warren said.
At the time of drafting, Warren also worried that the publicity the document generated at its outset could lead to a propagandistic dogma.
“I felt it could be turned into a kind of club to beat other institutions with,” Warren said.
He worried that the report had been implemented at other universities and co-opted by the political right almost immediately after it was released; the document from the outset was upheld as a creed that institutions should adopt before the effects could be observed.
“It might have made sense five years out from the adoption of the Principles to say, ‘Well, how is it working at the University of Chicago?’ But that wasn’t the case. So people were using it to make political debaters’ points, rather than to focus on the process and how one makes freedom of expression an active value,” Warren said.
Reflecting on what was left out of the report, Warren cited the distinction between academic freedom in a university context and freedom of speech under the First Amendment.
“Academic freedom and full freedom of expression are not the same thing,” Warren said. “And I do think that a clearer description of what academic freedom entails might have been a useful addendum.”
Academic freedom privileges certain types of speech over others, while under the First Amendment, all speech is equal before the state. The former “depends on expertise and judgment—’the notion,’ as the legal scholar Robert C. Post has put it, that ‘there are true ideas and false ideas,’ and that it is the job of scholars to distinguish them,” wrote Jennifer Schuessler in the New York Times. The unsettled debate over the role of protest in a student’s education has made it unclear whether the University’s “truth-seeking mission” encompasses both definitions of speech.
Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Mari-
anne Bertrand underscored the need to rearticulate the Principles’ raison d’être.
“One weakness of the Chicago Principles might be that they don’t articulate explicitly enough why freedom of expression is so important. Is freedom of expression the objective in itself, or a tool to get us closer to the truth?” Bertrand wrote in an email to the Maroon
Since the initial drafting of the report, universities have become increasingly reliant on donors to fund scholarships and grants and construct new facilities. Recently, the University received $100 million to dedicate to the inaugural Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression, also called the Chicago Forum.
Some faculty point to the association of free speech principles with the University’s institutional identity as evidence of its success as a branding strategy, rather than a set of values. “The ordinary members of the university community are related to the Chicago Principles in something like the way that the employees of Procter & Gamble are related to the ‘values’ described on its corporate website,” wrote Ford in his Chronicle op-ed.
“The university has become a corporation and a hedge fund, a tax haven for billionaires, and a playground for the children of the upper middle and upper classes,” said professor Eman Abdelhadi in a panel discussion held by the Chicago Center For Contemporary Theory this past fall. The panel was one talk in a sequence called “On University Values,” in which panelists debated what they viewed as contradictions between the University’s values and its interests as an employer and investor.
“Faculty are weaker than ever before and are facing increasing austerity,” Abdelhadi said in the scathing critique.
Ford continues to criticize the report as hegemonic, arguing in his Chronicle op-ed that the document was never ratified by the faculty council or by Student Government.
At the “Chicago Principles at Ten Years” event held at the Chicago Forum, Stone refuted that claim by listing groups of people the Committee had consulted. “We met with members of the faculty across the University. We met with all the deans in the University. We met with the
“Is freedom of expression the objective in itself, or a tool to get us closer to the truth?”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 9
deans of students in the University. We met with groups of students in the University. We talked to individuals outside our institution elsewhere.”
However, Stone agreed that the corporate model universities have begun to follow in the last century generates institutional pressures.
As a result of this model, “private donors exercised a great deal of power at many universities—not Chicago—but many universities, in saying, ‘Well, you
can’t teach students X, Y, and Z, because if you do that, we won’t give you money.’ What you want to tell your donors is, ‘If you value the institution, don’t do that,’” Stone said.
Looking toward the future, Bertrand raised a concern that the growing reliance on donors could inhibit the University’s ability to act freely in its role as educator.
“Ideally, the University would be even more transparent about the sources of the philanthropic support it receives, as
well as support it declines because the donors’ demand might be in violation of the Principles,” Bertrand wrote in her email.
Overall, the committee felt that the document, despite its weaknesses, has served its purpose. They couldn’t have written the report without an already-established culture of free expression to guide them, they said.
Cultural preservation doesn’t happen on its own, Woodward said. The responsibility falls on the community to pass down free speech values to each next
generation and keep the Principles alive.
“We have been a community of scholars since 1892, and generations of scholars have come to this place, learned what that means, and conveyed it to the next set of people who come to this place in the way that any kind of culture is conveyed from generation to generation,” Woodward said.
“My reflection 10 years later is we’re still debating them and what they mean, and that’s exactly what should be happening.”
The Maroon spoke with students and faculty from UChicago and Columbia to understand the universities’ approaches to free speech.
By ANIKA KRISHNASWAMY | News Editor
In 2016, former Dean of Students John “Jay” Ellison set social media aflame with his letter to the Class of 2020, declaring: “We do not support so-called ‘trigger warnings’... and we do not condone the creation of intellectual ‘safe spaces’ where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.” At the time, this letter sparked widespread debate, earning backlash from some and praise from those who championed UChicago’s commitment to protecting “academic freedom,” both inside and outside the University community.
The letter references several key University documents, including the Stone Report, a document now more widely known as the Chicago Principles.
Written in 2014, the Chicago Principles arose from former University President Robert J. Zimmer and Provost Eric Isaacs’s wishes to formally articulate “‘the University’s overarching commitment to free, robust, and uninhibited debate.’”
“In a word, the University’s fundamental commitment is to the principle that debate or deliberation may not be suppressed because the ideas put forth are
thought by some or even by most members of the University community to be offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed,” the Chicago Principles read.
To that end, Zimmer and Isaacs appointed the Committee on Freedom of Expression, chaired by UChicago Law School professor Geoffrey Stone and composed of seven professors across various University departments. In an interview with the Maroon, Stone explained that the initiative was a manifestation of preexisting values regarding free expression that had been part of the University’s culture since its founding.
The Principles have captured the attention of other institutions of higher education, where similar debates surrounding free speech have emerged over the last 10 years. As of December 2024, 112 universities across the United States have adopted the Principles; Princeton University was the first institution to adopt the Principles in April 2015, while Boise State University adopted them most recently in December 2024.
Yet, even as more institutions embrace the Chicago Principles, recent reports, in-
cluding one from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), have noted dwindling support for free speech on college campuses in recent years.
Recent student protests at Columbia University, an institution with a rich tradition of student activism, highlight the divergent approaches universities take to sanctioning open expression. Scholars from both Columbia and UChicago have questioned whether the Chicago Principles are universally applicable, especially when they were created in the context of UChicago’s long-standing commitment to academic freedom and institutional neutrality.
In UChicago’s case, professor Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the Chicago Forum for Freedom of Expression, argues that people can misunderstand the consequences of protecting “offensive, unwise, immoral, or wrong-headed” ideas.
“I think some people, particularly outside the school, have this idea that we’re just a campus awash with hate speech and yelling and racist epithet[s],” Ginsburg said. “I don’t hear that myself… [but] I think we could deal with that if it happened [in a way that is] consistent with
the Chicago Principles.”
In an October 2024 interview with the Maroon, President Paul Alivisatos said: “You can say very offensive things on this campus. That doesn’t mean that we’re saying, ‘Please go out and say offensive things.’ It just means that speech, broadly speaking, is protected.”
Featuring quotes from several past University presidents, the Chicago Principles serve as a guideline for the University’s approach to free expression rather than as a binding legal document; they encourage hosting controversial speakers and emphasize the importance of institutional neutrality in University decision-making.
“[The Principles] were written about and for the University of Chicago, which is why… they talk a lot about the history of the University,” Stone said. “They were not meant to be adopted by other institutions. They were just about ourselves.”
Columbia University is one institution that has struggled with adopting the Principles. However, according to professor Eli Noam, co-chair of the Columbia Academic Freedom Council, the administration’s approach to freedom of expression
“You can say very offensive things on campus.”
over the past few years appears to have diverged from the university’s own values regarding free speech, as well as the Chicago Principles.
Noam highlighted the challenges Columbia currently faces in maintaining open expression. Though Columbia adopted the Chicago Principles in 2016, according to Noam, if the University Senate had to decide whether to adopt the Principles today, “my guess is that it would be contentious, at least,” he said.
“Particularly among the student senators and some of the activist faculty representatives, the commitment to free speech principles has declined, not just at Columbia, but nationally.… While it used to be that free speech was advocated for by progressives and liberals, it is now seen as a conservative preoccupation and therefore has less support,” Noam said.
Noam added that, in 2018, the Columbia University Senate issued its own stronger resolutions on “Freedom of Expression” and “The Principle of Academic Freedom.” The Resolution in Support of Freedom of Expression on Campus affirms the application of First Amendment principles to campus discourse while balancing concerns for civility, diversity, and community safety. The Resolution Concerning the Principle of Academic Freedom explicitly stresses the right to disagree and the responsibility to engage in disagreements respectfully.
“My problem [with the Chicago Principles] is that they’re not self-enforcing,” Noam said. He took issue with the Principles for their vagueness and explained that Columbia has opted to resolve its issues more practically. At Columbia, “we [follow the guidance of] legal cases outside [of the University]…. That’s why
we think that the Columbia [Resolution is] actually better in dealing with actual issues.”
Despite these protections placed on free speech, professor Jacqueline Gottlieb, a co-chair of the Columbia Academic Freedom Council, explained that Columbia students and faculty find themselves hesitant to participate freely in conversation. As evidence, she cited the latest FIRE survey on free speech, in which Columbia ranked 250th out of 251 colleges and universities overall on qualities such as openness, tolerance, and administrative support.
Gottlieb interprets the survey results as a sign that “a lot of people feel that they have to self-censor. They don’t feel comfortable expressing certain opinions. It’s clear that there are taboos.”
“Obviously, there is some [free expression], but not as much as we feel comfortable with,” Gottlieb continued. “[Although] it is not clear that the actual political composition… of the student body or the faculty have changed over the years, certainly, the range of opinions that you can express—that people are comfortable to express—has become very, very narrow.”
