October 23, 2024
Dear President Alivisatos,
We write urgently to demand that the university reverse course with regard to the Arab student who was placed on an involuntary leave of absence and removed from student housing on October 21. This is part of a deeply worrisome crackdown on free expression and protest at the University of Chicago. In the wake of the “Updates to University Policies” on free expression, we have watched as campus police and CPD used pepper spray and batons on student and faculty protesters as they dangerously crushed the crowd. We have heard from participants in last spring’s encampment who now face criminal charges of “mob action.” And nearly six months after the end of that encampment, the University has failed to make good on its promise to announce a Gaza Scholars at Risk program. To say we have lost faith in the administration is an understatement.
The unceremonious removal of a student not only from the classroom, but from their housing may be a new low. This was done without notice as required by Illinois landlord and tenant law, when University of Chicago police accompanied university administrators to notify the student that they would be placed on involuntary leave, allowing only a few short minutes to pack a backpack before vacating their home.
This is a perversion of University policy, which offers at least some semblance of a process and oversight into disciplinary proceedings. Even in extreme circumstances, the student manual indicates that the Dean of Students “will consider germane information, including information provided in a timely manner by the student”—information that has not been requested, let alone taken into consideration. Denying a student their housing, along with access to their social networks on campus, is a drastic measure that should never be taken in such a summary manner.
The student in question is a member of our university community and deserving of its protections. Those who have had the pleasure of having them in class, would attest that they are sharp and engaged, someone who not only learns but makes the classroom better for their fellow students. To ban them from campus with the threat of arrest is to impoverish our learning environment and to chill our students’ speech. It is an abdication of our responsibility as educators and a rejection of the core tenet of freedom of expression for which the University of Chicago is so famous.
It is also a decision that can—and should—be reversed immediately. If you wish to lead the way in free speech and to show what it is to truly foster debate on campus, that is what you will do. Beating and pepper-spraying protesters simply for being adjacent to graffiti is abusive. Evicting and suspending a student for their free speech is vindictive and cruel. This is not what we or our students were promised when we joined the University of Chicago. If anyone is a threat to education or guilty of disruptive conduct, it is the police, who have repeatedly used excessive force against unarmed students and repressed protest over the last year. As faculty, our work, our safety, and our freedom is disturbed the most not by student protest but by police brutality. To unleash them against the very people this university is meant to protect is a betrayal of the principles of an academic community.
This comes at a time when such violations are rapidly escalating at universities across the country. This broader trend sees campuses shutting down protests and free speech, as they engage in anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and anti-Muslim racism in violation of federal antidiscrimination law (Title VI). As an institution that receives federal financial assistance, UChicago is required to comply with Title VI and not discriminate on the basis of race, color, or national origin. A Title VI complaint against UChicago for anti-Palestinian racism has already been made, and this incident further exacerbates the issue. This is a trend that we want no part of, one at odds with your stated commitment to free speech.
Change course, or our university will earn a very different reputation.
Sincerely,
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine
University of Chicago