UChicago Civic Engagement: Workforce Development?

HPherald.com

To the Editor:

Where, in the 800 words Derek Douglas took in 2/13’s Herald, does he provide a word of evidence for his claim, that “Alex [Goldenberg] makes inaccurate claims” in his interview in 1/29’s Herald?

Douglas leads the University of Chicago’s civic engagement. Goldenberg had told the Herald, “A lot of African Americans are employed by the University,” yet ”investing in workforce development writ large is something that they’re not doing.” Goldenberg specified that with all its building, the University could get “more people of color into [building] trades” — a need for which the Obamas have donated personally, in preparation for building their presidential center. “How is it that the University of Chicago, with its immense development resources, isn’t able to at least match that?”

Tellingly, Douglas expounds on seemingly everything but Goldenberg’s concern… from minority-owned businesses for construction, to local hiring, to charter schools, to some of the very benefits Goldenberg helped force on the University, like a trauma center. But what about workforce development, so that more of all these Black neighbors the University has working for it can get more than minimum wages?

All I can find through Douglas’s letter is a conclusion from the article he protests. Here again, “the U. of C. is not operating in good faith.” Rather, if the University does good, it is because we call it out.