For C.S., a second-year Columbia student who spoke anonymously due to concerns about the University seeking retribution, the narrowing of acceptable opinions comes as a direct result of the administration’s failure to maintain institutional neutrality and promote open discourse, two key aspects of the Chicago Principles.
He explained that the tensions surrounding free speech at Columbia have escalated, particularly over the past year, in the wake of the Israel–Hamas war, which has fueled debates on campuses nationwide. In April 2024, Columbia students established a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” for 14 days until it was dismantled by the NYPD, leading to 109 arrests and a continued police presence on campus for the following two weeks.
“We’re a school that has a long history of protest, a long history of free speech, but it’s certainly been clamped down on very seriously right now,” C.S. said.
C.S. also believes that the university administration often picked sides in the protests, citing the Columbia Board
of Trustees’ shutdown of the Columbia Law Review after it published an article critical of Israel.
According to the 2025 FIRE rankings, Columbia ranks 247th out of 251 in the Administrative Support category; by contrast, UChicago ranks 3rd out of 251 in the same category. Potentially as a result of this difference, student opinion at UChicago diverges from that at Columbia.
Lance Emry, a second-year, and Kunal Gokhale, an M.B.A. student, attributed their sense of freedom to voice their opinions to the Chicago Principles.
“I think the Chicago Principles kind of help people from all ends of the spectrum come together and still be respectful,” Emry said. “You can say very offensive things on campus—and obviously, that’s a very raw way of putting things—but it’s important because it makes us stand out, and I think it is part of the commitment to the Chicago Principles.”
“I think a lot of other schools and institutions would probably interfere, even when things get contentious,” Gokhale said. “But [UChicago’s administration] does a good job of letting students discuss it amongst themselves and express their opinions in whatever way they like.”
According to Gottlieb, concerns of administrative retribution extend to faculty at Columbia and many other universities. “Students in classrooms are worried that they can’t express some viewpoints because their grades will be reduced,” she said. “If you’re an adjunct professor and you provoke one of the social media mobs, you could very well be fired—or just your classes will be taken away… and they can do the same thing to a tenured professor.… [The administration] can make their life so miserable that it might be even worse than firing them.”
Gottlieb referenced former University of Colorado (CU) Boulder professor Roger Pielke Jr. and former Columbia Department of Psychiatry Chair Jeffrey Lieberman as examples of administrative retaliation. Pielke, despite having tenure, was gradually pushed out over the course of nine years after a Democratic representative encouraged CU Boulder to launch what Pielke called a “sham investigation” against his credibility, following his involvement in both the 2009
“I don’t think that state coercion is the right approach.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 11
Climategate emails and the 2016 Hillary Clinton WikiLeaks emails. Lieberman, on the other hand, was abruptly suspended after posting an offensive tweet. For Gottlieb, even a few such cases are “enough to trigger fears” and make people feel “constricted.”
Despite these concerns, Ginsburg and Stone note that UChicago has maintained a strong stance on institutional neutrality. Ginsburg pointed to the University administration’s response to the past year’s protests as an example of this commitment.
“I have little doubt that this university would have the same concerns about [the encampment], regardless of whether the people were attempting to communicate
a pro-Palestine, a pro-Israel, a pro-abortion, anti-abortion, a pro-Trump, [or] anti-Trump message,” Stone said. “It’s not the message that was the problem. It’s the means of communication that is itself disruptive.”
“At the University of Chicago, we have many people who take a controversial stance on Israel and Palestine, and no one would even think that they should not teach their classes or, you know, have their academic freedom constrained,” Ginsburg said. “And in other schools, I do see some of those things happening. So to me, I think on that issue, we, as with everything, should try to regulate speech on campus in a content-neutral way rather than pick and choose which speech you like. That’s the Chicago tradition.”
Noam, too, attributed the difference in response to a cultural distinction between the two universities, a difference in “tradition,” but he expressed hope that Columbia can return to its former levels of open expression.
“[At UChicago,] there is more room for, I think, for a culture of disagreement— acceptable disagreement and diversity,” Noam said. “We’re trying at Columbia to reach that. So it’s not a business we have given up.”
“I don’t think that every school has to adopt [UChicago’s] approach… There are many schools that might take a different approach—who knows what’s right—but at this university, it’s been a very old tradition, 130 years old, of people being really committed to the values of free expres-
sion, and so for us, I think it does make sense as part of our long tradition,” Ginsburg continued.
Ginsburg pointed out that some legislators have pushed to mandate the Chicago Principles at all universities. For example, the End Woke Higher Education Act, which passed in the U.S. House of Representatives last September, “calls on nonsectarian institutions of higher education to adopt” the Principles. However, Ginsburg reaffirmed that free speech policies should be tailored to each school’s unique identity.
“I don’t think that state coercion is the right approach,” Ginsburg added. “I think this really has to be cultural if it’s supposed to work, if it’s going to work, and it has to be bottom-up.”
As faculty members establish public personas built on their professional reputations, some professors argue the Chicago principles extend beyond the University while non-tenure-track faculty fight to establish their right to protection at all.
By DINAH MEGIBOW-TAYLOR | Grey City Reporter
As faculty members establish public personas built on their professional reputations, some professors argue the Chicago Principles extend beyond the University while non-tenure-track faculty fight to establish their right to protection at all.
On social media platforms, a professor’s professional and personal identities overlap—evident from faculty members’ statements on UChicago’s spring encampment. Though a university may be self-contained, distinct from the public sphere, outsiders can peer into the institution by observing the expression of student and faculty opinions—a quick search of ‘UChicago’ on X will do the trick.
The University’s separation from the public sphere is due in large part to its need to prioritize academic freedom, a kind of freedom set apart from freedom
of expression. As legal scholar Robert Post describes, “On campus, there is freedom to discover, develop, and distribute ideas in pursuit of knowledge and diffuse it in education. In the public sphere, there is freedom to debate and deliberate about ideas in expressing and responding to others’ opinions. The former is academic freedom, the latter freedom of speech.”
A large factor of the university’s separation from the public sphere is its need to prioritize academic freedom, a kind of freedom set apart from freedom of expression. As legal scholar Robert Post describes, “On campus, there is freedom to discover, develop, and distribute ideas in pursuit of knowledge and diffuse it in education. In the public sphere, there is freedom to debate and deliberate about ideas in expressing and responding to
others’ opinions. The former is academic freedom, the latter freedom of speech.”
Faculty speech that takes place outside of the classroom and pertains to scholarship is protected by the Chicago Principles, according to First Amendment scholar and UChicago Law School professor Genevieve Lakier. Rather than simply ensuring academic freedom, the Principles err on the side of protecting broader forms of expression, meaning there is a higher tolerance for the circulation of misinformation on campus.
“We’re embedded in the larger society, and until our politics changes, there’s no way for this institution to solve the problem of misinformation or falsity,” Lakier said. “The best way to deal with misinformation is to have a really vigorous culture of fact-checking and argumentation. And I do think [the University of] Chicago is pretty good at that.”
False and misleading information is not encompassed by the principle of academic freedom, but this speech is necessary as a function of the public sphere and has wide protection under the Principles, according to Lakier.
The Chicago Principles, Lakier said, try to protect both academic freedom and freedom of expression by “supplementing what is the traditional university focus on academic freedom with this rich understanding that… outside of the classroom, in the public sphere of the university more broadly, it is important to have a broader conversation that can help make sure that what happens in the classroom is not too isolated from broader public discourse.”
Take the discourse surrounding the course “The Problem of Whiteness,” an instance of back-and-forth between students, faculty, and administration that
“The University’s public position, for a long time, has been that it takes a maximalist view of speech rights.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 12
put the Chicago Principles to the test against the virulence of social media speech. In 2022, University undergraduate Daniel Schmidt (’25) took to X (then Twitter) to express his opposition to the course offering, which aimed to examine the concept of “whiteness.”
“[It] led to threats and doxxing of the instructor… and it’s really scary, and then of course, it obviously has a very significant chilling effect on the willingness to do controversial things, the kind of stuff that the University is supposed to enable and protect,” Lakier said.
As part of his thread about the course, Schmidt tweeted, “You have to wonder what the solution to the ‘Problem of Whiteness’ would be. This is how people who detest white people think and talk. And they have taken over all universities under the guise of ‘academic freedom.’ No sane professor can oppose it without risking their career.”
In Schmidt’s tweet, there’s an implication that faculty cannot oppose institution-sponsored initiatives, an implication that speaks to the perceived inadequacy of the Chicago Principles’ practical application.
“The student was protected by the Chicago Principles, the instructor was protected by the Chicago Principles. What do you do in such a situation?” Lakier said.
Lakier has focused her recent scholarship on how the First Amendment interplays with false and misleading information—complicated by discourse in the online sphere—and worries the University could be affected by the spread of misinformation. Although the protection of misinformation is necessary under the First Amendment, it could isolate the University from the broader public sphere.
“There are many people who think the way to respond to the current highly polarized, complicated political environment and media environment is to raise the drawbridge and create a moat around the ivory tower that is the institution,” Lakier said.
To do so—to insulate the University and its Principles from the broader pub -
lic—would be a shame, she said. “Universities have this really critically important role to play and speak to a broader public audience. I think a lot of academics think that it’s really beneficial to be perceived by a broader public.”
While Lakier worries that the University may create a moat and raise the drawbridge, others are working to safeguard faculty against the noted “chilling effect” on University-sponsored inquiry to preserve the University’s connection to the public sphere. Faculty Forward, the union representing UChicago’s nontenure-track faculty, is working to ensure that its constituents are wholly protected by the Chicago Principles to guard against this possibility.
Faculty Forward, which represents over 500 academic employees including lecturers, teaching fellows, and Humanities Writing Program writing specialists, ratified a new five-year collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the University on November 13, 2024. The CBA seeks to attain more “equitable working conditions, protections around academic freedom, and an ongoing role in the shared governance of the university through meaningful collective bargaining,” the union wrote on their website.
