Former Chicago mayor lends her experience at UIC

In a classroom at the University of Illinois Chicago this spring semester, former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot stood before a group of students eager to explore how leadership unfolds when history moves faster than ever. The course, Leadership in Times of Crisis, is one she designed herself. It's rooted in firsthand experience and a conviction that young people must understand the arc of history to lead effectively.

"I have to say, I love this class, I really do," Lightfoot said. "The great benefit of teaching is learning, and learning from your students."

Lightfoot served as Chicago's mayor from 2019 to 2023, becoming the first Black woman and first openly gay person to hold the office. Since then, she's traded marathon city council sessions for seminar discussions at the University of Michigan, Harvard and now, the UIC College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs. Her course attracts undergraduate students majoring in urban studies and public policy and the college's graduate students, all in programs that prepare future leaders to understand how cities work and how they can work better.

These programs at Chicago's most civically engaged public university emphasize hands-on learning and critical thinking about urban systems. Students study housing, transportation, inequality, planning, public management and governance, often with internships or projects in the city's neighborhoods.

It's the kind of practical backdrop Lightfoot said makes UIC special. "You're in one of the great urban laboratories," she said of her classes. "Anything you can imagine is probably happening in some corner of this city. Go out and learn your city."

"We're so lucky to live in this great city, where our civic giants like Mayor Lightfoot are willing to contribute their experience and life lessons to the leaders of tomorrow," said Stacey Swearingen White, dean of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs.

Many of Lightfoot's lessons draw directly from her time leading Chicago during the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 protests following George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis. Those moments, which can be described as "a perfect storm," are studied in her classroom not just as historical events but as exercises in leadership under pressure.

She said the idea to pair those two crises in one unit came from her students' curiosity.

"I would've covered COVID no matter what," Lightfoot said. "But I don't know that I would have gone in further and connected the dots between the pandemic and that summer of great social and civic disruption. That's really very much driven by what the students express as their interest."

Margarita Arango, a public policy major, enrolled in the Leadership in Times of Crisis course. "This class follows the history and policy surrounding specific crises in recent American history and has opened my eyes to the difficult choices public officials face in times of crisis," Arango said. "Mayor Lightfoot details political/social crises from the Great Depression to crises she faced in her own administration and encourages us to evaluate leaders' choices, including what they could have done differently."

Lightfoot hopes her students come away with a deeper empathy for those in decision-making roles.

"Very few things in life are black and white," she said. "I want them to see how leaders make decisions in the moment and to be more generous to those under fire."

"One of my favorite lectures so far was learning about the Japanese Internment," urban studies major Marc Zoppi said of Lightfoot's class. "I wasn't so familiar with it and was shocked to learn what (the U.S.) did."

Lightfoot worries young people's understanding of government has been eroded by a lack of civic and historical education.

"We've failed this generation by not teaching history in the way that we need to," she said. "Democracy depends on participation. Without that knowledge base, people can feel disconnected from leadership and public service."

Still, Lightfoot credits her UIC students for their passion and perspective. She described them as "phenomenal; bar none, some of the best I've ever taught."

"I didn't know how many students would even show up," she joked. "But not only did they stay past the drop deadline, they are really engaged."

Casey Fitzgerald, a public policy major, said, "Every class, we learn about a historical event and the decisions that were made that affected the outcome. Then we go through it as a class and dissect each choice, discuss what choices could have been made differently and look at everything in such an intersectional way."

Before entering politics, Lightfoot was a prosecutor and corporate attorney; she eventually became chair of the Chicago Police Board. When she won the mayoral election in 2019, she was a relative political outsider who promised reform and accountability. She now lives in Logan Square, and she still sees the city as both a challenge and an educator.

"This city has tremendous history, from the Pullman Porters and modern labor movements to Jane Addams and the Great Migration," she said. "I have a great sense of pride being a Chicagoan. The city itself has been an incredible teacher for me."

And as for teaching at UIC, "I believe UIC is a special place," she said. "It has the opportunity to be a leader in the city in ways other universities cannot and have not. I like feeling like I'm a small part of that."

For the students in her classroom, many of whom were in high school during the crises they now study, there's something equally meaningful in learning leadership from someone who has stood at the center of it.

"When I graduate, I hope to use the experience gained from this course to challenge the problems and emergencies that planners will face in the future," said Thomas Rose, an urban studies major. "Aside from political crises, there are also matters like a potential climate refugee crisis that Chicago will have to prepare for. If I should be in a planning position when such a situation could arise, the valuable firsthand experience from Mayor Lightfoot and her colleagues this course has provided will help me mitigate problems and potentially save lives."

- Jodi White Jones, College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs