University of Chicago faculty and students claimed at a news conference Friday the university is circumventing its own disciplinary process to withhold degrees from pro-Palestinian student protesters.
Fourth-year student Youssef Hasweh said he and three other seniors — Rayna Acha, Kelly Hui and a fourth student who declined to give their name — received an email Friday saying their degrees would be withheld until the resolution of a school disciplinary process related to their involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.
Students haven’t been informed of what the alleged misconduct was, other than it was related to complaints made about the encampment. University officials have said the students can still walk at graduation, but their degrees are being held until the process is finished, which has no clear timeline.
“Here at the University of Chicago, the free speech university, talking about Palestine is not free but comes with a hefty price,” Hasweh said at a Friday morning news conference with faculty and students. “I’ve lost my degree and all current employment offers I was interviewing for. I’ve lost a future, for now, as a graduate of UChicago.”
Later, Denis Hirschfeldt, a mathematics professor at the university and president of the school’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said the school’s disciplinary process had lost “all credibility.”
Denis Hirschfeldt, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, speaks outside the University of Chicago’s Levi Hall in Hyde Park, where students and faculty gathered to speak out against the university’s decision to withhold degrees of four graduating seniors “due to a university disciplinary process because they ‘may have been involved’ in the Gaza solidarity encampment on the quad,” according to a press release, Friday, May 31, 2024.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Hirschfeldt was on the faculty senate that drafted the rules for the disciplinary process in 2017. He claims an ad hoc chair, chemistry professor Bryan Dickinson, was appointed by provost Katherine Baicker without the consultation of the sitting chairs or faculty senate after the complaints had already been made. He called it “clear interference” and a “massive conflict of interest.”
University policy defers actions to the sitting chair, and doesn’t mention any process for appointing an ad hoc chair for certain cases.
The University of Chicago said in a statement it was “routine” for the committee to have multiple chairs assigned based on “availability and involvement in other matters.” It did not address the sudden appointment of the new chair.
“The description of the Disciplinary System for Disruptive Conduct as given by some faculty members contains inaccuracies,” the statement said. “This process is being followed consistently with past practices.”
“[Baicker’s interference] has turned a faculty-led disciplinary process into an administration-led exercise in punishment,” Hirschfeldt said.
The news conference came within hours of 16 City Council members sending a letter to Baicker urging her to reconsider the disciplinary measures.
“We are concerned that these students’ degrees are being withheld without appropriate process or adequate basis in evidence; that the withholding of these degrees constitutes a grave repression of free expression in contradiction to the University’s commitments to free speech and First Amendment rights; and that this repression forms part of a pattern of universities targeting students for making their voices heard,” the City Council members wrote in the letter.
At the encampment, students demanded that the university disclose its investments, divest from those with ties to Israel and arms companies and help to repair the damage done to Gaza’s universities. The protesters also wanted the school to stop development on the South Side and to put money toward repairing the “harm” it had caused to the area through prior investments.
Fourth-year student Youssef Hasweh said he and three other seniors — Rayna Acha, Kelly Hui and a fourth student who declined to give their name — received an email Friday saying their degrees would be withheld until the resolution of a school disciplinary process related to their involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.
Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
“We are all complicit in every death in Gaza if the bombs being dropped are made with our tuition dollars,” Hasweh said. “We don’t deserve a graduation made from the profits of investing in death.”
The students having their degrees withheld said they plan to walk at graduation Saturday, displaying empty diploma cases as they do.
“There’s no class of 2024 in Gaza,” Acha said. “We will fight to get our degrees so we can continue to fight for Palestine.”
