A new protest sign on campus

April 22, 2025 • 9:30 am

While walking home yesterday afternoon, I came across this protest sign just off the Quad. Like yesterday’s “installation,” this one was also approved by the University for public display, but I didn’t get a look at who put it up, though there’s a reference to the Instagram site “@ek_taskforce” (environmental justice task force) at the bottom. I’ll check later on.

At any rate, its theme is clear, giving all the reasons why the University of Chicago hates “you”, meaning the campus community.  They including “arresting students” (those students who either attacked cops or violated campus regulations and trespassed; the latter were all let off), “investing in death” (i.e., Israel), evicting local residents, helping destroy the planet, and even “losing millions of dollars on cryptocurrency” (that’s one I haven’t heard.) You can read most of the reasons given, or expletives, but clicking on the photo to enlarge it. It may have been erected to criticize the university on Earth Day.

The hatred of the University here is palpable, including the straightforward “Fuck UChicago” and assertions that “The board of trustees are criminals” and the University “hates people of color.” While I remain a free-speecher, some of my free-speech colleagues think that no “installations” of any kind should be put in the Quad, as they’re said to impede free speech by being corrosive of intellectual discussion and inimical to civil and rational engagement. (As a private university, we aren’t obligated to adhere to the First Amendment on our campus.)  I go back and forth on this, but it’s clear that our Administration favors complete First-Amendmen-legal expressions in the “public square.”

At any rate, what struck me was that those who put up  this “installation” was backwards. The University of Chicago does not hate its community. Rather, the people who put up this sign (and the tent I showed yesterday) hate the University because it doesn’t behave the way they want. And that has led me to think that those people not only favor the destruction of Israel, but also the destruction of Western civilization and Enlightenment values as a whole. Sometimes they say this explicitly, and it’s a recurring theme in Douglas Murray’s speeches and books.  Until recently I hadn’t thought much about that, but now I think it’s worth considering. I surely do not want to live in a world run according to the values of those who erect these installations.

32 thoughts on “A new protest sign on campus”

  1. “what struck me was that those who put up this “installation” was backwards. The University of Chicago does not hate its community. Rather, the people who put up this sign (and the tent I showed yesterday) hate the University because it doesn’t behave the way they want.”

    Nailed it —

    Projection, Inversion – standard techniques in dialectical political warfare.

    1. I continue to be surprised by how accustomed I’d grown to certain colors of … what do you call those little squares with the design next to our names? It’s been instructive to note how I’ve come to expect
      certain types of comments from certain readers. I find that this change in color has caused me to slow down and really read what people are writing instead of assuming I know what I’m about to read. This is making me wonder about prejudices I may be filtering readers’ comments through. It’s an interesting exercise. True confessions of a simple mind.

      1. I love them. Mine is default as I don’t know how to change it!

        I want a pic of me and my doggie there!
        Or a cool one like Coel has!

        D.A.
        NYC

        1. Someone below has suggested you can change it at gravatar.com.

          Maybe you could try it! If one person could get it to work it would be quite something. I don’t want to fiddle with mine in case I lose it.

          The gravatar.com suggestion came up while I was searching.

      3. I don’t remember what those little square thingies are called. But you can also drop in your own avatar picture by making a free WordPress account.

  2. … it’s clear that our Administration favors complete First-Amendment-legal expressions in the “public square.”

    … so long as they are woke-approved messages that is.

    I don’t believe that they’d accept protest signs saying “Sex is Binary!” and “Trans women are MEN!”, nor would they accept “End Affirmative Action!”, “No to DEI!”, and “Merit-based Admissions Now!” .

    Though I’d be delighted to be proved wrong.

    1. I really want some people to test these cases. Apply to the university to put up installations with these messages, and let’s see what happens.

      2. An idea is to get the permission, and then put up a mocking nonsense demonstration like you’d see in The Onion. No harm done, but I bet it would piss the right people off.

  4. I have to confess that it took my a few moments to figure out who “Uchi” was. I’ve never seen that used in reference to the University of Chicago. Someone should let them know that the planet is not burning. Even Greta Thunberg has moved on.

    2. Is UCHI supposed to be a demeaning term? (I sorta sounds like it to me.) Has it replace UC??

  5. It looks to me like it’s a graffiti board, with random students and passerby’s encouraged to scribble whatever message they chose.

    Since it’s probably not, the folks who set this thing up don’t understand design. It’s horrible. I’d be tempted to draw “Kilroy was here” and see how long it would take for anyone to figure out it wasn’t a deliberate but obscure insult aimed at UChicago.

  6. I dunno. “Kim, Kim, Kim, Il Sung/Revolution by the Young” or some such thing.

    Oh my goodness, am I Red-baiting — naw, just making a comparison. I like the “Kilroy was here” comment above, subtle humor for us oldsters with even a vague sense of history.

  7. It has always amused me when I see fascists/communists/Islamists demand the “destruction of Western civilisation”. They’d all be the first to start crying, just before they’d start trying to massacre each other.

    BTW, has anybody ever met anyone who supports the “destruction of western civilisation” who WASN’T a fascist/communist/Islamist/Nazi, etc.?

    Nope. Me neither!

  8. Animus against not only the university but Western civ in general is a symptom of “Daddy issues”, a disorder in which early adolescence is prolonged for many years or decades. A curious aspect of this malady is that academia has encouraged and even instilled, it since about the 1980s. It is concentrated in academic ballets that have intellectual standards similar to or below those of astrology and homeopathy, a feature demonstrated by the experiments of Sokal and then of Boghossian, Pluckrose, and Lindsay. We can expect academic units of this sort to adopt the U. Chi installation under discussion in their “scholarship”, and to assign it in their curricula.

    1. Absolutely Jon. Every time I see these idiots I go straight to the psychiatric reason: they hate Daddy and that hate is sublimated often to self hate and vitriol against everything good about civilization.
      Also, the internal logic of their positions, let alone lessons of history, don’t make any sense.

      cheers,

      D.A.
      NYC

    1. It is pretty lame. Obviously they lost major funding, both in terms of being able to buy tents and larger displays, as well as for human participants in their outrage.

  10. Compared to last year’s tent cities, this expresses weakness. It is juvenile; but of course that doesn’t make the sentiment harmless.

  11. While I fully support (almost) absolute freedom of speech, perhaps it is time for UChicago and other architecturally lovely universities and their grounds to offer an environment conducive to quiet contemplation and peace, rather than a blank for graffiti like on a restroom stall and a source of constant noise dunning students and faculty as they walk the campus. Maybe a separated speakers’ corner for those interested in the events of the days with the default for the majority of the college yards being restful welcome. Does the UK have such ubiquitous displays and assaults on the senses in the ancient unis?

  12. Suppose that today’s and yesterday’s installations were placed in exactly the same locations but that the organizers hadn’t gotten prior permission to put the installations in place. Would they then be violating the “time, place, and manner” rules? If so, then why is the same demonstration acceptable now? Is it simply because they got permission? They’re purveying the same hate whether they have the university’s blessing or not.

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