In a letter sent to the University of Chicago, the Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and more than 150 lawyers, legal workers, law professors, law students, and organizations are calling on the University to drop all disciplinary actions being taken against its students who participated in protests against the genocide in Gaza, and to stop the sanctions it is seeking against the NLG Campus Chapter.
The University of Chicago has been a historic site of student activism. Students have participated in demonstrations, occupied school buildings, and engaged in civil disobedience in support of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and in advocacy for an end to the Vietnam War. The students are now demanding that the University disclose their investments and divest from all material support for the apartheid state of Israel. They are demanding an end to the genocide in Gaza and an end to Israeli apartheid.
In response, the University’s administration has threatened students with suspensions and expulsions for participating in constitutionally protected free speech activities. The University also allowed its police force to violently clear the students’ encampment on May 7th.
In its harsh stance against the students and their NLG Campus Chapter, the University has betrayed its highest principles of freedom of expression and places itself on the wrong side of history once again.
