Members of six unions took to the quad this morning to protest University funding decisions and advocate against new viewpoint neutrality standards at UChicago’s Laboratory School.
Graduate Students United–United Electrical, Faculty Forward, the Committee of Interns and Residents, Teamsters Local 743, National Nurses United, and UChicago’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) were represented at the protest, which had about 100 attendees.
“We’re here on this May Day to oppose the rise of authoritarianism at every level,” said Dmitry Kondrashov, an instructional professor in the Biological Sciences Collegiate Division and chair of the Faculty Forward executive committee. “The University of Chicago, while maybe not a microcosm of this authoritarianism at the federal government [level]… at least echo[es] the same priorities.”
Kondrashov said that, in addition to the Lab School policy, the unions are fighting against Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations near campus and increased workloads for professors without increased pay.
The new Lab School standards state that “[e]ducators should engage contested issues in instructional settings only when pedagogically justified.” A UChicago AAUP statement last month, signed by 252 professors, criticizes the standard and expresses concern that UChicago administrators are “engaged in an act of compliance with implicit or explicit pressure from powerful and wealthy actors—an act of compliance dressed in the guise of neutrality.”
“The administration is clearly using this as a test run before they attempt to control what and how we teach at the University,” Kondrashov said. “These are reflections we are seeing of the priorities of the University—the billionaires on the Board of Trustees and the administrators doing their bidding.”
Associate professor of history and the College and UChicago AAUP President Gabriel Winant told the Maroon that the protest was part of a broader “effort to strengthen shared governance on this campus and to build more of a culture of participation in the governance of the University, which we view as having fallen too far under the influence of wealthy donors and political pressure from wealth.”
Multiple speakers also criticized University funding decisions and professors’ wages.
“A lot of us are paid [the National Institutes of Health] national postdoc minimum, which is currently set at $62,000 for a Ph.D. researcher,” Department of Ecology and Evolution fellow Luella Allen-Waller said. “Chicago isn’t cheap. We all know that, and many of us are starting families, caring for aging parents, trying to travel back to… our home countries. $62,000 does not cut it. We make a living wage, but we deserve a thriving wage.” The National Institutes of Health currently sets the minimum stipend for first-year postdoctoral researchers at $63,480.
“None of us can actually afford to live here if you’re a single person,” Eddie, a representative from Teamsters Local 743, said. Local 743 represents several groups of employees on campus, including clerical workers and service and maintenance staff. It also represents student library employees under a separate collective bargaining agreement.
“The University, over the past months, years, has been increasingly diverting funds for our mission of education away from work here, away from the students,” said Daniel Morgan, a professor in the Department of Cinema and Media Studies, in an interview with the Maroon. “We’re here to attempt to restore the University to its core mission: research and education.”
Brent Fergusson / May 6, 2026 at 10:14 am
If the neutrality guidelines being imposed on lab teachers right now were enacted in the 50’s, lab would be defending segregation. But what’s the actual history of Lab? They formally desegregated in 1943, more than a decade before brown v board of education.
The administration wants to sell the lab community a false bill of goods–that these neutrality guidelines are a return to uchicago principles. They’re not.
The administration wants us to think that we can’t possibly know what is right and wrong, therefore we shouldn’t fight for anything. This is not hyperbole: the director of the school recently told a room of concerned parents that we couldn’t possibly know what will be considered right and wrong 20 years from now.
It’s a clumsy attempt by the billionaire board of trustees to silence progressive voices in the university community, and it spits in the face of anyone who thinks we should perhaps trust the teachers who were hired as experts in their field to teach our kids. Personally if I were on the Board of trustees of the university of chicago I would be more worried about why Jeffery Epstein said I was “like family”
Milkman / May 2, 2026 at 2:47 pm
Why stop at $63,480? Why not make the minimum stipend $10 billion a year? It’s going to solve all your life problems. And while we’re at it, why not make the minimum wage for all jobs everywhere $10 billion a year as well?
How can someone so ignorant be a postdoctoral scholar anywhere, let alone University of Chicago? If a shop demands a minimum of $500 for a gallon of milk nobody is going to buy. If the government mandates that all shops sells milk at $500 a gallon, shops are either going out of business or they stop selling milk, and nobody gets to drink milk — lose-lose situation for business and consumers. Same thing goes for jobs.
Sour Milkman / May 6, 2026 at 10:07 am
Why stop at an 8 hour workday? Why not make the workday 5 minutes? It’s going to solve all your life problems. And while we’re at it, why not make the work day for all jobs everywhere 5 minutes a day as well?
How can someone so ignorant make comments like this on a maroon article? Milkman here is willfully ignoring the history of the labor movement, which has historically paid for even marginal benefits with blood.
Orrin / May 8, 2026 at 5:14 pm
If the rich can, in their perpetual union, conspire against the poor, cannot the poor, in something of the same sort, conspire against the rich?