Stately and elegant, red brick with white trim, partly obscured by a row of trees, the house has nothing to set it apart from the other homes on this affluent residential block of Kenwood. Except that it is protected. In the driveway there is always a black SUV. At the end of the street, where University Avenue meets Hyde Park Boulevard, a black sedan is parked behind a long wall of waist-high concrete barriers and metal pipe fences. The blockade reaches along the street, across the sidewalks and back on the other side, enclosing half a city block in each direction. At every entrance, a blue metal sign covered with yellow and white letters declares in English and Spanish: ATTENTION: BY ENTERING THIS AREA YOU ARE CONSENTING TO A SEARCH OF YOUR PERSON AND BELONGINGS.

Barack Obama doesn’t live here anymore, but his presence does. Read the rest of this entry »

The Chicago Neighborhood Tours website boasts that Hyde Park and Kenwood are “where lakefront vistas, ancient history, architecture and Nobel Prizes meet.” Now that Senator Obama, who used to be the neighbor of thousands of proud South Side residents, has become President Obama, the tour company offers the opportunity to “admire distinctively designed dwellings in President Obama’s Kenwood neighborhood.” Read the rest of this entry »

“This little light of mine,” a swell of voices rang out over darkness twinkling with red, white, and blue lights. “I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” The DuSable Museum of African American History Theater was full to the brim with bodies and feeling as visitors sang the spiritual and waved glow sticks in celebration after President Obama’s inauguration speech. Read the rest of this entry »

Not many sixty-five-year-old women have tattoos that read “Thug Life,” but Nikki Giovanni is an exception. The radical ’60s poet-turned-children’s author, who stopped at the University of Chicago’s International House during her book tour on October 18th, inked herself some years ago in a tribute to famed rapper Tupac Shakur. This was just one of many colorful topics that Giovanni chose to share with her audience, who, by the end of Giovanni’s talk, weren’t sure if they had come to hear a lecture promoting children’s books, a mangled retelling of American history, or a stump speech for Barack Obama. Read the rest of this entry »

Barack Obama is perhaps the most famous Chicagoan in the world at the moment, so it’s no surprise he is well remembered on the South Side. In fact, his name and likeness have been popping up all over the place. Here are some of the more unusual ways the South Side is commemorating—and profiting off of—its native son. Read the rest of this entry »

“Libertarian paternalism” sounds like an oxymoron, but two professors at the University of Chicago have written a new book arguing that it is the best approach to governance. In “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness,” UofC Law School professor Cass Sunstein and Graduate School of Business professor Richard Thaler explain how it is possible to influence people to make good choices in areas as diverse as savings, nutrition, and the environment, without restricting their rights to choose. Their method consists of “nudging” people in the right direction, sometimes with economic incentives, but just as often by appealing to the lazy and the irrational in all of us: making the best paths also those of least resistance. Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday, February 5 was an important day for American politics, with five frontrunners among the Republicans and Democrats vying to win their parties’ nomination to become the country’s 44th President. For the event, the University of Chicago Democrats and Republicans transformed the Reynolds Club’s Hallowed Grounds coffee shop, installing a projector and setting up speakers so that students could huddle together and support their candidate as the night’s results unfolded. The place was packed. At the very least there were a hundred people, and though the results started coming in at seven, a solid group of students soldiered on until 11:30 as the number of votes in California and Missouri were still being counted. Read the rest of this entry »

Aside from the occasional political button or t-shirt, the people crowded into the high-ceilinged atrium of the Experimental Station showed no obvious signs of radicalism. They sat quietly before each panel of speakers, punctuating the dialogue with the occasional burst of applause. Even when “apparatchiks” were mentioned, it was as a means of condemnation rather than description. Read the rest of this entry »