Tristan Schweiger, an assistant instructional professor in the Master of Arts Program in the Humanities and the recording secretary of Faculty Forward, has been an instructor at the University since 2011.
Motivating the focus on protecting academic freedom for non-tenure-track faculty, Schweiger said, is the belief that outside of the classroom, speech that reflects the personal views of a faculty member should not be at risk of scrutiny by University administration, provided that the speech doesn’t infringe upon the faculty member’s ability to teach effectively.
Schweiger said there had been a feeling among union members that although academic freedom and freedom of expression were codified in University policy, there remained pressure from management to “be on your best behavior.” The language of preexisting policy implied that “lecturers… should at all times re -
member that they’re representing the University of Chicago,” Schweiger said. “And [the union] successfully got [the language] struck.”
The “best behavior” language in the previous CBA, active from 2021–24, read, “As members of a learned profession and employees of the University, Lecturers should remember that the public may judge their profession and the University by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the University.”
The passage in the current CBA reads, “The University shall not attempt to control the personal opinion of, nor the public expression of that opinion by, any Lecturer whether such activity occurs on or off campus. When speaking in their personal capacity, bargaining unit members have the right to the same freedom of expression, inquiry, and assembly as other individuals regarding political rights and privileges, without fear of institutional censorship, reprisal, or discipline.”
These stronger protections for faculty members come at a time when universities are beginning to recede from public perception, Lakier said.
“We already have seen at Columbia, for example, they’ve closed the gates— like, literally closed the gates—and made it difficult to enter the campus,” Lakier said. “That’s for lots of reasons, but I think it is part of a move by university administrators to try and insulate themselves from the distorting, problematic, difficult politics of the broader public sphere.”
This behavior, Lakier added, will happen more frequently as institutions continue to grapple with online public perceptions.
It remains to be seen whether these protections will act as an effective bulwark against a chilling effect that would otherwise curb inquiry and speech.
Schweiger and Jason Grunebaum, Faculty Forward co-chair for full-time faculty and an instructional professor in the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, affirm that lecturers, when acting in their official capacities,
must abide by University standards of professionalism.
However, Faculty Forward wanted the CBA to reflect that “when [lecturers] are acting as private citizens… we have First Amendment rights, and as union members, as labor[ers], we also have rights under the National Labor Relations Act and Illinois labor law, too,” Schweiger said.
Article VII of the CBA, the Equal Employment Opportunity and Non-Discrimination article, establishes the intention to convene a joint committee with University management and union members to form policy recommendations that address the problem of online harassment.
The impetus for the joint committee model was the complexity and novelty of this challenge, Schweiger noted. The union plans to advocate for fair policies that protect its members, students, and the University committee and that commit “to a very broad protection of speech and [of] academic freedom as well.”
As the threat of University insulation looms, non-tenure-track faculty obtain protections of their freedoms of expression, and the boundaries between professional and personal are pushed, broken, and rebuilt by the social media landscape, the University continues to use the Chicago Principles as its North Star.
“I think it is actually very important that universities allow there to be a vigorous and wide-ranging debate on campus, even among those who are articulating things that they think are untrue,” Lakier said.
“The University’s public position, for a long time, has been that it takes a maximalist view of speech rights,” Schweiger said. “Our main mission is to fight for our members, but our broader concerns are [about] the whole university community: that speech and debate are valued here, that speech that does not discriminate, that does not actively harm someone else, but that is the expression of someone’s beliefs should be broadly protected when it’s outside of the classroom.”
Protecting this speech in line with the Chicago Principles, whether off-campus or on X, will be “on the union’s radar,” Schweiger said.
Over 100 American institutions of higher education have adopted or endorsed the Chicago Principles.
By SONIA BRADLEY | News Reporter
As the University of Chicago community celebrates the 10th anniversary of the Report of the Committee on Freedom of Expression—commonly known as the Chicago Principles— the Maroon is taking a look at the impact that the Chicago Principles have had on college campuses across the country. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, 112 schools have created official policies of free speech modeled after the Chicago Principles since they were written.
In examining the national rate of adoption of the Chicago Principles, the overall rate has remained relatively constant, apart from 2018 to 2020, when the nation saw a steeper rate of adoption. This seems to be for a variety of reasons. Many schools in Florida adopted the Chicago Principles in part due to
Governor Ron DeSantis, who pressured institutions to adopt more rigorous free speech policies. This is one example of the ways in which political pressure has influenced institutions’ decisions to adopt the Chicago Principles.
Looking forward, many more universities may be adopting the Chicago Principles or similar sets of free speech principles because of a section of the End Woke Higher Education Act (H.R.3724). The act, which encourages higher education institutions to adopt sets of free speech guidelines based on the Chicago Principles, has passed in the House of Representatives and is likely to pass through the Republican-controlled Senate.
Claremont McKenna
One of the earliest institutions to
adopt the Principles was Claremont McKenna College, in May 2016. President Hiram Chodosh said in an interview with the Maroon that at the time, Claremont McKenna adopted the Principles because “first, our faculty, and second, our Board of Trustees viewed the Chicago Principles as completely consistent with our own principles and policies. Endorsing them both reinforced our own principles and allowed us to express support to external audiences.”
However, Claremont McKenna extends their philosophy past freedom of speech. “The freedom to speak up is foundational; however, we believe it is insufficient. We also believe in the value of engaging different viewpoints, not just the expression of one.… The commitment to viewpoint diversity as foundational to learning is a key element in our approach,” Chodosh said.
Claremont McKenna commits to
freedom of expression and inquiry through an initiative called “Open Academy,” which aims to facilitate constructive dialogue through workshops, dialogue dinners, and classes co-taught by instructors from different departments.
“We should always endeavor to understand why we disagree, to reconcile how we understand our disagreements, to mitigate the conflict that may follow, even to resolve them, when we can,” Chodosh said.
Vanderbilt
Vanderbilt University was another early adopter of the Principles, implementing them in August 2016. At Vanderbilt, the university seeks to instill principles of free expression early in students’ academic careers through an orientation program launched in August 2023 called “Dialogue Vanderbilt,” a program designed to encourage open dialogue within the Vanderbilt community. In an interview with the Maroon, Vanderbilt chancellor and former UChicago Provost Daniel Diermeier said, “We really want to make sure our students know [free expression] is a part of who we are. We have two things that are very important to us. One thing is a pledge that our students sign called the ‘Community Creed,’ which students wrote themselves.” According to the Vanderbilt Student Government website, “The Community Creed is a student-initiated statement of the values to which the Vanderbilt community aspires.”
“This year something we had for the first time was a discussion after students arrived on campus,” Diermeier said. In this discussion, Diermeier spoke with the freshman class and the editor of the Vanderbilt student newspaper about what free speech is and why it is important.
“[Free speech principles] are becoming part of the student culture now and a point of pride and distinction,” Diermeier said. Although Vanderbilt officially endorsed the Principles in 2016, its core practices have a longer history. “The Stone Report [Report of the Com-
“If I ask myself, ‘Is my classroom a free speech zone?’ The answer is no.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 14
mittee on Freedom of Expression] really was there to codify existing practice. It wasn’t there to do something new.”
Diermeier is a strong advocate of the Principles. “We firmly believe that you can only have a transformative education if students are really able to fully engage with ideas in a way that’s free from concerns of censorship or retribution,” Diermeier said. “These principles instantiate that so we have guidelines and a framework where we can make our decisions to make sure they align with our purpose.”
American University
American University (AU) initially adopted the Chicago Principles in 2015 and updated its free speech policies in 2022. Associate professor of government Thomas Merrill was a part of the revision group, headed by members of the AU Campus Life Department, that updated their university’s set of free speech guidelines in 2022. “When I started, I thought that the folks at campus life were gonna be like, ‘We have to protect these students, and they’re snowflakes, and we need trigger warnings,’ but it was
kind of the opposite,” Merrill told the Maroon. “In the dorms and clubs and things like that, they deal with a lot more speech controversies than people do in the classroom.”
While American University’s set of free speech guidelines mirrors the Chicago Principles, it is not a replica. “I’m a big fan of the Chicago Principles, but AU is a distinct community, and we needed something that people in our community could see themselves in and own,” Merrill said.
Following protests on AU’s campus around the Israel–Hamas war, the university took certain actions restrictive of free speech, such as prohibiting indoor protests. However, Merrill said, “When people protested, when they wanted to say that the university had got something wrong, they cited our statement. And that to me was the sign that we had gotten something right, that we had established a standard to which members of the community could look.”
As a professor, Merrill understands that free speech cannot always be unlimited. “The university has competing commitments,” Merrill said. “We’re
trying to create a culture based on the ethos of inquiry. But it is also true—and sometimes free-expression people forget this—that for us to do that, when I go into a classroom, I have to invite every student into the conversation.”
“If I ask myself, ‘Is my classroom a free speech zone?’ the answer is no. The reason is that I don’t allow people to call each other names; I’m sensitive about the fact that some topics are going to be difficult for some people to talk about in public… so as a teacher, it’s important to see this not just as a matter of rights, but as a matter of trying to create a framework for a particular type of culture,” Merrill said.
Although some universities officially endorsed sets of free speech principles modeled after the Chicago Principles close to a decade ago, many institutions have adopted them more recently due to pressures on administrations caused by campus protests last spring. Northwestern University is one of the most recent schools to adopt a set of free speech principles modeled after
the Chicago Principles, accomplished in August 2024. Northwestern’s Statement on Free Expression and Institutional Speech expresses that “all members of our community may choose to speak publicly on controversial topics and to identify themselves as a member of our community, consistent with our policies and terms of employment.”
Some schools’ free speech statements mirror the Chicago Principles but maintain significant differences. According to their statement on free speech, Brandeis University encourages open dialogue and sharing of opinions but is more restrictive of free speech than UChicago. Brandeis’s official statement on free speech and expression states, “The freedom to debate and discuss ideas does not mean that individuals may say whatever they wish, wherever they wish, or however they wish.”
This establishes a narrower acceptance of free speech than the Chicago Principles, which allow for free speech even if such speech is offensive or highly controversial. While Brandeis encourages open dialogue, it prioritizes fostering “a just and inclusive campus culture.”
Kalven also highlighted the current presidential administration’s attacks on higher education.
By ALEX PARKER | News Reporter
The Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression hosted a discussion on the topicality of the Kalven Report amid the Trump administration’s growing hostility toward universities on February 18. The event, titled “The Unfinished Business of the Kalven Report,” featured a conversation between Forum executive director Tony Banout and Jamie Kalven, founding Executive Director of the Invisible Institute and son of First Amendment scholar Harry Kalven Jr. (A.B. ’35, J.D. ’38), who chaired the faculty committee that drafted the Report.
The Kalven Report, published in 1967, argues for institutional neutrality wherein the University does not take a stance on political and social questions unless its core interests are threatened.
“The instrument of dissent and criticism is the individual faculty member or the individual student. The university is the home and sponsor of critics; it is not itself the critic,” the Report reads. “The neutrality of the university as an institution arises… out of respect for free inquiry and the obligation to cherish a diversity of viewpoints.”
The Report was written by an appointed UChicago faculty committee led by Law School professor Harry Kalven.
After Harry Kalven’s passing in 1974, his son Jamie Kalven completed his manuscript on the intellectual history of the First Amendment, absorbing Harry Kalven’s ideas on the First Amendment in the process. The manuscript was published in 1998 as a book titled A Worthy Tradition: Freedom of Speech in America. Central to the event was a discussion on Jamie Kalven’s recent op-ed in the Chicago Tribune, titled “Is it time for the University of Chicago to abandon cherished neutrality and join the fight?”
In the piece, Kalven argued that the Report has “hardened into institutional dogma, invoked again and again, in the view of its critics, not to ensure space for vigorous discussion about possible exceptions that would overcome the presumption against collective action but to shut such discussion down.”
For Kalven, such dogmatism will prevent the University from responding appropriately to the Trump administration. “It would be delusional not to recognize that [the Trump administration is] coming full force for higher education,” Kalven said at the event. “It
“There is a multi-pronged, sustained, fierce, heedless effort that is now building to enforce a censorship regime.”
would be beyond ironic at this point if the Kalven Report, given its commitment to sort of fearless, open discourse, provided ‘principled’ cover for people not to confront what threatens higher education at the moment.”
Under the Trump administration, the NIH reduced its indirect-cost rate, which is the percentage of funding that institutions can use to cover indirect costs associated with research. It is “vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead,” the official NIH statement reads.
Trump also signed an executive order prohibiting DEI initiatives for federally funded institutions. The order states that “it enforces long-standing federal statutes and faithfully advances the Constitution’s promise of colorblind
equality before the law.”
“There is a multi-pronged, sustained, fierce, heedless effort that is now building to enforce a censorship regime, basically to determine the parameters of permissible discourse,” Kalven said.
Kalven went on to argue the importance of the obligation clause in the Report, which states that “from time to time instances will arise in which the society, or segments of it, threatens the very mission of the University and its values of free inquiry. In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the University as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.”
“A paragraph of obligation seems to be what’s central in the Report, and it was something that people would have just passed over before and not seen this as the heart of it,” Kalven said.
Banout and Kalven also discussed
the role of tradition and the Kalven Report more broadly.
“I would make a distinction between sort of the dead hand of tradition… and a living tradition, which I take to be an argument about the content of what the tradition is,” Kalven said. “Argument is fundamental, both for continuously testing and refining the norm, but also for acculturating and socializing people into the tradition.”
Kalven questioned whether the Kalven Report and its principles on institutional neutrality truly represent a living tradition. “I think neutrality has been a really problematic term,” he said, suggesting that “institutional silence” may be a more appropriate term.
“By institutional silence you create space… for people to think their own thoughts, speak their own thoughts, [and] be robustly engaged,” Kalven said. “And so I’m not sure what you call that,
but ‘neutrality’ doesn’t feel right. It feels to me like a profound institutional commitment to creating the conditions for the most free and robust and uninhibited discourse about important matters.”
Banout ended the discussion by asking Kalven what universities across the country can do at the moment.
“I think it’s very much up for grabs,” Kalven said. “I don’t presume to have answers to all the specific questions that are going to confront university communities and university leadership. I think the thing that’s critically important right now is that we have to work together to achieve a degree of diagnostic clarity about what’s happening.”
“Part of what leadership means for [the] University and for voices within the University, for the Forum right now, is to speak out forcefully in order to embolden others and create space for others to speak,” Kalven concluded.
UChicago’s policy on institutional neutrality has not stopped the University from spending millions on federal lobbying, drawing both criticism and support from the University community.
By ELENA EISENSTADT and EVGENIA ANASTASAKOS | Grey City Editors
The University of Chicago spent over $200,000 on federal lobbying in 2024. Some community members believe this practice violates the University’s commitment to institutional neutrality, while others see it as necessary and consistent with this commitment.
In 2024, the federal government invested billions of dollars into higher education, allocating money to financial aid, student loans, and research. Higher education institutions lobby the federal government to compete for research funds and to influence legislation that affects their educational and corporate interests, such as immigration policies that affect foreign student visas.
“When you receive money from the government, there are strings attached. A lot of [lobbying] just has to do with pulling and hauling over what those strings are,” said John Mark Hansen, the Charles L. Hutchinson Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Political Science. Hansen has previously served in administrative leadership roles at UChicago, including as associate provost for research and education, dean
of the Division of the Social Sciences, and senior advisor to former University President Robert Zimmer.
Each year, the University receives hundreds of millions of dollars from federal programs and agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Science Foundation (NSF), Department of Energy (DOE), National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Office of Naval Research, Department of Justice, and Department of Education. The exact federal funding totals are not publicly available.
UChicago’s 2024 Lobbying Profile
The University spent $225,272 on lobbying in 2024, down from $300,281 the previous year. UChicago’s spending was lower than that of many peer institutions, including Brown, Columbia, Northwestern, and Stanford.
In 2024, the University lobbied on bills including the DETERRENT Act (H.R.5933), which requires institutions of higher education to disclose foreign gifts and contracts, and the DHS Restrictions on Confucius Institutes
and Chinese Entities of Concern Act (H.R.1516), which restricts federal funding to institutions of higher education that maintain relationships with Confucius Institutes, cultural institutions funded by the Chinese government. The University’s Office of Federal Relations also lobbied the Senate and House of Representatives for NSF funding and DOE Office of Science funding.
The NSF is among the latest targets of the Trump administration’s funding and staff cuts. Earlier this month, the Foundation paused its annual grant review process after an investigation led by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) identified over 3,400 NSF grants as “[advancing] neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda,” including 18 awarded to the University with a combined award amount of over $15 million.
Since 1998, the University has generally spent below $300,000 on lobbying annually. However, expenditures spiked in 2006, the year that the University became a co-manager of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, which is owned by the U.S. Department of Energy. Reports from that year list Argonne National Laboratory management, another federal lab managed by the University, as a specific lobbying issue and the Department of Energy as one of the agencies contacted.
In recent years, the University has repeatedly lobbied the federal government on immigration and tax reform. In 2017, the University lobbied in support of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. Additionally, they filed an amicus brief—a legal document filed by a non-party offering arguments to assist the court’s decision—that challenged the federal government’s plan to end the program. That same year, the University lobbied against a tax reform
proposal to treat graduate student tuition as taxable income, which was later dropped from the final Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
According to Hansen, evergreen University lobbying priorities include student visas, research funding, and federal financial aid and loan policies, but the amount spent on these advocacy issues fluctuates according to the federal government’s political priorities.
“Since the Reagan administration, there’s been this pattern of Republican administrations wanting to cut back on federal programs in a whole bunch of areas,” Hansen said. In 1981, the Reagan administration proposed budget cuts to research funding that drew harsh criticism from the scientific community and sparked an increase in University lobbying.
UChicago lobbies the federal government through the support of its Office of Federal Relations, as a member of mutual interest organizations, and by hiring consulting firms to represent its legislative priorities.
UChicago opened its Office of Federal Relations, located in Washington, D.C., in 2008. The establishment of a D.C. office reflected a nationwide increase in university lobbying efforts to block the proposed College Opportunity and Affordability Act, an amendment to the reauthorization of the Higher Education Opportunity Act that would have allowed the federal government to collect data on students’ post-graduation job market experiences and prospective students to compare colleges in terms of their returns.
The Office of Federal Relations “supports the work of the University by identifying opportunities to discuss issues
“When you receive money from the government, there are strings attached.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 17
of interest to the University with the White House, executive branch agencies, members of Congress, and other national opinion leaders and stakeholders,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Maroon. “The Office of Federal Relations also identifies sources of federal funding and helps raise the profile of successful faculty research and initiatives on a national level. The University’s federal relations team stays in touch with elected officials and their staff and shares University input on policy issues of importance to the University’s mission.”
The University’s advocacy issues include “science and innovation-related funding and legislation, University of Chicago Medical Center issues, urban-related research and community engagement, national laboratories funding and policy, and international education (Title VI) policy,” per the Office’s website.
UChicago also lobbies as a member of mutual interest organizations like the Association of American Universities (AAU) and the American Council on Education (ACE). These organizations advocate on behalf of universities based on mutual interests in shaping public policies. Institutions pay membership dues, which the AAU and ACE use to
fund their lobbying efforts.
The University, the AAU, and ACE were all parties in a lawsuit against the NIH over indirect funding cuts this month.
The AAU includes 71 public and private research universities. One of the organization’s key advocacy issues last year was pushing Congress to prioritize investment in scientific and medical research through the NSF and the NIH. Additionally, the AAU called for action to “secur[e] university research against foreign threats” and to protect university technology transfer by preserving the Bayh-Dole Act, which allows universities to keep intellectual property rights for inventions made with federal funding.
ACE’s university members number over 1,600. According to ACE’s 2025 legislative and regulatory agenda, this year, the organization will push for legislation that increases funding for student accessibility, protects “institutional autonomy on a national level,” promotes institutional transparency, and enhances innovation through academic research.
The AAU declined to comment, and ACE did not respond to a request for comment.
Since 2011, the University has outsourced some of its lobbying efforts to Cornerstone Government Affairs, a bi-
partisan consulting firm. Cornerstone represents an array of higher education institutions, from elite research universities to community colleges.
“Our group of professionals maintain strong ties with the federal authorizers and appropriators who oversee education policy and funding, and therefore are very well positioned to assist clients with their legislative and regulatory agendas,” Cornerstone’s website reads.
In 2024, UChicago hired four Cornerstone lobbyists, all of whom are former federal employees.
Neither Cornerstone nor any individual lobbyists responded to requests for comment.
Community members have criticized the University’s lobbying based on principles set forth in the Kalven Report, which argues for institutional neutrality in political matters.
In his 2011 Maroon op-ed “Lobbying for Consistency,” Michael McCown (A.B. ’14) argued that “not only does hiring lobbyists contradict the spirit of the Report, it contradicts the very letter. The University, according to the Kalven Report, ‘if it is to be true to its faith in intellectual inquiry, must embrace, be hospitable to, and encourage the widest
diversity of views within its own community…. It is not a club, it is not a trade association, it is not a lobby.’”
However, according to Hansen, University lobbying does not conflict with UChicago’s policy of institutional neutrality set forth in the Kalven Report. “The Kalven Report is quite clear that the University can and must take positions on matters as an institution [and] on matters that are inextricably related to its mission,” he said.
In 2017, the University lobbied in support of the DACA program. However, it did not support the 2010 Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) act, citing tenets from the Kalven Report.
For a 2017 Maroon article, a University spokesperson explained that “the DREAM Act encompasses issues that do not directly affect the University. However, in general the University strongly supports efforts to address this issue through legislation that protects the ability of DACA-eligible students to live in the United States and pursue their education and careers here.”
“[The University] is defending the interest in the prerogatives of the University in education and research and in the kind of treatment of University faculty and employees and students,” Hansen said.
“Does UChicago Have a Culture of Free Speech?”
The Maroon’s Nicole Ochoa conducted interviews with non-tenure-track faculty and student interns from the Department of Physics and the Pozen Center.
Featuring: Nicole Ochoa
Edited by: William Kimani
The University of Chicago has long been regarded as a bastion of free expression, and outsiders associate the school with a commitment to institutional neutrality and open discourse. But how well does this commitment
hold up in practice? Do members of the institution consider those principles important in their duties at the University?
The Maroon ’s Nicole Ochoa conducted interviews with non-tenure-track faculty and student interns from the Department of Physics and Pozen Family Center for Human Rights to provide a look into how free expression functions
within the University for three of its members.
The views expressed are the interviewees’ own.
Listen at chicagomaroon.com.
The University has “to take a side on stuff when it comes to education and medicine,” Jill Glick said.
By VEDIKA BARADWAJ and LEAH TABAKH | Grey City Reporters
Beyond its academic intensity and trademark quirkiness, the University of Chicago stands out for its unwavering commitment to freedom of expression. The Chicago Principles, along with the Kalven Report, are two documents that define UChicago’s unwavering commitment to free expression. The Chicago Principles describe the University’s commitment to free speech, and the Kalven Report asserts the importance of institutional neutrality.
The Kalven Report has previously been applied in discourse on various issues ranging from divestment to global conflicts. Since March 2024, Jill Glick, a pediatrician at UChicago Medicine and founder of the University of Chicago Medicine Child Advocacy and Protective Services Program, has been pushing the University to take a stance against legislation targeting routine practice in child abuse medicine. The case raises concerns about institutional neutrality interfering with medical practice.
The University denied Glick support in standing against the Protecting Innocent Families Act, a piece of legislation that would protect the right of families of child abuse victims to know when their child is being examined by a medical professional contracted by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS). With the introduction of this amendment, families would need to be informed when a pediatrician is involved in a Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) investigation. The bill would also empower these families to seek a second medical opinion on whether the child suffered abuse or neglect. According to the bill, these measures ultimately aim to reduce the overreporting of abuse or neglect caused by hasty misdiagnoses.
According to Glick, the bill, which was drafted by defense attorneys, seeks
to limit the power of pediatricians in these cases. “Defense attorneys are not neutral. Defense attorneys are trying to defend their defendants, and… their goal is to ensure due process,” Glick said. Glick implied that defense attorneys have a vested interest in preventing pediatricians—neutral scientific experts—from testifying in child abuse cases, which is reflected in the bill.
However, Glick said the amendment would also impact how pediatricians practice medicine. “[The amendment] told us specifically how and what we have to say to our patients when we evaluate children and families,” she said.
Glick argues that when politicians or legislators start controlling how medicine is practiced, the University must step in. “Our mission is to provide medicine, and if, in fact, there is legislation that is challenging best practice, we need to stand up, and the University needs to stand up,” she said. “[The Kalven Report], in my opinion, is a cloak of scholarly cowardice.”
On March 13, 2024, Glick asked UChicago to submit a witness slip representing the University. A witness slip is an individual or community’s response to a bill. The individual or community submits a response to the Illinois General Assembly before it is considered by a House or Senate committee, which will indicate an offer to testify against the legislation. According to Glick, the University denied her request, citing the tenets set forward in the Kalven Report. Glick saw that other hospitals, such as Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, had put in witness slips. She “felt very alone and very isolated and betrayed” and believed that her work was necessary and that the bill would do irreparable harm to both her work and her patients’ well-being.
“The University did not take an offi-
cial position on the bill that you mention. Consistent with the ideas articulated in the Kalven Report, individual faculty members are free to engage in advocacy on this and other issues if they choose,” a University spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Maroon.
Glick found the goal of institutional neutrality valuable, especially in research and the classroom. However, she thought the University’s prioritization of institutional neutrality became problematic when it came to the commitments of medical professionals.
“The whole purpose of the University of Chicago… is the idea that we’re supposed to create new knowledge to improve humanity in all the different facets,” she said.
“Our commitment is to the well-being of our patients. Therefore, if there’s something that impedes our ability, it is our responsibility as physicians to advocate for our patient.”
Glick did not think that the Kalven Report itself is problematic. Instead, she thought that the problems come from the “opacity” of the University’s application of the Kalven Report and the fact that the Kalven Report has not been updated since its creation in 1967. Glick underscored that the Kalven Report needed to clarify its requirements of the University so that its applications could be more strictly delineated.
“When something legislatively comes up that’s anti-medicine, the University has to have an open forum and discuss Kalven’s application,” Glick said. She believed that this discussion should have happened when she went to the University asking for help in her advocacy against the Protecting Innocent Families Act.
Although the original bill did not pass, it has reappeared in the House as HB3169, an amendment to the Abused and Neglected Child Reporting Act. Glick is now working to get the University to oppose this bill.
As Glick’s experience highlights, the
applications of the Kalven Report have not changed over time. Jamie Kalven, a writer and human rights activist championing his father Harry Kalven Jr.’s treatise on free speech, believed this interpretation needs an overhaul. Specifically, Kalven believed the application should include a more structured and documented deliberation process.
“The committee was trusting to the future the task of building such a deliberative process. I think what happened in fact is that very quickly that presumption against public statements hardened into creed,” Kalven said, pointing to Glick’s experience as evidence.
Kalven interpreted the spirit of the Kalven Report as intending “to create optimal conditions for free and robust exchange of ideas within the university and optimal conditions for individuals within the university community to participate in political discourse more generally.”
According to Kalven, the document was created as a “point of departure” for the community to grapple with political issues. While it sets in place the presumption that the University will not take a position on a public issue, Kalven thinks that rebuttals and exemptions could be made to that assumption.
The Kalven Report, he believes, is only the precursor to deepening knowledge of the free speech principle with subsequent application and interpretation. He compared it to common legal development, where after each case, “there’s a deepening understanding, a deepening of knowledge of the principle as it is tested by concrete situations. In a way, it’s a dialogue between the principle and different fact situations—a process by which experience and knowledge accumulate.”
According to Kalven, implementing the Kalven Report as an anchor for the creation of knowledge requires two things: transparent documentation and CONTINUED ON PG. 20
“[I]f, in fact, there is legislation that is challenging best practice… the University needs to stand up.”
CONTINUED FROM PG. 19
community involvement.
“There’s no written record of decisions made under the Kalven Report, you know. I’m quite sure drafters did not quite anticipate that application of their recommendations would be a matter of administrators voting up or down.… Think of how interesting it would be now if there was a rich history going back half a century of different deliberations that were documented,” he said.
Kalven said that in the absence of such documentation, those within the University who enforce the Kalven Report are under no burden to give a reasoned explanation for why they arrived at the conclusion they did. “So what my father, I think, intended as an open invitation to have difficult conversations has
often been deployed as a shield against having those conversations.”
Ultimately, Kalven believed that the University needs to be “socialized” into such a deliberative process. He believed that the more crucial concern in Glick’s case was not whether submitting the witness slip was the right or wrong decision, but rather why there hadn’t been a deliberative process with the University in making that decision.
Glick believed that the time had come for the University to step into politics. She felt this move was particularly important after the Trump administration froze all meetings, travel, and communications from the National Institute of Health (NIH) and sent a directive to cut NIH funding of the University’s indirect research costs.
“We have to take a side on stuff when it comes to education and medicine, and we need to know how to have consensus amongst ourselves. Not everybody’s going to agree with everything, but I do think in certain circumstances, like abortion or withholding vaccinations, we need to come together,” Glick said.
