This isn’t quite accurate. It’s pretty clear that they received a warning because they removed their statement from their department website. Furthermore, in a year that saw basically no admissions to English PhD programs anywhere, a quick perusal of the English department site at UChicago suggests that the 2020 cohort isn’t distinct from prior years, either in research interest or student admitted. If anything, it’s the English Department, and not the university, that appears to be disguising a marketing ploy behind some “principled” statement or other.
The Kalven Report was generated in the wake of political and societal upheaval in the '60’s. While Zimmer no doubt has made “free speech” a major platform issue, he’s not inventing anything new. University of Chicago News
The trend has a wide reach and hits nearly every academic department of every college and university save a few, perhaps. UChicago isn’t immune, agreed.
Michigan went through the Richard Spencer crap. They are legally obligated to have him. They set him up in an area away from campus proper and had many activities to lure the students away. Not many showed up a few of his followers. Michigan state just said no. Just saying.
Good catch, @JBStillFlying . I hadn’t revisited the English Department website since the date of Zimmer’s October statement clarifying that the Chicago Principles apply to units within the University. The Zimmer statement clearly had the English Department in its sights. The department thereupon immediately altered its own prior statement to indicate only that it would simply “prioritize” Ph.D. applicants in Black Studies, not close the door entirely to other fields. However, they retained the following language:
“English as a discipline has a long history of providing aesthetic rationalizations for colonization, exploitation, extraction, and anti-Blackness. Our discipline is responsible for developing hierarchies of cultural production that have contributed directly to social and systemic determinations of whose lives matter and why… For these reasons we believe that undoing persistent, recalcitrant anti-Blackness in our institutions must be the collective responsibility of all faculty here and elsewhere…”
That language taken with the prioritization of Black Studies indicated to me that anyone with traditional literary interests and without an activist perspective need not apply. It seemed a sad day for a storied department. Whether the department itself drew back from that brink or whether discussions behind closed doors were held with the administration we will never know. However, I note that the language cited above has been entirely eliminated from the present iteration of the statement (which can be found under “News” in the Graduate Studies section of the English Department web page), which now simply expresses support in general terms for Black Lives Matter. It continues to say that “in the coming academic year (2020-2021) we are prioritizing consideration of applicants who work in and with Black Studies”. Yet, as you say, that hardly seems borne out by the applicants actually admitted for that year (and what about future years?). I scrolled through the cohort of the twelve admittees for 2020-2021 and found only one of them indicating any interest in Black Studies and none in Post-colonial studies. They were a mixture of genders, ethnicities and interests spanning the spectrum of the species Young Scholar. Many had postmodernist interests, but there were also several with distinctly traditional literary interests.
It is hard to know what to make of this. Could it be that after a period of moral panic ordinary life has resumed even in the English Department?
I am the OP. Obviously the thread went off in an unrelated direction but for benefit of any parents reading it in the future, I talked to two people who had kids (one current and one very recent grad) at UChicago, one of the kids was trans, and they both said their kids loved the school and it was a very lgbtq inclusive/welcoming environment and most of the student population had progressive/liberal beliefs (which were my original questions). Having said that neither of their kids is as politically engaged as my d is. So in any case I think it is back on the visit list, will do a quick Chicago visit and visit northwestern as well on same trip. Thanks to those who tried to answer my question. The condescension and unwelcoming nature of some replies were … something else.
I too looked in more detail at the websites since that earlier response, @marlowe1 and, similar to what you found, I noticed only one who expressed an interest in “Black” Anything. However, a few more were interested in CRT and some were interested in 20th Century Am Lit. No doubt there will be crossovers (or, to use the current jargon, “intersectionalities”) with Black Studies. However, this didn’t seem different from other years and they still admitted their Medievalist, their Romantic Poet, and so forth. If anything there seems to be an over-concentration of Queer Theorists, Marxists and grad students whose last name begins with the letter “C.” Not sure what to make of that last one, but the other areas of study are part-and-parcel with the English Department.
Good luck on visiting. As you said, there are a lot of other great universities out there that could be a better fit both academically and culturally for your daughter. Only she and you would know. Glad you are visiting both Northwestern and UChicago. That would give you a good sense on what options are out there.
