“The real challenge is how the database is going to be protected, because there’s a lot of information going there,” said Maurice Dawson, associate professor of information technology and management and director of Illinois Tech’s Center for Cyber Security and Forensics Education.
“Even the lower courts that have ruled against the president believe that the president is entitled to a fair amount of deference. I don’t think that’s a controversial view. But the (federal) government is taking the position that the president’s decisions in this are completely unreviewable,” said Carolyn Shapiro, founder and co-director of the Chicago-Kent College of Law’s Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States. “I think that’s completely wrong, and it seems unlikely to me that there are five votes for that position, because if there were, they would have already granted a stay.”
“The administration is trying to dispense with the niceties of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which Congress has passed in order to structure who can fill vacant positions,” said constitutional law professor Harold Krent. “The administration obviously wanted Alina Habba to be the interim U.S. attorney and had the right under the statute to appoint her … but under that particular statutory provision, it only lasted for 120 days.”
“For the most part the idea of an independent-expert-type agency will be over” if 90-year-old precedent allowing Congress to limit the president's ability to fire independent agency officials is overturned, said Chicago-Kent College of Law Professor Harold Krent. “It's incredibly significant. It gives the president even more powerful control over these agencies.”
“To find places where the locals usually eat comes with some risks,” said Alvin Lee, a director at the Institute for Food Safety and Health at Illinois Institute of Technology, “and the risk is always food poisoning.”
"It's an enormous leap to say that because Brandon Johnson's top deputies and policymaking positions are African American, that the city is discriminating on the basis of race in its hiring of ordinary, non-policy making employees," said Carolyn Shapiro, professor at the Chicago-Kent College of Law.
“They are arguing that the categories of people that they are attempting to exclude are not subject to jurisdiction,” says Christopher W. Schmidt, law professor and co-director of the Institute on the Supreme Court of the United States at Chicago Kent College of Law. “Their argument being that if you’re not legally in the country, [or] temporarily, you’re not, in some sense, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. Now, even as I talk through that, it doesn’t seem to really resonate in any meaningful way when people think about why you’re subject to jurisdiction.”
“The potential upside is huge, which means if you get in early the ride is going to be phenomenal,” said Illinois Tech President Raj Echambadi. “In the next 25 years, we’re going to be catching that elephant’s tail.”
On Monday evening, May 5th, the winner of the 2025 Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize (MCHAP) was announced in Chicago. The ceremony took place, appropriately enough, in Crown Hall, Mies van der Rohe’s elegant essay in transparency, located on the campus he designed for the Illinois Institute of Technology.
“The story of the Armour Research Foundation Reactor reflects both the optimism and the challenges of embracing new technologies,” said Jeff Terry, a physics professor and Illinois Tech’s vice provost for research. “As we continue to explore the possibilities of nuclear energy today, this pioneering effort at Illinois Tech serves as a reminder of the progress made and the potential that still lies ahead.”
