Latest news with #LoyolaUniversityChicago


Black America Web
3 days ago
- Politics
- Black America Web
Trump Signs EO On College Sports: But What Does It Mean?
On Thursday, President Trump exercised his writing hand and signed an executive order titled 'Saving College Sports,' mandating federal authorities like the Department of Education to have more involvement with universities, especially those public colleges that receive federal funds, to ensure that athletic scholarships and NIL deals remain above board. The order demands that larger universities with massive athletic departments maintain a certain number of scholarships for less lucrative sports. The hope is that this executive order will help quell the massive influx of money for schools to attract big names under the recently created name, image, and likeness deals — known as NIL. 'The future of college sports is under unprecedented threat,' the order says, NPR reports. 'A national solution is urgently needed to prevent this situation from deteriorating beyond repair and to protect non-revenue sports, including many women's sports, that comprise the backbone of intercollegiate athletics, drive American superiority at the Olympics and other international competitions, and catalyze hundreds of thousands of student-athletes to fuel American success in myriad ways.' Here's the problem: An executive order is not the law. Think of it as a sternly worded email from the CEO of a company. Yes, it means something, but what really? There is no guarantee that the order will be made a law, but many legal experts believe that it does shine a light on the president's growing interest in sticking his nose in matters that don't concern him. 'This may not be a binding legal framework — but it's absolutely a signal: that the federal government, and now presidential politics, are increasingly willing to intervene in the future of college sports,' Noah Henderson, a professor of sports management at Loyola University Chicago, told NPR. Trump's order comes just one month after a class action settlement called House v. NCAA allowed Division I college athletic departments to pay players directly. 'Absent guardrails to stop the madness and ensure a reasonable, balanced use of resources across collegiate athletic programs that preserves their educational and developmental benefits, many college sports will soon cease to exist,' the order reads. Many believed that the president was planning on creating a college sports commission to sort through some of the more difficult issues facing college sports, (like is all of the player money coming from the universities?) But Trump's order chose to try and add 'guardrails' to 'an out-of-control, rudderless system in which competing university donors engage in bidding wars for the best players, who can change teams each season,' the order reads. From AP News: There has been a dramatic increase in money flowing into and around college athletics, and a sense of chaos. Key court victories won by athletes angry that they were barred for decades from earning income based on their celebrity and from sharing in the billions of revenue they helped generate have gutted the amateurism model long at the heart of college sports. Facing a growing number of state laws undercutting its authority, the NCAA in July 2021 cleared the way for athletes to cash in with NIL deals with brands and sponsors — deals now worth millions. That came mere days after a 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court that found the NCAA cannot impose caps on education-related benefits schools provide to their athletes because such limits violate antitrust law. The NCAA's embrace of NIL deals set the stage for another massive change that took effect July 1: The ability of schools to begin paying millions of dollars to their own athletes, up to $20.5 million per school over the next year. The $2.8 billion House settlement shifts even more power to athletes, who have also won the ability to transfer from school to school without waiting to play. 'We've gotten to the point where government is involved,' Purdue coach Barry Odom said when asked about the Trump order, AP reports. 'Obviously, there's belief it needs to be involved. We'll get it all worked out. The game's been around for a hundred years and it's going to be around 100 more.' Trump Signed An Executive Order On College Sports, But What Does It Mean? was originally published on 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.


Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Politics
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago communities recovering from string of hateful defacements
Daniel Kirzane said he was cautious and curious after learning someone posted antisemitic graffiti across the street from his synagogue in Hyde Park. While the congregation contacted Chicago police just to be safe, Kirzane said he didn't think it was a 'real threat.' Rather, Kirzane said he viewed it as 'public intimidation' — the kind his congregation wouldn't 'give in to.' 'These aren't the values we hold by in Hyde Park, which is a community that's proud of its diversity,' said Kirzane, rabbi at KAM Isaiah Israel Congregation. 'And I think many Jews are upset to be singled out in this negative way.' Vandals tagged at least four locations in Hyde Park in June with antisemitic messages, police said. Murals depicting solidarity with Palestinians and immigrants were defaced that same month in Pilsen. Just weeks later, taggers drew hate symbols and language on buildings in Little Village. The rash of vandalism has shaken communities across Chicago, and while residents have mustered support for their affected neighbors, the vandalism reflects a concerning rise in hateful ideologies, experts and advocates said. 'To experience something like this is scary,' Chicago Human Relations Commissioner Nancy Andrade said. 'It really rattles you, and what you think may have been a safe community makes you start to think again.' While overall hate crimes in Chicago have decreased between 2023 and 2024, reported cases against Jewish people and gay men increased, according to a July 18 city news release. Antisemitic hate crimes increased 58% last year to account for about 38% of total hate crimes. Still, it seems people are more willing to express their hate, said Loyola University Chicago professor Jeannine Bell, who studies policing and hate crime. She attributed that willingness in part to the rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and civil rights enforcement at the federal level. Those policies create a national conversation that has 'percolated down' to more local displays of hate and bias, she said. To DePaul University professor Joseph Mello, President Donald Trump and his administration's attacks on immigrant groups have contributed to what he described as a trickle-down effect. 