Dear President Robert L. Manuel and Provost Salma Ghanem:

We condemn the assault on our communities and higher education institutions brought on by the Trump administration’s sweeping executive orders. As concerned staff and faculty, we urgently call upon the DePaul University Administration to be courageous and uphold our Vincentian values by being proactive in ensuring and defending the constitutional and ethical rights and safety of our students, staff, and faculty against the current climate of repression spreading across college campuses in the United States. 

This includes but is not limited to the surveillance, arrest, and threats of deportation against international and immigrant people generally, and particularly for their protected free speech in principled opposition to the genocide in Gaza and support for Palestinian liberation, such as the recent detention by ICE agents of Columbia graduate and legal resident Mahmoud Khalil, Georgetown postdoctoral fellow Dr. Badar Khan Suri, and Tufts PhD student Rumeysa Ozturk, among numerous others. See more here “‘A warning for students of color’: Ice agents are targeting certain protesters, say experts (The Guardian)”

The university’s lack of action on these issues thus far puts each of us in danger. It affects all of our safety, and students’ learning and living conditions. It also affects our working conditions, restricting faculty and staff’s ability to do our best work and uphold the university’s Mission. Thus we call on DePaul to resist authoritarianism and repression and stand with others in higher education who have

decried the injustice of these actions, most recently the positions outlined in the lawsuit filed on March 25, 2025 by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and their national chapters at Harvard, Rutgers and NYU, seeking to block the “Trump Policy of Arresting and Threatening to Deport Students and Faculty for Lawful Speech.” See also:

• ”ACLU of Virginia files emergency motion to stop Trump administration’s illegal deportation of Georgetown Professor for Exercising Free Speech”
• “Georgetown faculty call for solidarity after postdoc Badar Khan Suri’s detention (Religion News)”

Why does DePaul need to stand up?

These are not normal times. As the largest Catholic University in the United States, this time requires the DePaul University Administration to stand up as a faith and education leader to fight authoritarianism and repression in higher education. While we understand the impulse to duck and cover, we serve a higher mission than mere survival of the fittest or luckiest. Remaining silent will not save our university from threats. It will not save our enrollments. It will not save our funding. It will not save us from an authoritarian government set on destroying higher education entirely. It will only make us complicit and drive away students, faculty, and staff, and alienate alumni. It might also risk our University being condemned or boycotted by others actively standing up to such repression in higher education.

We ask that the DePaul University Administration act according to DePaul’s Mission Statement including the following aspects of the Mission’s “Distinguishing Characteristics, Core Values, and Commitments”:

1) Distinguishing Characteristics:

We serve to ennoble the sacred dignity of all people, with special attention to those who are vulnerable, underserved, or materially poor, and we seek creative and effective solutions to institutional and societal challenges.

 2) Core Values:

Access to Higher Education

Founded to provide access to higher education for underserved immigrant communities in the city of Chicago, DePaul University’s commitment to such equity and access has remained a common thread of our mission throughout our history.

Human Dignity and Vincentian Personalism

As a university community, we strive to ennoble the God-given dignity of all people. Our Vincentian personalism and professionalism is reflected by our DePaul community whose members care for the needs of each other and of those with whom we live, work, study, and seek to serve.

Care for Society’s Most Vulnerable

Grounded in our Vincentian character, our belief in the dignity of all people challenges us to exercise compassion for those in society who lack opportunity due to material poverty or flawed human systems and social norms. We strive for solidarity and social justice through education and by offering our academic expertise, research, service, and public advocacy on behalf of the common good.

Diversity Equity and Inclusion

Given a history of societal systems that perpetuate the unjust treatment of many in the United States and around the world, particularly in education, our teaching, learning, and operations are motivated to address causes of inequity and injustice. Both within and outside our university community, we work to advocate for and build just, equitable, and inclusive communities, policies and processes that enable all to flourish.

 3) Fundamental and Emerging Commitments

Anti-Racism

With racism so deeply intertwined in human history and still pervasive today, as an institution we recognize our ongoing complicity with systemic racism. These structures continue to cause harm today and prevent needed opportunities for many people who remain underserved and underrepresented. Therefore, we commit forcefully in thought, word, and action to do all that is required to transform our university into an anti-racist institution.

Nonviolence, Dialogue, and Peacebuilding

As a Catholic university, Pope Francis’ declaration of nonviolence as a fundamental commitment of the Catholic Church and Catholic education challenges us to model, teach, and foster the necessary awareness, theory, and skills of dialogue and peacebuilding. Furthermore, our grounding in Vincentian mission moves us to recognize the ongoing threat of violent conflict, both locally and globally, and how it harms those most vulnerable populations. Therefore, we strive to integrate nonviolence, dialogue, and peacebuilding into the educational experience of our university community.

 We call upon the DePaul University Administration to stand up to do the following for students, staff, and all categories of faculty:

• Protect academic freedom.
• Protect free speech.
• Protect political expression.
• Protect immigrant and international students, staff, and faculty.
• Protect LGBTQIA+ students, staff, and faculty.
• Protect DePaul’s curriculum, academic programs, and centers from the current attacks on DEI in higher education that are rooted in a racist, eugenic, sexist, patriarchal, homophobic, transphobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Palestinian political agenda.

