On October 24, some 200 students, faculty and staff at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), associated with the city’s famed Art Institute, walked out of class to protest the Israeli mass murder in Gaza. The demonstrators denounced the ongoing genocide and the complicity of the art school and museum.

According to ARTnews“Signs carried phrases such as “WHEN ISRAEL BOMBS, SAIC PROFITS” and “AIC STAFF SUPPORTS SAIC STUDENTS.”

Students for the Liberation of Palestine (SPL), which organized the action, claimed in an Instagram post that the art school “supports and profits from war criminals and profiteers.”

SPL referred to the fact that there could be “no ethical education” at an institution “funded by the Crown family”. The reference is to the descendants of Chicago financier Henry Crown, whose total worth now stands at some $14.7 billion, reports Forbes review. The original Crown “started a building materials company in 1919, which merged with General Dynamics in 1959. The family still owns 10% of General Dynamics” (Forbes) one of the largest arms manufacturers in the world and, underlines the SPL, “an arms supplier to the Israeli army”.

The anti-genocide group continued

There is no free speech, radical artistic expression, and progressive education as long as a member of the Crown family sits on our board of directors and holds more power than any student or faculty member.

Israel’s genocidal campaign continues in Gaza; land theft and settler violence in the West Bank increases; and now the Zionist entity is expanding its murderous attacks and terrorist regimes to Lebanon, Yemen and Syria.

The large Chicago protest occurred amid a widespread crackdown on the right to protest and free speech at art schools across the United States. Many of these institutions witnessed major protests last spring against Israel’s war of extermination, including the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD); Pratt Institute, Cooper Union, School of Visual Arts, Parsons School of Design and Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in New York; the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) in Santa Clarita, California and the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles; Savannah College of Art and Design in Savannah, Georgia; SAIC in Chicago and Cranbrook Academy of Art in suburban Detroit.

The recent protest at SAIC followed “a widely publicized pro-Palestinian protest at the school in May that led to the mass arrest of approximately 70 students,” according to ARTnews. Subsequently, “a group of 40 museum employees sent an open letter to museum president James Rondeau expressing solidarity with the protesters. The letter called on the museum to end “financial support for the Palestinian genocide, whether direct or indirect.”

Remarkably, following a November 2023 walkout in Gaza, “the school administration sent an internal email to students alleging that the protest “disturbed the balance.”ARTnews)