Sep 12

Sep 12 Back To School

Chicago, Demonstrations, Performance, Protest, Public Declarations

Each year during the Labor Day weekend, both the print and broadcast media begin a 10-day series of 9/11 remembrances. This year, 9/11 saw some steep competition. The end of summer coincides with the start of the academic year. The logical question: Would college students pick up where they left off last spring, with protests and encampments highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people? I read more than a few articles about changed university policies, and I have seen several interviews with pro-Palestinian student leaders.

Somewhat surprisingly, campuses have been relatively quiet to date, but today saw over 100 demonstrators gather outside the DePaul University Student Center for a rally, press conference, and march. The question on my mind was whether the students planned to erect a new encampment. What transpired really wasn’t a press conference because the speakers took no questions from the press, so I couldn’t ask my question.

There are new signs posted around DePaul’s campus prohibiting special events or demonstrations, tents or other shelters, equipment and portable restrooms, and amplified sounds. Over the summer, the university also issued revised rules regarding campus speech. Presumably today’s organizers complied with the new rules by providing the university with the necessary notices.

While DePaul may have approved the demonstration, it wasn’t taking chances. As the march passed the entrances to the Fullerton Quad where students encamped last spring, CPD bicycle cops and private security contractors closed off those access points to the demonstrators. During the march, I had the opportunity to ask one of the student organizers whether there were plans for a new encampment. I received a wishy-washy answer, neither a firm “Yes,” nor a “No,” which was not surprising. If a new encampment is in the works, the students most likely will act stealthily.

Probably the most thought-provoking aspect of today’s event was the press conference. Only four people spoke, three of whom read their remarks as they looked down at their screens. When I was in college, I took a suggested public speaking class. Practice, but don’t memorize; maintain eye contact with the audience; use gestures; and don’t read the speech. Apparently, colleges and universities no longer offer public speaking courses. Given that one of the speakers was a former adjunct professor, I can only begin to imagine how boring classes must be with the current crop of professors casting their gaze downward for 55 minutes as they recite their lectures word-for word from a script displayed on a screen.

The former adjunct in question was Anne d’Aquino, who taught Health 194, Human Pathogens and Defense during the 2023-spring term. Inside Higher Ed reports that d’Aquino had originally asked her students in an assignment to address the “first-known case of a human catching avian flu from a nonhuman mammal.” D’Aquino subsequently provided the students with an optional alternative assignment via an email, which stated:

Today, Israel rejected a ceasefire deal and continues to bomb Rafah, where over 600,000 children are currently sheltering . . . many view this as the last phase of the genocide/ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinian people . . . I encourage students to use scientific analysis and critical thinking to understand and communicate the impacts of genocide on human biology, and the creation of a decolonized future that promotes liberation and resists systemic oppression.

A copy of an email from d’Aquino regarding the assignment can be viewed here.

Several students contacted the DePaul administration about the assignment, which resulted in DePaul dismissing d’Aquino midway through the course. During her remarks today, d’Aquino discussed a dispute resolution process, but I am unclear on where that process now stands.

From my vantage point, and without taking into account the merits of the claims made by either the Israelis or Palestinians, the university made the right decision in dismissing d’Aquino. She has pointed to recent warnings from scientists and medical personnel about the spread of infectious diseases in Gaza, but her citation to those warnings is pretextual.

D’Aquino’s references to “decoloniz[ation],” “liberation,” and “systematic oppression” reveal the political rather than scientific motivations driving the assignment. Moreover, even if the war in Gaza does pose relevant issues addressed in the class, d’Aquino could have easily depoliticized the alternative assignment by asking students to consider the issue in terms of the war in Gaza, the civil war in Sudan, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or historical conflicts, for which there is most likely better immunological data available because the fog of war has cleared, permitting scientists to collect and examine all relevant data.

Sadly, d’Aquino’s linkage of war zones and the spread of infectious diseases was prescient, given recent reports of a polio outbreak in Gaza. She erred, however, by introducing her own political biases into the alternative assignment. She could have made her point by simply allowing her students to make their own discoveries untainted by d’Aquino’s political views.

Even though the assignment was cast as an optional alternative, some students undoubtedly wondered whether sticking with the original assignment might be taken by d’Aquino as a rejection of her political viewpoint, possibly resulting in a lower grade. And even if the students chose the optional alternative, they might have concluded that there was only one “correct’ answer to the question d’Aquino was posing.

In her email, d’Aquino refers to “systematic oppression,” falling back on what has become the intellectually lazy Marxist ‘oppressor-oppressed’ paradigm. Yet, she fails to recognize that in the classroom she is the locus of power, making her just another one of the world’s ‘systematic oppressors’ who she has condemned. In this case, someone with the power to impose her views on her students, who could easily be characterized as the oppressed. Like many, d’Acquino is unable to see the Israeli-Palestinian conundrum as a multi-faceted and highly nuanced one, permitting others to hold viewpoints contrary to hers.

Not surprisingly, d’Aquino and her supporters raise “academic freedom” as a defense. Would the student demonstrators have been equally supportive of a theology professor who was teaching a course on the Old Testament had the professor offered the following alternative optional assignment: write a paper explaining whether the Israelis have a biblical right to annex the entire West Bank, making it part of Israel. Assume the professor’s email contained loaded references to the October 7th “terrorist” attack by “Iranian-backed Hamas warriors and savages” against '"innocent” Israelis—the attack being “rooted in age-old and virulent anti-Semitism.” Given the zeitgeist last spring, there would undoubtedly been an uproar on campus (and there probably still would be one).

The other notable speaker was Terrance Freeman, who was a security guard on DePaul’s campus last spring. He claims that during his tenure, he regularly posed for photographs with students, but when he posed for a photograph with pro-Palestinian students in late May, DePaul asked his employer, Guardian Security, to transfer him because DePaul didn’t want him on campus anymore. DePaul was concerned that pro-Israeli students might view his presence as problematic. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Freeman is now assigned to a post at the Merchandise Mart. Taken together with d’Aquino’s case, Freeman’s situation is the far more sympathetic one, although I only heard his account. When he posed, was he holding a pro-Palestinian sign or wearing a keffiyeh, or was he just smiling as the students surrounded him?

Other than these two speeches, the demonstration was an anodyne affair. The students were orderly and generally respectful; maybe too subdued. Notably, I watched as plenty of other students passed the marchers. Few paid much attention to the marchers, some looking on with bemused expressions. Classes had just begun, and dinner beckoned. Some students were out for a late afternoon run; others were taking a stroll hand-in-hand with a romantic partner; some were headed to class or the library; and one student was even enjoying an ice cream cone—ah to be 19-years old and be able to eat ice cream just before dinner without your mother yelling at you about spoiling your dinner—those were the days.

As the marchers returned to the student center, several students were spreading out a tarp and mixing paints. Ten or so students gathered around the tarp, filling it with handprints and slogans using the supplied paint. I said to a fellow photographer, “I guess we must wait around to see whether someone throws paint on the statue of Monsignor John J. Egan.” Doing so would have been highly ironic, given that the base of statue carries the inscription, "What Are You Doing for Justice?” Fortunately, nobody was looking to be arrested by one or more of the dozens of CPD officers in the vicinity.

As I headed home, I noticed several demonstrators walking nearby who were wearing UIC-branded shirts and hats, an indication that the rally was even smaller than I thought in terms of the number of participating DePaul students.

[Click on an Image to Enlarge It. The Images Are Not Necessarily in Exact Chronological Order]