Regarding the NIH’s cost cuts and the University’s lawsuit filed against the agency, Kalven highlighted one particular section of the Kalven Report that details the University’s responsibilities under exceptional circumstances that “threaten the very mission of the university and its values of free inquiry…. When people within the University—faculty, students, researchers—are subjected to that kind of attack, is their rigorous work transformed into a political issue
that the University doesn’t address? Or does the University have an obligation to defend them?”
The Kalven Report states: “In such a crisis, it becomes the obligation of the university as an institution to oppose such measures and actively to defend its interests and its values.” The use of the word “obligation” is particularly significant here. “The president acknowledged an ‘obligation’ to resist the NIH cuts. I commend him for doing so,” Kalven said. The present moment calls for a “return to the document and [to] really think hard about what its implications are,” he concluded. Glick, too, hoped the Kalven Report could be reevaluated and updated for the modern day. In the current political climate it seems dangerous to “keep our heads in the sand,” she said.
Despite its institutional commitment to freedom of expression and inquiry, which relies on access to information, the University of Chicago has long operated under a shroud of secrecy relative to its peers.
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
“The University of Chicago has hidden treasures, in secret kept, in silence sealed.” So (almost) wrote Charlotte Brontë in Jane Eyre
Despite its institutional commitment to freedom of expression and inquiry, which rely on access to information, the University of Chicago has long operated under a shroud of secrecy relative to its peers. The University’s failure to disclose organizational actions, admissions data, financial information, and policing records to students renders open and honest discourse impossible.
The University must work toward improved accessibility, transparency, and accountability or risk violating the very principles it holds so dear.
Just last month, the University sued the National Institutes of Health (NIH), joining 12 peer institutions in pushing
back against an NIH memo that threatened university research funding. However, if you are a student, you might never have heard of the lawsuit. University President Paul Alivisatos explained the University’s rationale for suing only to faculty.
Though the University has sent several communications to faculty concerning the effects of Trump administration policies on the University, none have been sent to students. This lack of transparency is particularly striking given that the current presidential administration has clearly and repeatedly demonstrated its disdain for institutions of higher education.
That gap in communications reflects the University’s broader selectivity about information disclosure.
While UChicago’s class profiles in-
clude the number of applicants, accepted students, and enrolled students each year, as well as distribution by region and standardized test data, there exists no enrollment information broken down by race, socioeconomic background, or gender. By contrast, institutions such as Brown, Harvard, and Stanford release detailed information about race, ethnicity, and gender breakdowns of their admitted classes.
Furthermore, the University only began completing the Common Data Set in 2021, an annual survey jointly administered by the College Board, U.S. News & World Report, and educational services company Peterson’s Guides to “improve the quality and accuracy of information provided to all involved in a student’s transition to higher education.” However, the University still does not provide information on the number of waitlisted and enrolled students or on early deci-
sion numbers—information that peer institutions publish.
Without transparency on how UChicago crafts its classes, members of the University community can critically assess neither the nature of the student body nor the extent to which the University is fostering a diverse academic community.
The University is also notably opaque about its financial operations, providing no publicly available information on its investment holdings; proxy voting records; or environmental, social, and governance (ESG) performance data—a set of standards used to measure an institution’s social and environmental impact. A 2023 Amnesty International scorecard on university endowments and human rights rated UChicago zero out of 40, the lowest score among all rated schools, including a zero out of nine
discussed at all—are invitation-only. Students aren’t on the guest list.
CONTINUED FROM PG. 20
in the “Disclosure and Transparency” category.
By contrast, peer institutions like those in the University of California system disclose their investments, voting records, and ESG data to the public. Columbia University even has an Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing, which includes student members.
UChicago’s $18 billion in assets under management, as reported in 2022, do not represent mere financial decisions; they are a form of speech, conveying implicit endorsements from the University. Even if one is to argue that investments do not represent institutional position-taking, choosing to hide investments certainly does.
Students, who effectively act as investors through their tuition and time, de -
serve to know how their money is being allocated. Yet, budget town halls—one of the few venues where University finances are discussed at all—are invitation-only. Students are not on the guest list.
UChicago’s continued pattern of limited disclosure is especially concerning when it comes to student and community safety.
The University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) serves a public function but is legally a private police force. Therefore, it is not required to meet the same standards of public accountability as the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
UCPD’s jurisdiction currently extends from 37th Street to 64th Street and from Cottage Grove Avenue to Lake Michigan. Of the 65,000 residents who live in the area that officers patrol, the “vast majority” are not University affiliated, according to the South Side Weekly
UCPD officers can search, ticket, arrest, and detain anyone within that sixsquare-mile area. In the past, detained students were held in CPD holding cells while UCPD processed charges.
While CPD is required by Illinois law to release all arrest records publicly, UCPD—Chicago’s largest private police force—has cast a veil of secrecy over their arrest records. Even arrests that occurred off campus are released only upon request and at the University’s discretion.
UCPD is also generally not subject to requests under the Freedom of Information Act, which allows press and the public to access police records. No such process exists by which reporters and members of the public can access UCPD officers’ body camera footage or tactical response reports. It is a black box within a university draped in gray.
We acknowledge, of course, that there is a line between transparency and privacy. The University would rightfully assert its responsibility to maintain privacy in its administrative and financial matters. This, however, is not about disclosing confidential information but rather about disclosing information that is the business of all parties to the University community—students included. This lack of transparency finds increased relevance with facts and freedom of expression under siege by many in positions of power. But the underlying problems are not new and have already resulted in a University rendered opaque and a community left too long in the dark.
— Celeste Alcalay, Anika Krishnaswamy, Zachary Leiter, Eva McCord, Naina Purushothaman, Anushree Vashist
In honor of Black History Month, Grey City examined the Maroon archives to trace the history of dormitory segregation and desegregation at UChicago.
By LEAH TABAKH | Grey City Reporter
Carter G. Woodson (A.M. 1908), was a historian, author, and educator whose commitment to the study of Black history led to the creation of Black History Month. After completing his undergraduate degree in literature from Berea College in Kentucky, Woodson obtained his master’s degree from UChicago in 1908. He then became the second Black American to get a Ph.D. from Harvard, second only to W.E.B. Du Bois.
In 1926, Woodson introduced Negro History Week, selecting the second week of February to coincide with the birthdays of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. While Negro History Week was never on the national calendar, his efforts laid the foundation for what is now recognized as Black History Month.
In honor of Black History Month, Grey City examined the Maroon ar -
chives to trace the history of dormitory segregation and desegregation at UChicago. The story of dormitory desegregation is an early example of students and faculty challenging the University to confront its institutional barriers and push it toward greater inclusivity.
Georgiana Rose Simpson, Early Struggles with Housing Segregation
Georgiana Rose Simpson was the first Black woman to graduate from an American university with a Ph.D. in
1921.
In 1911, Simpson received a Bachelor of Arts in German at UChicago. She then received her master’s degree, also at UChicago, in 1920. Her master’s thesis examined an early Middle High German poem. Simpson completed her dissertation, “Herder’s Conception of ‘Das Volk’,” and received her Ph.D. in German on June 14, 1921, at age 55. Simpson experienced racial prejudice while living in UChicago dormi -
CONTINUED ON PG. 22
Before the [1962] article, the University had never publicly acknowledged its discriminatory housing policies.
CONTINUED FROM PG 21
tories. When Simpson moved into a majority-white dormitory, her white neighbors protested. At first, Sophonisba Breckinridge, the residence hall head, advocated for Simpson. But after five white women left the residence hall, Breckinridge asked Simpson to leave the dormitory. Simpson refused, and Breckinridge rescinded the request. However, University President Harry Judson ultimately intervened, forcing Simpson to vacate. As a result, Simpson took most of her courses during the summer to avoid further conflict.
After Simpson died in 1944, Breckinridge published Simpson’s obituary
The University of Chicago Magazine. Breckinridge wrote that Simpson’s death left her with “a sense of real personal loss” and that “during the years since the summer of 1907, when I first became acquainted with her, I have cherished the highest respect and a warm and affectionate regard for her.”
In 2017, the Monumental Women Project honored Simpson by commissioning a bust of her in the Reynolds Club. This bust is now standing directly across from a sculpture of President Judson.
1962–1963: University Admits to Housing Segregation, Protests and
On January 17, 1962, the Maroon published the news that “UC officials admitted yesterday that Negroes are barred from living in several buildings owned by the University.”
Before the article, the University had never publicly acknowledged its discriminatory housing policies. However, as Simpson’s experience illustrates, segregation in student housing had been an ongoing issue for decades.
According to the same article, “charges of UC segregation were first presented by a group representing Student Government and UC’s chapter of
CONTINUED ON PG. 23
First page of the Maroon published on January 17, 1962. The first article reports that the University administration had admitted to discrimination in housing. the maroon archives .
CONTINUED FROM PG 22
the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The group sponsored test cases in which Negro and white students applied for apartments in University-owned buildings. In each of the six cases, Negro students were refused apartments, while white applicants were offered apartments.”
The results of these test cases pro -
vided undeniable evidence of racial discrimination in University housing policies. Following the article, protests surged across campus, culminating in the University’s first sit-in protest. On January 23, 1962, roughly 30 students participated in an all-night sit-in outside former University President George Wells Beadle’s office in the Administration Building to demand an end to racial
First page of the Maroon published on July 19, 1963. The second article on the page confirms the end of segregation in University-owned housing. the maroon archives .
discrimination in housing. Bernie Sanders (A.B. ’64) and Bruce Rappaport (A.B. ’64) led the sit-in as leaders of UChicago’s CORE chapter.
The Maroon continued to document the mounting tensions between students and the administration as activists pressed for immediate desegregation in the early 1960s. On July 19, 1963, the Maroon reported that the
University had officially ended housing segregation. The article quoted Beadle’s statement on the ending of housing segregation: “There are currently no racial restrictions in any University-owned buildings.”
The struggles and triumphs of Black students, scholars, and activists have shaped UChicago’s institutional history.