'It creates a permission structure for average people to say some pretty vile stuff and do some pretty vile things,' said Mello, a political science professor who researches speech rights and law. Throughout June, Pilsen was hit with hate-related defacements. At a mural depicting a Palestinian man by 16th Street and Ashland Avenue, a woman burned the face of the painted subject. The woman also threw trash and feces at the mural, according to Natalie Figueroa, who said the vandal assaulted her when she tried to intervene. Alyssa Hall, a technology consultant who has lived in Pilsen for six years, said the defacements have upset her. 'They're kind of taking the heart of what this neighborhood is — resistance, building a community outside of your own and that solidarity — and attacking it,' she said. As a result of recent hate-related vandalism in Pilsen, Hall is more wary of people from outside the neighborhood and their intentions, she added. She urged her community to stay vigilant and for visitors to remain respectful of the neighborhood. One of the most significant impacts of hateful expressions, including the graffiti in Hyde Park and the mural defacement in Pilsen, is its chilling effect on the rest of a community, Mello said. 'Hate speech is … meant to intimidate and silence other people into not speaking,' Mello said. 'It's designed to make people speak less, to scare people.' Mello pointed to last weekend's vandalism in Little Village, where Latino-owned businesses and advocacy organizations discovered their buildings tagged with swastikas and pro-immigrant enforcement messages. He said those messages can make immigrants feel less safe about their communities. And even if the iconography isn't familiar to the general public, hate-related vandalism can still damage a community, Mello added. An individual defaced Hoste, a recently opened event space in Pilsen, with a Nazi symbol called the Black Sun in mid-June. Co-founder Jordan Tepper said when his staff saw the circular shapes spray painted on four exterior doors the morning of June 16, they had to look up what they represented. In the last few years, several far-right and neo-Nazi groups have adopted the symbol. 'What was really affected was the staff,' Tepper said. 'It's not good to feel unsafe in your place of work.' Though police caught the vandal, they told Tepper it would be difficult to charge the incident as a hate crime, he said. Nonetheless, community members who reached out in support of Hoste told Tepper they felt 'hurt and frustrated' by the graffiti, he said. Jordan Esparza-Kelley, a spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations-Chicago, said the vandalism has made many Muslim, Arab and South Asian Chicagoans worried about the 'viability' of living here. 'It does, for many in the community, beg the question of 'Is it OK for us to exist here?'' he said. ''Is it safe for us to exist here?'' He added that authorities need to do more when hate affects communities of color, such as in Pilsen. Police did not make an arrest after the mural defacement, and the woman responsible walked away from the scene after officers arrived, advocates said during a June 18 news conference. How officials respond to hate-related vandalism can make or break a community's recovery, Bell said. 'This is not a victimless crime. … Words matter, damage matters,' Bell said. 'It is incredibly traumatizing to … walk past a swastika or a slur on a building. When you catch the perpetrator, punish the perpetrator, that is recognition that this is something that is damaging not just to the property owner but to anyone who sees it.' Based on her research, dedicated hate crime units in municipal law enforcement are the best positioned to accumulate expertise to fight hate incidents, she said. Chicago police established a human relations section in the 1940s to deal with 'ethnic intimidation' cases. Over the decades, it's evolved into the hate crimes team housed in the office of equity and engagement. Aside from organization, the amount of effort put into solving hate crimes is also important, Bell said. The percent of hate crimes resulting in arrests and charges decreased from about 14% in 2021 to 5% in 2024, according to Chicago police data. Between 70% to 80% of cases were suspended in that time period, meaning all investigative avenues were exhausted but the case couldn't proceed. Chicago's Human Relations Commission also provides victim support to property owners and individuals targeted by hate-related vandalism, Andrade said. After the antisemitic messages in Hyde Park the commission reached out to KAM Isaiah Israel, she said. Andrade's staff also contacted local business owners and advocacy groups such as Latinos Progresando in Little Village after their buildings were tagged, she added. The Human Relations Commission also focuses on educational outreach, Andrade said, launching campaigns to help residents understand when and how to report hate incidents. 'They're speaking up, which is wonderful. That is awesome,' Andrade said. 'Hyde Park communities spoke up. Little Village communities spoke up: 'We don't want this.'' They immediately alerted the authorities. We were alerted about this. We are very happy that (reporting) is happening.' And based on the recently released data showing an increase in hate crimes against Jewish people, the Human Relations Commission plans to hold special hearings on antisemitism in September. Just like government responses, how a community reacts to hateful vandalism can also affect how targeted groups recover, Bell said. If a majority of neighbors speak up to say a hate display doesn't represent the neighborhood, it doesn't have to 'stain' the community, she said. Kirzane said by and large, the Hyde Park community has moved on from late-June's antisemitic taggings. In addition to encouraging responsiveness from police and the Human Relations Commission, Kirzane said the offices of two aldermen, local churches and neighbors also reached out to ask how they could help. 'If we didn't have that, it would be harder to move on,' Kirzane said.