Many schools that are known to be great at Astronomy/Physics, are kinda quirky, be it MIT, Caltech, UChicago, etc. So maybe after your visits, you would know if these quirks from these quirky schools are deal breakers for you.
Yes thanks. My d is indeed super quirky. Not sure what in particular gave so many on this thread an idea she isn’t a good match for UofC other than me having said she is a lesbian with very progressive political views - based on people I have talked to IRL it seems that wouldn’t prevent it being a good match. Of course getting in is always the hard part! Ours school sends 5-10 kids to UChicago per year and I would guess double that number (or so) are admitted but as a rising junior no way to tell where my d will land gpa-wise and score-wise.
Hopefully over the next year your daughter will get a good feel for the seniors at her school who end up at the various colleges she is considering. Are those who end up applying to and/or attending school X the type of kids she’d like to be around for the next four years? Does she have enough shared interests with these kids academically and otherwise? How do these kids interact with their peers, teachers and staff? Is it with distain, indifference, or respect? Is their learning style and lifestyle combative or cooperative and is it compatible with your daughter’s style?
When it comes to fit, paying attention to which kids end up at these schools will probably provide much more valuable information than the views of the parents here or the pile of marketing material you’ll receive from some of these schools.
You and your D would know best as to whether she’s a good fit and have plenty of time to figure that out (as well as her exact admission plan). Being admitted is indeed the hardest part of the process; the retention rate after first year is 99% and about 91% graduate in four years. Based on those stats, it’s highly likely that if she’s admitted and decides to attend, she’ll love it. By the way, being a woman interested in astrophysics will probably help her admission, all else equal.
There’s a lot to be said for quirkiness if what is meant by this is orginality in thought and behavior. There’s also something to be said for disdain if, as Aristotle taught, it is directed at the right persons for the right reasons. As for respect, those who earn it should get it, but it should not be dealt out too liberally or else it loses all meaning. Courtesy and decency are the true coin of the realm and should be the baseline of our conduct toward every person of every condition, station in life, race, belief, or character. We are all poor creatures crawling between heaven and earth. Indifference in anything is, however, to be scorned: We have been told on good authority to spit out the luke-warm.
Take these few precepts to heart and add one more:
This above all; to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
My daughter just finished her first year at UChicago. She is very far left on the political spectrum, and very interested in social justice. She tells me all the time that she’s finally met “her people.” One of her classes read a lot of Marx and similar writers, and she said that by the end of the term, she was pretty sure that everyone in the class was now a communist (and I think she was only exaggerating slightly). The university has a strong commitment to social justice issues, particularly given the community in which it is located. There’s a whole office just dedicated to civic engagement, focusing primarily on connections to the South Side neighborhoods.
I can’t speak for sure as to how LGBTQ+ students feel, but I can tell you that my daughter (who is straight) would point blank refuse to attend any school where LGBTQ+ wasn’t welcomed and fully accepted.
Unfortunately, not many will understand this reference.
A critical reading of Marx will not necessarily turn one into a communist. However, it was precisely this very scenario that prompted young Lucille Norton’s uncle, Charles Walgreen, to raise a ruckus that the University of Chicago was indoctrinating its students to be communists. The ensuing PR nightmare was one of UChicago’s pivotal “free speech” moments - a good reminder that this trait comes in handy when the shoe is on the other foot.
A fervent anti-Communist, Walgreen made national headlines in 1935, when, after his niece mentioned that her social science coursework at the University of Chicago included books about Soviet Russia, he demanded an investigation by the state legislature. Roiled in controversy, the school broke out in violent protests over academic freedom. The investigation concluded that “nothing in the teachings or schedule of the school can be held to be subversive”, and Walgreen apparently did not hold a grudge – two years later he gave the University half a million dollars to establish the Walgreen Foundation for Study of American Institution. https://www.nndb.com/people/205/000159725/
Also MIT math / physics alum. Did theory, so have no opinion about your points 1-2, but can’t agree more strongly with your characterization of the MIT culture in point 3. That is exactly how I experienced it.
My daughter is a second year student at UChicago. She is basically a communist and from one of the most left-leaning parts of the US. She does not feel that the University if conservative. Of course, some students are, but not the University of the culture.