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According to a June 2024 press release, Lightfoot will be a Visiting Professor for the Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan as a Harry A. and Margaret D. Towsley Foundation Policymaker in Residence. Lightfoot graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor’s Degree in 1984. 

Lightfoot will co-teach a “strategic public policy consulting class” with Professor Jeffrey Morenoff. 

According to the press release, “The course will pair graduate students with social impact not-for-profit organizations in Chicago and Michigan to solve challenges those groups are facing in the delivery of services in their respective communities.”

Lightfoot addressed her adequacy to teach the course, and revealed she started a not-for-profit organization: 

“I have started a not-for-profit whose goal is to support community based organizations to build the internal infrastructure they need to remain viable for their communities. These organizations are in many instances critical assets in these neighborhoods and are essential for neighborhood vibrancy.”

Lightfoot believes the goal of her not-for-profit can be realized through the public policy course:

“To make this vision a reality, however, we need a large cadre of consultants who share this view about the importance of community-based organizations, and are willing to work at tables set by the community to share their time and talents in furtherance of building capacity and solving problems.”

Ford School Dean Celeste Watkins-Hayes said the university was excited to have Lightfoot as a professor on campus:

“We are delighted to welcome U-M alum Mayor Lori Lightfoot back to her alma mater. With her extensive experience as a public servant, Mayor Lightfoot will offer her insightful and multifaceted perspective to our students and inspire our future leaders to grapple with the opportunities and the deep complexities of leadership.”

Updated – June 21, 2024

Former Chicago Mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has been appointed as a Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow for the fall term (2023) at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. 

Lori is proud to be Chicago’s first black and openly gay mayor and she served from 2019 until 2023. Following her tumultuous and controversial term as mayor, Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose re-election.

In 2020, she led Chicago’s response to COVID-19 and, according to Sun Times Chicago, her course will be a study of how she managed the pandemic. Like many other big-name mayors in the United States, Lori fully supported vaccine mandates for restaurants, bars, gyms, and other indoor public places. Beyond that, she used her leverage to threaten Chicago PD and other city employees saying they will lose pay if they don’t get a COVID-19 vaccine.

For many people across the country, the name Lori Lightfoot was very unfamiliar until the pandemic began. Lightfoot’s newfound fame came from a healthy mix of political stunts and controversies. 

Mayor Lori Lightfoot (left) dressed as the “Rona Destroyer”. October 1, 2020.

In this tendentious tweet, Lori put out a call to arms and pushed for “a fight to victory.”

One notable controversy surrounding Lori stems from a Zoom call regarding the removal of a Christopher Columbus Statue in the Little Italy neighborhood in Chicago. During the call, Lori got frustrated and is quoted saying, 

“You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians, what you are doing, you are out there measuring your d—- with the Italians seeing who’s got the biggest d—, you are out there stroking your d—- over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago Police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My d— is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest d— in Chicago.”

This sentiment landed her in a defamation lawsuit from the group of lawyers that were on the call. 

At a city press conference on March 15, 2023, Lori Lightfoot was criticized by a reporter for her governance. The reporter said, “You shut down our schools, you shut down the churches, you shut down the businesses. You did the one thing I thought could never happen: As somebody who was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, I never thought in my life that I would ever see the city of Chicago brought down so low.”

Lightfoot responded to the reporter saying,

“I hope that, after today’s city council meeting, you will pack your suitcase and get the hell out of my city.” She then proceeded to strip him of his city press credentials which got her in another lawsuit. 

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Mayor Lightfoot came out and said, “F— Clarence Thomas” while she was speaking at a pride event.   

Published – June 2024