Chicago Tribune
29-06-2025
- Chicago Tribune
Sharp drop in arrests, other long-term crime trends shown in new Cook County data dashboard
Throughout 2019, Chicago police officers made nearly 80,000 arrests before scaling them back significantly during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the following spring. Now five years later, that drop appears not to be just a COVID-era blip: In recent years, arrests have rebounded slightly, but annually police still are recording tens of thousands of fewer arrests than they did in 2019. The trend is among a number of long-term shifts in how the criminal justice system operates in Cook County, according to Loyola University researchers who in partnership with local officials produced a data project that seeks to shed light on how 'shocks to the system' like the pandemic have reshaped how crime and violence are handled in Chicago. The publicly available data dashboard, unveiled by officials on Tuesday, integrates information from police, the court system, jails and prisons with the goal of creating a fuller picture of how cases move through the system from start to finish. It's funded by the MacArthur Foundation's Safety and Justice Challenge and was developed in conjunction with Loyola University Chicago by David Olson and Don Stemen, co-directors of Loyola's Center for Criminal Justice. 'It's a strategic tool to be able to note big trends and for the county stakeholders to use internally in terms of how we talk to each other about overall trends and strategies,' said Ali Abid, deputy director of the Cook County Justice Advisory Council, adding that officials felt it was important to make it available to the public and the media as well. The dashboard comes at a time when the justice system is still adjusting to major changes, like the elimination of cash bail in 2023 in addition to the massive upheaval brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. The system is also experiencing new shifts that may continue to transform how justice looks in Cook County, such as the shuttering of the electronic monitoring program run by Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and the policy changes brought by State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke since she took office in December. 'What we've been seeing for a decade is a shift in thinking about how we respond to crime,' said Olson. Olson said Cook County is the only large county he is aware of with a data system like this one. He noted that it is not designed to explain why changes are happening but rather help stakeholders spot patterns. 'Part of it is to illustrate the interconnectedness of the system despite the fact that agencies are at different levels of government, different branches of government,' he said. Even though, according to the dashboard, arrests have declined since the pandemic — with police in total making more than 47,000 arrests in 2024 compared with more than 78,000 in 2019 — the researchers noted that incidents reported to police have not seen the same sustained sharp decrease, an indication that police practices may be shifting. '(Arrests have) gone up a little bit since 2020 but certainly are not back to the levels that you saw before COVID,' Stemen said. In particular, drug arrests have declined significantly. 'I don't think anyone would interpret this as a 60% drop in drug use in Chicago, but a change in policing habits,' Olson said. And among those who are charged with a drug offense, a greater share of those people are being sentenced to probation, according to the researchers. 'The use of prison has gone down,' Olson said, as a reliance on diversion and community supervision has grown. Meanwhile, arrests for weapons offenses have risen in recent years, according to the dashboard, with more than 5,300 made in 2024 versus around 4,600 in 2019. So far this year, the dashboard has also tracked a rise in the jail population, as well as an increase in people being ordered detained by judges while their cases are pending, though Olson and Stemen cautioned that the 2025 data so far makes up a small sample of the total data. The Tribune earlier this year reported on a recent uptick in the population of Cook County Jail, as officials examined possible factors such as the new state's attorney's policy-making and judicial decisions. 'It's at least on a trend where it seems like it will continue to increase for a while, but at a certain point it should plateau,' Olson said.


