Lori Lightfoot, the former Mayor of Chicago known best for how violent crime wracked Chicago day by day, night by night under her watch, was unemployed because Chicago voters booted her out of office and she had to leave on May 15. However, now she’s employed again because Harvard, ostensibly the top school in the nation, gave the failed mayor a teaching gig.
According to the school, former Mayor Lightfoot will, starting in the fall, teach a course at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The class Lightfoot will teach is tentatively titled “Health Policy and Leadership.” Her position in Harvard’s T.H. Chan School is as its Richard L. and Ronay A. Menschel Senior Leadership Fellow.
Michelle A. Williams, the dean of faculty at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, praised Lightfoot and her record as Chicago’s mayor in a statement announcing her new role, saying, “As mayor, she showed strong leadership in advocating for health, equity, and dignity for every resident of Chicago, from her declaration of structural racism as a public health crisis to her innovative initiative to bring mental health services to libraries and shelters. And of course, she led the city through the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Similarly, Harvard highlighted her pandemic record in its statement on why it hired her, saying, that former Mayor “Lightfoot led a coordinated, citywide response across government, business, and community organizations to safeguard public health and minimize economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Former Mayor Lightfoot, for her part, cheered the news in a statement on Twitter in which she said that she loves teaching and is excited to go back to doing it, saying, “I’ve always loved teaching, and the opportunity to get back to it is something I am excited about. Looking forward to sharing the experiences and perceptions I learned governing through one of the most challenging times in American history with the @HarvardChanSPH community!”
Left unsaid by both Harvard and Lightfoot was why students should be learning from a failed mayor from whose city businesses fled because of rampant crime. However, Eric Andersen, the director of both the Senior Leadership Fellows Program and studio programming at the school, said that the school reached out to Lightfoot because “as mayor and as a leader she faced many pressing public health issues, most notable navigating the pandemic” and that Harvard believes “students will benefit from her experiences, insights and knowledge of leadership decision-making.”
In any case, Lori Lightfoot teaching at Harvard is something of a pit stop for former mayors. Both former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and former Boston Mayor Kim Janey both served as Menschel fellows at Harvard. It remains to be seen if Lightfoot manages to turn her classroom at currently-prosperous Harvard into a crime-ridden wasteland, much as happened to the formerly glittering city of Chicago under her disastrous watch.
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