In light of the Trump administration’s new executive orders, Rhodes Scholar Francesco Rahe explores trans identity at UChicago and underscores the importance of gender’s role in education.
By FRANCESCO RAHE
My name is Francesco Rahe. I am a short, bespectacled Catholic man fond of wearing quarter-zips. I learn languages in my spare time, recite poetry for fun, and proudly hold the unofficial position of “Shakespeare reviewer” for the Maroon ’s Arts section. Most people at UChicago probably know me as a recent recipient of the Rhodes Scholarship. Fewer know that I am trans.
When UChicago News published the article on my scholarship selection, I asked them not to mention this last personal detail. It is not that I am ashamed of my identity; I simply wish to not be defined by it. To be trans right now is to regrettably serve as a projector screen for the often-contradictory opinions and expectations of others. Having been called an “abomination,” “perversion,” and (to cite Representative Nancy Mace’s favorite) “tranny” in the past, I prefer to be just seen as human. UChicago News respected my wishes, but I fear the hopes underlying my request were ultimately futile. The days when trans and gender-nonconforming people could work out their identities in peace are now a fleeting memory.
Those not in the trans community may be unaware that, as of February 26, 2025, numerous executive orders have been unleashed by President Donald Trump specifically targeting the trans community. According to the Trans Legislation Tracker,
more than 600 anti-trans bills have been proposed nationwide this year. These bills impact everything from pronoun usage at work to medical transition for adults, and we are only a month into the new administration.
As a pacifist and certified klutz, I will probably never join the U.S. military. Yet the executive order that worries me the most is “Prioritizing Military Excellence and Readiness” (i.e., the trans military ban). In the past, arguments about shutting trans people out of the military have rested on the premise that our medical treatment is expensive or that we are too mentally ill to serve. These claims, while spurious, at least attempt to make a genuine case—and therefore can be argued against.
Trump’s order, however, makes its argument on moral grounds. As it states, “adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life. A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”
Trump is redefining transness not as an inborn characteristic, but as an action. He is claiming that we have about as much right to call ourselves a demographic group (and therefore be entitled to workplace protections and the like) as thieves do. By being trans,
according to Trump, I am effectively lying. I and my entire community are dishonorable, dishonest, undisciplined, prideful, and selfish. We are deviants at best, subhuman at worst. Our visible presence in society is an aberration rather than an expression of the diversity of the human experience.
All this is bad—but why should the University of Chicago community care?
Setting aside the existence of trans students who may need support right now, the Trump administration has already made moves which might put the University of Chicago in the crosshairs of its anti-trans policies. On the evening of January 27, the White House issued a memo which sent a wave of panic through the UChicago community. This memo ordered a temporary freeze of the disbursement of federal funds to areas potentially implicated by prior executive orders. Chief among these implicated areas was the so-called ideology of “transgenderism.”
Though the funding freeze has since been halted by a judge, the fear it caused remains. Many of UChicago’s researchers, particularly those in the sciences, depend on federal funding to continue operations. It may be tempting for the faculty and administration of our school, fearful that these valuable funds might be revoked, to, as New York Times columnist Masha Gessen put it, “obey in advance.” Many organizations nationwide are already doing so.
Such premature obedience might include canceling classes on LGBTQ+ topics, revoking RSO status for affinity groups, denying grants to researchers working on topics related to gender, and even instituting a bathroom ban if the Trump administration presses the issue. The last restriction would be especially damaging for trans students, as it could run the risk of outing or even physically endangering those who have already medically transitioned. Furthermore, it is no farfetched possibility. The Trump administration has already launched a Title IX investigation on a Denver school district for having a multi-occupancy gender-neutral bathroom; Ohio, meanwhile, has passed a bathroom ban affecting institutions such as Kenyon College.
Trans people are a tiny subset of the total U.S. population—about 1.3 percent in 2024, according to a recent Gallup survey. It might seem foolish to risk the financial security of the majority of UChicago’s population for the sake of its few trans students and staff. However, to submit to Trump’s ideological purity test would imperil the very premises of free thought and inquiry which define the University of Chicago.
UChicago’s motto is “crescat scientia; vita excolatur.” In English: “Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched.” This principle—that knowledge ought to be pursued—is based on the assumption that knowl-
edge is good. That we should be unafraid of whatever we might discover.
To study the human experience in full also requires acknowledging the existence of trans people. Conservatives who would claim that we floated into existence some 50 years ago have no answer to the countless examples throughout history of people who have expressed a sustained discordance between their biological sex and their gender identity. From the millennia-old existence of the hijra of India to that of the kathoey of Thailand, from Antonio de Erauso in the 17th century to James Barry in the 18th, from Albert Cashier in the 19th century to Lou Sullivan in the 20th, we have always been here. We always will be.
Knowledge can be perilous. Self-knowledge particularly so. While the existence of trans people on its own might be unnerving, the idea that one could oneself be trans is, to many individuals, terrifying. Yet from time immemorial, self-knowledge has occupied a central role in human flourishing. In ancient Greece, where Western philosophy first dawned, the Delphic oracle commanded her adherents to “know thyself.” Plato famously picked up this maxim in the Phaedrus. When I was a first-year, a close friend of mine told me he thought he might be a trans woman. Sensitive and gentle, he often felt awkward in male spaces. Several years later, how-
CONTINUED ON PG. 25
ever, he told me he’d realized this wasn’t the case. He might not have conformed to what society always expected of a man, but he considered himself a man nonetheless.
My friend had the courage to take a good, hard look at himself, at who he was and at what he wanted out of his life. When the truth he thought he’d discovered ended up, for him, being incorrect, he was unafraid to admit it. He proved himself a true philosopher, the epitome of the best of UChicago’s culture right now. But the questions he asked of himself are ones which the Trump administration aims to eliminate from consideration altogether.
The decision of Trump and his supporters to close their eyes and hide from the existence of trans people seems to me in the end rather pitiable. Like a little boy afraid of a storm, Trump would prefer to creep under the covers rather than gaze at the glorious lightning.
To allude again to my friend Plato, he prefers the shadows in the cave to the blinding sun outside. Trump is free to make these decisions in his private life… but to impose that choice upon a university, a place defined by its dedication to the fearless pursuit of knowledge, is to make a mockery of the institution.
To that end, as an earnest lover of UChicago, as a student immensely grateful for the education I have received here, I ask that the UChicago community not accede to Trump’s demands. If a professor wishes to study trans history, let them do so. If a student wishes to be called by a name other than their legal one, call them by it. A world where some avenues of knowledge are dismissed outright, where private lives are policed, and where individuals perceived as deviating from gender norms, such as the Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, are vilified, is not a world anyone should have to live in.
But that is the world—and the university—the Trump admin-
istration is currently working to create.
I understand that for those on the fence about pushing back against the Trump administration, the complex nuances of trans issues may appear intimidating. In the past, earnest allies of trans people have attempted to defend our rights by fiercely shutting down any discussions perceived as threatening. Often, in cases such as the premature canceling of “I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter” (since renamed “Helicopter Story”) in 2020, this involved the silencing of trans people themselves. While well-intentioned, such quelling of conversation on the left has only fueled the right’s vicious narrative of trans people as predatory and dangerous. Accepting complexity does not have to entail accepting conservative narratives. To take one high profile example, the vast majority of children who medically transition are happy with their treatment. However, a very small percentage of
them face regret. These people deserve compassion. It is not unreasonable for Americans to want trans children to receive thoughtful, rather than rushed or haphazard, care. Many trans people agree, and in fact the foremost expert on detransitioning is himself a trans man.
Like all human issues, trans issues are nuanced—but none of Trump’s executive orders recognize those nuances. Concerns about complexity should daunt no one from having the courage to resist the Trump administration’s overreach of power.
Some three centuries ago, our founding fathers gave us a great gift—a nation which, while flawed, strove to be free. Benjamin Franklin challenged his compatriots at the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
I challenge my readers now: a university, if you can keep it.
At a time when civil liberties are threatened, let us keep both our university and our republic. Let us keep them through kind-
ness to our fellow peers, many of whom—and not only those in the trans community—are now afraid. Let us keep them through openness to others, a willingness to always look hard questions in the face and to do our best to thoughtfully answer them. Let us keep them, above all, through courage, that great virtue of the scholar and of the citizen.
For our University community to suffer briefly in battle is far preferable to it facing the slow, insidious rot of submission to political ends. Consequently, I ask that the University community strive to stay as it is, brave and free. To remain a place which can provide to the first-years of the future the gifts it has given to me. I am asking no more and no less than for it to stick to its motto: to let knowledge grow from more to more, and so be human life enriched.
Francesco Rahe is a fourthyear in the College.
The simple board game has become my bridge between academics and self-care.
By KACI SZIRAKI
As midterms crept up and the winter grew colder, it would have been easy to hole up indoors and make everything about studying. Just last week, I had confined myself to a small cubicle on the fourth floor of Regenstein Library; all I thought about was my next assignments, my upcoming exams, and the essays I had yet to write. The mounting academic pressure (combined with the single-digit temperatures) had started to take their toll.
Just as I was about ready to collapse, my phone buzzed with a message from a friend: “Catan tonight?” It was a simple request. All she wanted was for us to play a board game together. In the wake of the busy winter quarter, however, even that small reassurance helped me get out of my head. It served as a reminder that among the chaos of deadlines and responsibilities, it’s important to leave room for a little bit of fun.
Catan is a board game similar to Risk. The goal is to build settlements, barter with oth -
ers, and earn “victory points” via world domination. It’s one of those games that are easy to pick up but difficult to explain. To play, you find a small group of people to set up its hexagon-shaped board. From there you escape into a world of trading, building, and resource-gaining until you conquer the entire map—or fail trying.
