CHICAGO — As Chicago voters head to the polls in less than a month to decide the next mayor of the third largest city in the U.S.—in addition to aldermanic elections in all 50 city wards—DePaul University faculty experts are available to provide insight and commentary. Their expertise includes the many topics being discussed in debates and in the news, such as crime, cash bail, the city budget, the Chicago Recovery Plan, gentrification, drug law, immigration, migration, the Latinx vote, and more. Experts include:
Geneva Brown
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences |
A public defender in Milwaukee and Kenosha, Wisconsin, for nearly a decade, Geneva Brown is now a faculty member in DePaul’s Department of Criminology. Brown can speak to the effect of drug laws on poor communities and communities of color, cannabis law, and general criminal justice topics in Chicago. She recently appeared on WTTW’s “” to discuss the Chicago Police Department’s gang database.
Nick Kachiroubas
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences |
A longtime associate teaching professor in DePaul’s School of Public Service, Nick Kachiroubas serves as city clerk for the City of Crystal Lake, Illinois, is a member of the Illinois Community College Board, and previously served as a member of the Crystal Lake Police Pension Board. He can speak to Chicago mayoral policy and politics, and the mayor’s race with major city issues in the public spotlight, such as crime, race relations and mayoral and city leadership. He’s also available to discuss the topic of pension reform as it relates to municipalities and the election and candidate objection process.
Amanda Kass
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences |
An assistant professor in the School of Public Service, Amanda Kass was previously the associate director of the Government Finance Research Center in the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). Kass is available to discuss public finance, public pensions and urban governance, particularly at the local scale. She’s also free to talk about the Chicago Recovery Plan, the Chicago public pension systems, and some aspects of the overall budget. In January 2023, Kass was part of a group of researchers who published a that looked at how the American Rescue Plan pandemic recovery funding is being spent in Illinois.
Xavier Perez
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences |
A faculty member in DePaul’s Department of Criminology, Perez can discuss cash bail, the causes of crime, violence prevention, violence in communities, Latinx populations and crime, the criminalization of immigrants, immigration as a political wedge issue, interactions between police and minority communities, prison education, and mass incarceration. He recently joined the “” podcast to discuss issues in the Latino community.
Shailja Sharma
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences
As the co-director of the DePaul Migration Collaborative, and the founding director of the Refugee and Forced Migration Studies program at DePaul, Shailja Sharma can speak to why asylum seekers are coming to the U.S.; what Chicago can do as a sanctuary city; if Chicago has the resources to settle forcibly displaced migrants; and what the city is currently doing to help migrants who have been sent here from the Southwest. A recent op-ed in the goes into more details about potential solutions to the current U.S.-Mexico border issues.
Carolina Sternberg
College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences |
The chair of DePaul’s Latin American and Latino Studies Department, Carolina Sternberg researches gentrification and race in Latinx neighborhoods in Chicago from 1990s to the present. She can discuss why candidates should care about gentrification, and how it has led to the loss of affordable housing in Chicago, displaced working class families and contributed to a loss of diversity. Her recent op-ed in the reviews her own gentrification research from Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood.
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