Yomiuri Shimbun
27-06-2025
- Science
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Humans Adapted to Diverse Habitats before Trekking out of Africa
Small bands of Homo sapiens made a few failed forays leaving our home continent before the species finally managed to launch a major dispersal out of Africa roughly 50,000 years ago, going first into Europe and Asia and eventually the rest of the world. So why was this migration successful after the prior ones were not? New research is offering insight. It documents how human hunter-gatherers in Africa began about 70,000 years ago to embrace a greater diversity of habitats such as thick forests and arid deserts, acquiring an adaptability useful for tackling the wide range of conditions awaiting beyond the continent. 'Why the dispersal 50,000 years ago was successful is a big question in human origins research. Our results suggest that one part of the reason is that humans had developed the ecological flexibility to survive in challenging habitats,' said Loyola University Chicago archeologist Emily Hallett, coleader of the study published in the journal Nature. Looking at an array of archeological sites in Africa, the study detailed how human populations expanded their range into the forests of Central and West Africa and the deserts of North Africa in the roughly 20,000 years preceding this dispersal. Some examples of archeological sites dating to this time that illustrate the expansion of human niches to harsh deserts include locales in Libya and Namibia, and examples of expansion to forested habitats include locales in Malawi and South Africa. Homo sapiens arose roughly 300,000 years ago, inhabiting grasslands, savannahs and various other African ecosystems. 'Starting from about 70,000 years ago, we see that they suddenly start to intensify this exploitation of diverse habitats and also expand into new types of habitat in a way we don't see before. They exploit more types of woodland, more types of closed canopy forests, more types of deserts, highlands and grasslands,' said archeologist and study coleader Eleanor Scerri of the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Germany. 'An Ice Age was coming, which means drier conditions in parts of Africa. It seems possible that humans responded to this squeeze by learning how to adapt to new niches,' Scerri added. The increased ecological flexibility of the species appears to have reflected cultural and social advances such as passing knowledge from one generation to the next and engaging in cooperative behavior, the researchers said. 'This must have entailed profound changes in their interaction with the natural environment, as it allowed them to occupy not only new environments in Africa, but entirely new conditions in Eurasia as well,' said evolutionary biologist and study coleader Michela Leonardi of the Natural History Museum in London. 'Another way to phrase this is that the ability to live in a variety of environments in Africa is not directly the adaptation that allowed a successful [migration] out of Africa, but rather a sign that humans by that point were the ultimate generalist, able to tackle environments that went from deep forest to dry deserts,' said University of Cambridge evolutionary ecologist and study coleader Andrea Manica. 'This flexibility is the key trait that allowed them, later on, to conquer novel challenges, all the way to the coldest tundras in Siberia.' Trekking out of Africa, Homo sapiens encountered not only new environments and unfamiliar animals and plants, but also other human species, including the Neanderthals and Denisovans. The ecological flexibility learned in Africa may have provided an edge when Homo sapiens encountered these other humans, both of whom disappeared relatively soon thereafter, the researchers said. Genetic evidence indicates that today's people outside of Africa can trace their ancestry to the population of humans, numbering perhaps only in the thousands, who engaged in that pioneering migration out of Africa approximately 50,000 years ago. 'I think that adaptability and innovation are hallmarks of our species, and that they allowed us to succeed in every environment we encountered,' Hallett said. 'At the same time, we are almost too good at adapting to different places, to the detriment of most other species on Earth.'

Los Angeles Times
21-06-2025
- Science
- Los Angeles Times
Early humans adapted to extreme habitats. Researchers say it set the stage for global migration
WASHINGTON — Humans are the only animal that lives in virtually every possible environment, from rainforests to deserts to tundra. This adaptability is a skill that long predates the modern age. According to a new study published this week in Nature, ancient Homo sapiens developed the flexibility to survive by finding food and other resources in a wide variety of difficult habitats before they dispersed from Africa about 50,000 years ago. 'Our superpower is that we are ecosystem generalists,' said Eleanor Scerri, an evolutionary archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology in Jena, Germany. Our species first evolved in Africa around 300,000 years ago. Though prior fossil finds show some groups made early forays outside the continent, lasting human settlements in other parts of the world didn't happen until a series of migrations around 50,000 years ago. 'What was different about the circumstance of the migrations that succeeded — why were humans ready this time?' said study co-author Emily Hallett, an archaeologist at Loyola University Chicago. Earlier theories held that Stone Age humans might have made a single important technological advance or developed a new way of sharing information, but researchers haven't found evidence to back that up. This study, whose findings were published Wednesday, took a different approach by looking at the trait of flexibility itself. The scientists assembled a database of archaeological sites showing human presence across Africa from 120,000 to 14,000 years ago. For each site, researchers modeled what the local climate would have been like during the time periods that ancient humans lived there. 'There was a really sharp change in the range of habitats that humans were using starting around 70,000 years ago,' Hallet said. 'We saw a really clear signal that humans were living in more challenging and more extreme environments.' Though humans had long survived in savannas and forests, they shifted into diverse environments including dense rainforests and arid deserts in the period leading up to 50,000 years ago, developing what Hallet called an 'ecological flexibility that let them succeed.' Although this leap in abilities is impressive, it's important not to assume that only Homo sapiens did it, said University of Bordeaux archaeologist William Banks, who was not involved in the research. Other groups of early human ancestors also left Africa and established long-term settlements elsewhere, including those that evolved into Europe's Neanderthals, he said. The new research helps explain why humans were ready to expand across the world way back when, he said, but it doesn't answer the lasting question of why only our species remains today. Larson writes for the Associated Press.