Heather McShane's Notes from the UIC Teach-In: Assault on Science, Humanities, and Human Rights held on the National Day of Action for Higher Education, April 17, 2025

 Notes from the UIC Teach-In: Assault on Science, Humanities, and Human Rights held on the National Day of Action for Higher Education, April 17, 2025

Below are my notes from “Teach-In: Assault on Science, Humanities, and Human Rights” from the panel held on April 17, 2025, at University of Illinois at Chicago. Much of the text could be considered direct quotations, if not, paraphrases, from the speakers on the panel, though please forgive me if I misheard/misunderstood points. I grabbed the biographical information from the Social Justice Initiative website linked here. 

Katherine Franke, Columbia University Law Professor (retired) and activist, a leading scholar on law, sexuality, race, and religion drawing from feminist, queer, and critical race theory

• fired (“retired”) from Columbia for standing up for a student protestor
• everything in U.S. happening much faster than ever before
• They’re testing us by fabricating an emergency, we’re showing up in protest, and then they’re using the protest as justification for disciplinary action (authoritarianism). They will likely soon declare martial law
• We must strategize how to interrupt the loop
• We must DREAM about what we want

Veena Dubal, General Counsel, AAUP; Professor of Law at University of California Irvine

AAUP: The mission of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) is to advance academic freedom and shared governance; to define fundamental professional values and standards for higher education; to promote the economic security of faculty, academic professionals, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and all those engaged in teaching and research in higher education; to help the higher education community organize to make our goals a reality; and to ensure higher education's contribution to the common good.

• what’s happening now is beyond McCarthyism
• Intended to wipe out American higher education and take away economic and social mobility, especially for marginalized groups 
• we need to stand up for our non-citizen immigrant colleagues who are being essentially silenced
• We must have a groundswell of mobilization and find hope through collective strategic action

Janet Lin, Professor of Emergency Medicine, UIC College of Medicine; Affiliate Professor of Community Health Sciences, School of Public Health

• Do not make emotional decisions that are irrational
• Be aware, however, that there could be public bans on national abortion, gender-affirming care, and HIV care
• Getting rid of Medicaid means 800,000 people (in Illinois?) will lose coverage, with culminating impacts

Linda Rae Murray, M.D., world-renowned public health champion and previously served as chief medical officer for the Cook County Department of Public Health, and president of the American Public Health Association. She is an UIC alum and teaches in the School of Public Health

• Attack on immigration
• Argues that 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments have never been enforced anyway (13th about slavery, 14th about due process and equal protection for citizens, and 15th about right to vote)
• Trump administration is destroying the infrastructure allowing us to live
• Cuts to USAID are going to kill people with AIDS
• Current measles crisis has spread to Canada and Mexico
• MAGA=Make White People Great Again
• We must look to the tradition of fugitive pedagogy
• We can only exist in connection with other people

Elizabeth Todd-Breland, Associate Professor of History at UIC who works on racial and economic inequality and education policy

• Spoke on the connection of UIC to K-12 education and cuts to resources and education
• dismantling Title I funds hurts people with disabilities and English learners
• Follow former CTU President Karen Lewis’s questions for leadership: “Does it unite us, does it build our power, and does it make us stronger?”
• People who are privileged need to stand up and speak out
• Trump is targeting UIC because, in 2016, protestors shut down his planned rally (and he’s petty)

Naomi Paik, Associate Professor of Global Asian Studies and Criminology, Law and Justice at UIC, a scholar of immigration, carcerality and justice, and a member UIC Sanctuary Campus for All and Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine UIC

• Suggests using a within/along/against approach to social justice work
• Helping immigrants by establishing a legal defense fund, asking faculty and staff to donate 5% of their annual salary, especially higher administration (the chancellor)
• Tech checklists/to-dos (VPNs, etc.)
• Establish UIC as a sanctuary campus 

Q&A (I didn’t stay for all the questions and answers) 

One question, as I understood it, concerned the ties of capitalism to liberalism, especially in regards to higher education, with Katherine Frank’s suggesting a new model for higher education, not a business model

Another question involved losing this battle, and again Frank’s spoke, saying how it’s possible to have success without victory

There was also discussion about using some of the radical acts of the ACTUP movement (and other previous movements) for this movement, to get away from individualism, cynicism, and fear (ACTUP is the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power)