Playing encourages social interaction and communication, which tends to dwindle as the pressure of deadlines and exams grows. With the stress
of academic pressure creeping in, UChicago’s winter term is steadily becoming tougher to get through. Between juggling the peak of Chicago’s winter weather and keeping your foot on the academic gas pedal, these conditions make it hard to take a step back and focus on your own mental well-being. Even the University recognizes the effects that winter quarter can have on students. Articles such as “Are You More Likely to Be SAD This Winter?,” “Winter Weather Got You Down?,” and “Seasonal affective
disorder: How to spot and treat the ‘winter blues’” all cover the different ways cold weather and a deficit of sunlight can negatively impact mood, energy, and sleep—and I can personally attest, as someone who grew up in Michigan, that cold winters coupled with seasonal blues are no joke. That’s why taking a break, even for something as simple as a board game, is a necessity to recharge, reconnect, and bring back the balance between time spent for academics and time spent for yourself.
At least once a week, I get together with a few friends to play Catan. At first, our group was small, but as winter quar -
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ter progressed, we steadily grew in size. Now, Catan is a much-needed reprieve from our busy schedules. Moreover, it gives us something to look forward to.
After securing one of the communal Catan sets from the Woodlawn common areas, we migrate to the room of the person hosting the games for the week. Trying to fit five or more college students into such a tiny space can sometimes prove to be more challenging than playing the game itself, but by the time we’re immersed in the world of Catan, the shoulder-to-shoulder squeeze feels far less important
than the quest for world domination playing out right before our eyes. With a few snacks we scrounged up from the depths of our closets, and our voices drawing each other out as we barter, build, and conquer, every night of Catan becomes a night to remember.
Even beyond Catan, board games in general are a great way to step out of one’s shell. While it’s easy to go from Reg to room, doomscrolling the internet after a hard day of studying, finding a group of people to meet with—whether that be through checking the communal study rooms, house commons, or even browsing Sidechat to see if anyone is available—can turn
By DANIEL LIN
On the first snowy night of the season, three of my friends and I strolled to a friend’s apartment nearby to pick up some food. With three large, empty Tupperware containers in hand, we stood outside the building, taking in the pillow-white snowfall as we waited to be let in. Suddenly, a car screeched to a stop at the middle of an intersection, and several darkly clad figures tore toward us. That night, we experienced an armed robbery.
My story isn’t a unique one. Everyone I know at this school has either experienced or knows someone who has experienced some form of crime. In February alone, there were six reported armed robberies, two reports of property damage, and four reports of assault. Despite the presence of
crime, I think the University generally handles student safety well. UChicago has one of the largest private police forces in the country, and in my case, the main reason the muggers left was because a campus security car drove by. Administration was supportive afterward, as well: my professors offered me extensions, my RAs offered resources, and the Emergency Assistance Programs reimbursed me for my lost possessions. This is not to say that the University’s Department of Safety and Security is perfect—there are definitely improvements that can be made to its Via system and campus shuttles. However, the department’s resources still provide a significant net benefit to students. After all, UChicago is still not among the 20 “most dangerous college campuses” in the U.S., as low a bar as that may be.
No matter how effective the Department of Safety and Security is, there will always be some form of crime in the area; my friends and I were outside for about 10 minutes, yet we still got mugged. It’s impossible for the University to constantly monitor every single part of campus and the surrounding area. Although the University can definitely make efforts to mitigate crime, the city and local governments must also play their parts. Specifically, local governments can improve in their crime response through responsive and preventative measures.
Responsive measures mainly refer to how the police plan to respond when crime happens, and presently, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is not responsive enough. After speaking with the police on the night of the robbery, it wasn’t
a brief social gathering into a consistent experience, adding a little spark to a busy calendar. We don’t have to live up to our epithet.
Whether it be Catan , Monopoly, or Clue, board games are great ways to build a community; taking a moment to slow down and relax from the winter quarter rush can go a long way. So, the next time you find yourself trapped in a studying nightmare, round up a few people and the world of a game to immerse yourself in. You might just find that it’s exactly what you need to keep going.
Kaci Sziraki is a first-year in the College.
until nearly two months later that CPD reached out to me. When they called, I had frankly forgotten that I gave them my contact information, and they asked if I knew of any updates. I ultimately told them that they could drop the case. I was surprised it took two months for me to be contacted, but given
CPD’s record staffing shortages in recent years, it makes sense. The sheer lack of manpower has led to slower response times and numerous calls for help without immediate response. In order to effectively reduce crime rates, the city must be able to properly respond to
crimes, which starts with addressing the staffing shortage.
Although responsive measures help once a crime has been committed, preventative measures are necessary to deter people from committing crime in the first place. The people who mugged me and my friends looked roughly our age, possibly even younger. This follows the trend seen in Chicago of more youth committing crimes. The
city must develop plans to address poverty and education issues to reduce youth crime.
One of the most effective ways of decreasing crime rates is increasing educational opportunities, specifically in vulnerable communities.
During the pandemic when schools were shut down, more students dropped out of high school. As a result, youth aged 17 and under were responsible for a significant portion of
crimes, accounting for 8 percent of homicide arrests, 9 percent of shootings, 32 percent of robberies, and 49 percent of carjackings. Despite this correlation between education and reduced crime, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) districts experience underfunding of $1 billion, according to the state’s funding formula, and are running on a budget deficit of $505 million this academic year.
As more low-income stu -
dents are leaving CPS, it becomes imperative for the city to invest in education. Investing in education yields both shortterm benefits, such as reduced crime, and long-term advantages that extend well into the future. Education directly leads to higher lifetime and median earnings. As education leads to higher earnings over time, individuals become less likely to commit crimes.
The story of encountering
crime is one that far too many at UChicago can relate to. As both the University and the City of Chicago work to address these issues, I hope for a future where these stories are no longer so universal and where every member of this community can move through Hyde Park safely.
Daniel Lin is a first-year in the College.
Baseball continued their hot start, winning both games of a doubleheader against Franklin (Ind.) in a high-scoring fashion. They are now 8–2 for the season.
Men’s Basketball won their highly anticipated encounter with No. 13 Wash U (Mo.) 76–68, keeping their Division III National Basketball Championship hopes alive with an 18–7 record.
Women’s Basketball swept Wash U (Mo.) with a 65–55 win. They move to 15–10.
Lacrosse bounced back from their first loss of the season, winning two straight games against Kalamazoo (Mich.) and Kenyon (Ohio) before falling to No. 23 Denison (Ohio). They are now 3–2.
Softball suffered four narrow losses in their fixture-heavy start to the season at the NFCA Leadoff Classic, just falling short to No. 5 Belhaven (Miss.), Piedmont (Ga.), UW-Eau Claire (Wis.), and LeTourneau (Texas). However, the team rebounded with a 9–6 win against Stevens (N.J.), followed by a 5–3 win against Alma (Mich.). They are now 2–4.
Swimming and Diving tied for first overall out of 13 teams at the NCAA DIII Diving Regionals this weekend, with the men placing seventh out of thirteen and the women placing first out of seven. This win follows a successful showing at the Midwest Invitational last weekend, with the men and women both placing first out of four teams.
Men’s Tennis earned a hard-fought 4–3 win against No. 14 Johns Hopkins (Md.), following that up with a 7–0 win against No. 27 Washington and Lee (Va.). They are now 10–1.
Women’s Tennis remain dominant, beating No. 18 Sewanee (Tenn.) 7–0 and No. 5 Emory (Ga.) 5–2 to reach the final of the 2025 ITA Indoor National Championships, where they beat No. 2 Claremont-Mudd-Scripps 4–1, claiming the championship. They are now 9–1.
Track and Field continue a strong season, with the men’s team placing first out of seven, and the women’s team placing second out of seven at the UAA Indoor Championships this weekend. This success follows a triumphant outing at the Margaret Bradley Invitational last weekend, where the men’s and women’s teams placed first out of 10 and 11 teams, respectively.
Wrestling placed seventh out of 17 teams at the NCAA Region V Regionals this weekend, building upon a strong performance at the Future Regionals Tourney last weekend, where first-year Zack Parisi, second-year Cole Joseph, and third-year Hutch Lynott all took home individual championships.
1 Softest mineral according to the Mohs scale
Abbr. next to a founding date
By PRAVAN CHAKRAVARTHY | Head Crossword Editor
17 What might help the coming-out process? [Taking off from Los Angeles...] 19 Peter Parker’s alter ego, colloquially
What the Joker fell into to become the Joker
“I wanna be picked!” 23 “Don’t touch it, it’s mine!” [...with a layover in San Francisco...]
Color on more than 75 percent of national flags
Clashes with authority
Voluntarily participates
Rhyme scheme of “Do not go gentle into that good night”
Delicious, in slang
Fourth-largest company in the world by revenue [...and landing in Orlando] 36 “Encanto” protagonist
39 Set of 31 at a popular ice cream chain
“It’s no secret for me” [leaving Washington, D.C...]
Berkeley teams, for short
“We’re on!” 45 Joe ___ (John Doe’s friend)
Org. that offers PreCheck
Pop cover? [...change at Newark...]
52 “Couldn’t have said it any better” 54 ___ Paulo
55 “Nattering ___ of negativism” (Spiro Agnew’s epithet for the media)
56 Closing remarks of a debate [...and touchdown in Chicago]
61 Singer Abrams
62 Lagunitas offering 63 Concern for some paleontologists, for short 64 Jazz saxophonist Sonny 65 Bust a gut 66 Metalmaking waste For more puzzles, visit chicagomaroon.com/crosswords.
1 10-digit number, for short
Precursor to
5 Collaborates, perhaps, as on a Google Doc
Toyota RAV4, for example
Metro area home to over a quarter of Norway’s population
French pal
A piece at a time
Dummy
“The Color Purple” or “Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe” 44 “Aladdin” monkey
45 Attempt to vanquish, as an insect 46 Loathed things at an amusement park
47 Sharp taste
48 Goes in the ring
49 On home plate
51 Sosc assignment
53 Points, fancily
57 Mo. that often begins with pranks
58 Stereotypical American desire
59 What has messenger, transfer, and ribosomal varieties
60 Pablo Picasso’s Lump, for one