To do this, we demand the DePaul University Administration take the following action immediately:

Make a public statement, founded in DePaul’s Vincentian and Catholic Mission, in support of free speech, the right to protest, and non-compliance with attempts to threaten or undermine these rights. Include also DePaul’s commitment to social justice and to protecting our most vulnerable members.

In addition, we demand the University takes these steps:

• DO NOT arrest, sanction, discipline, expel, suspend, fire, or revoke degrees for students, student organizations, faculty, and staff using their protected speech and first amendment rights.
• DO NOT capitulate to threats of or active federal investigations or lawsuits.
• DO NOT adopt any definition of antisemitism that conflates it with anti-zionism. Respect the diversity of opinion and action within the Jewish community, including at DePaul, on this matter.
• DO NOT use social media surveillance programs to identify individuals in our DePaul community.
• DO NOT ban masks or force mask removal on campus.
• DO NOT cut programs and services because of ideological differences with the Trump administration or participate in targeting the populations already under siege due to their gender, sexuality, race, class, disability, status, or religion.
• DO NOT punitively weaponize grant funding, awards, graduation, degrees, student status, or employment.
• DO NOT participate in anticipatory obedience.
• DO refuse to provide names or any personal or online information of students, staff, faculty, or administrators who have participated in pro-Palestinian protests on campus and other forms of lawful speech covered in the First Amendment.
• DO affirm speech on campus that supports Palestinian human rights.
• DO keep ICE off our campus: Do not invite ICE on campus or cooperate with ICE agents who do not have a signed judicial warrant.
• DO cut back on campus security officers, and refrain from bringing additional security and Chicago Police to campus as their increased presence the past year has already created a climate of fear and repression for many and does not keep us safer.
• DO foster an environment that welcomes the voices and perspectives of noncitizens and US citizens alike.

We ask that the DePaul Administration meet with the signatories of this open letter to discuss concrete steps and a timeline for actions outlined above, including making a public statement committing to protecting our community.

Laura Kina, Vincent de Paul Professor, The Art School

Ann Russo, Vincent de Paul Professor, Women’s and Gender Studies 

Allison McCracken, Associate Professor, American Studies

Michael McIntyre, Associate Professor, International Studies

Erin Workman, Associate Professor, Writing, Rhetoric, & Discourse 

Lydia Saravia, Term Faculty, WRD

Dr. Jessica Cook-Qurayshi, Director, Labor Education Center

Marcy J. Dinius, Professor, Department of English

Laila Farah, Associate Professor WGS/CES

Nila Ginger Hofman, Professor Anthropology, Director Community Service Studies Minor

Heidi Nast, Professor, International Studies

Anna Anthropy, Term Faculty, School of Design

Lisa Mahoney, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture

Yuki Miyamoto, Professor, Department of Religious Studies 

Meredith Carroll, Content Producer, Driehaus College of Business

Kaveh Ehsani, Associate Professor, International Studies

Lourdes Torres, Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies

Scott Paeth, Professor, Department of Religious Studies

Heather Montes Ireland, Associate Professor, Acting Director of LGBTQ Studies

Amor Kohli, Professor, Dept. of African and Black Diaspora Studies

Horace R. Hall, Professor of Educational Policy Studies

Jeff Carter, Professor, The Art School

Francesca Royster, Professor, Department of English

Rocío Ferreira, Chair WGS, Associate Professor, MOL

Winifred Curran, Professor, Department of Geography

Gary Cestaro, Associate Professor, Modern Languages/LGBTQ Studies

Mark DeLancey, Professor and Chair, Dept. of History of Art and Architecture

Kathryn Grant, Professor, Psychology

Li Jin, Vincent de Paul Professor, Global Asian Studies

Joanna Gardner-Huggett, Associate Professor, History of Art and Architecture

Alex Papadopoulos, Professor, Geography

Susana Martínez, Modern Languages and Peace, Justice & Conflict Studies

Marcia Good, Senior Professional Lecturer, Anthropology

Chernoh Sesay, Associate Professor, Religious Studies

Sanjukta Mukherjee, Associate Professor, Department of Women’s and Gender Studies

Sean D. Kirkland, Professor, Department of Philosophy

Bill Johnson Gonzalez, Associate Professor, English

Carolina Sternberg, Professor, Latin American and Latino Studies

Ron Neimark, Instructor, Labor Education Center

Molly Brown, Associate Professor, Psychology

Meg Lewis, Instructor, Labor Education Center

Jessica Espinoza, Instructor, Labor Education Center

Cathleen Jensen, Faculty, Labor Education Center

Rajit Mazumder, Associate Professor, Department of History 

Delia Cosentino, Professor, History of Art and Architecture 

Alex M. Tillett-Saks, Instructor, Labor Education Center

Anne Saw, Associate Professor, Psychology

Reina Ashley Nomura, Liberal Studies Program Coordinator, College of LAS

Aviv Goldman, Adjunct Faculty, Women’s and Gender Studies

Megan Heffernan, Associate Professor, English

See additional signatories gathered after 4:30 p.m. 3/28/25: https://forms.gle/nykRLjeC9f7jaaTU6

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Letters to the Editor

Anyone within the DePaul community may submit a letter to the editor. All letters should be emailed to the Opinions Editor. Read the full letters to the editor policy here.