From Ferguson to Chicago’s South Side: How Faculty Respond to Major News Events

Faculty, especially historians, often feel a special obligation to respond to major events of racial injustice outside of the classroom. Historians in particular are moved to compare and contrast events in the present with those of the past. Professorial reactions run the gamut from participation in marches, protests, and other demonstrations, to more staid activities, but one typical response has been the organization of public campus programs, often with student and community involvement. In recent years, my colleagues and I at Governors State University in Chicago’s south suburbs have organized a series of programs in response to such events. The 2014 police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson occurred while we were engaged in a yearlong, campus-wide commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In response, the committee put together a panel of civil rights scholars, students, and police officers to discuss various angles of the problem of police brutality. In 2017, members of our Campus Inclusion Team invited local politicians and activists to join faculty in a community discussion on the violent events in Charlottesville and the personal and institutional racism that continues to plague our society. And in August 2018, as Faculty Senate President, I joined a group organized by Rainbow/PUSH, Rev. Jesse Jackson’s organization, to address a severe uptick in gang violence in Chicago. This presentation will reflect on lessons learned about appropriate scholarly responses to these sorts of moments.