Attention DePaul University donors! Do you want to check out how your funding is being put to use? The institution just initiated an obnoxious, new anti-ICE journalism institute in partnership with radical ex-Mayor of Chicago Lori Lightfoot and another Chicago-based left-wing group financed by some of the most notorious leftists in American politics.
The supposedly Catholic DePaul — which sits comfortably on a roughly $1.15 billion endowment — announced that it was launching the cringely-named Institute for Journalism and Racial Justice (IJRJ) during a February 25 campus event, according to student newspaper The DePaulia.
The announcement came following a “community briefing for a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement accountability platform led by” Lightfoot. Who held Lightfoot accountable? The Firearm Industry Trade Association panned Lightfoot's tenure as Mayor in 2023 as being tainted by some of “the worst criminal and gang violence in memory.” Chicagoans reported a 43 percent crime increase in 2022 above pre-pandemic levels under her administration. But apparently, DePaul sees the former Democrat mayor as its guiding “Lightfoot.”
“DePaul launches new journalism institute aligned with Lightfoot ICE initiative,” read the headline by DePaulia editor-in-chief Sofia Joseph and content managing editor Laura Vázquez David. Also telling was that the anti-ICE “community briefing” with Lightfoot was moderated by former ABC News Nightline correspondent Chris Bury, who has since become the senior journalist-in-residence at DePaul. Per The Depaulia, “In describing how racial justice comes into play at [her] ICE accountability project, Lightfoot” told Bury that “it is ‘fundamentally a part of where we are.’”
In keeping with Lightfoot’s distorted vision, one of the new Depaul institute’s core goals is to “[a]dvance racial justice in media by creating space for dialogue, learning and action that challenges inequitable media practices and promotes narrative change by employing asset-framing, solutions journalism and other innovative journalism practices towards more inclusive storytelling.”
Newsflash (no pun intended): Injecting leftist "racial justice" politics into storytelling is a textbook case of manufacturing propaganda, not journalism.
Despite the fact that Chicago has become part of the nexus of criminal violence and resistance against ICE officers carrying out federal immigration law, it appears that the IJRJ’s focus is to invert the perspective among student journalists to cast law enforcement as the aggressors and the criminals as the marginalized victims. Lightfoot’s adjoined anti-ICE initiative states this plainly:
Our purpose is to document and provide transparency to the public and other interested parties of the numerous allegations of serious misconduct committed by federal immigration agents who have been rampaging through our communities since the start of the so-called ‘Operation Midway Blitz’ in September, 2025. We aim to serve as a permanent, centralized repository to memorialize the information and evidence of the actions of the array of federal immigration agents operating in the towns and neighborhoods throughout Chicagoland since September 2025.
"Rampaging?" Oh please. On November 9 2025, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated unequivocally that “Border Patrol faced gunshots, violent mobs at every stop, bricks and other objects thrown at them, and four vehicle rammings” in Chicago alone.
“The violence in Chicago against law enforcement is unprecedented—These attacks are the consequence of vitriolic smears from sanctuary politicians and the media,” McLaughlin continued. “Just last week, Chicago and national media falsely accused law enforcement of raiding a daycare center. Now, they are silent when our agents come under gunfire.” Who is it here that is "rampaging"?
Will DePaul University’s new “racial justice” journalism institute “aligned” with Lightfoot’s soft-on-crime radicalism change that trend? Doubtful.
DePaul is also partnering on this effort with the liberal media nonprofit Public Narrative, which has been funded by massive left-wing money networks like the MacArthur Foundation, and eBay co-founder Pierre Omidyar. MacArthur — which has doled out millions to causes such as “environmentalist policy, population control,” “racial justice” and “abortion access” per Influence Watch — has nominally funneled $2,030,300 (unadjusted for inflation) between Public Narrative’s founding in 1989 to 2024. Omidyar, who has financed efforts to censor conservative viewpoints on social media and infuse left-wing dogmatism into U.S. journalism, also gave out a $100,000 grant to Public Narrative in 2024, according to a 990 tax filing.
Public Narrative’s “Mission” page reads like a DEI factsheet:
We balance the public narrative through equity, inclusivity and authenticity frameworks in all aspects of media coverage: from storytelling to consumption and the production and promotion of all media forms.
The "baseline research" for the institute was done in collaboration with a "Black-led" group called Reparations Media, which as you might expect, seeks to "build narrative power and increase public support for reparations" for African Americans.
Are DePaul’s donors okay with their fortunes being used to fund this kind of radical leftist indoctrination foisted onto students?
