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Wednesday, October 22, 2025

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Churches brace for ICE activity Evanston religious congregations set action plans By SARAH SEROTA

daily senior staffer @sarahserota

Illustration by Siri Reddy

Judge Georgia Alexakis said the plaintiffs did not establish that they were likely to succeed on the merits of their claims.

Judge denies bias training TRO Restraining order declined in class-action against Northwestern By BEN SHAPIRO

daily senior staffer @benshapiromedia

A judge declined to issue a temporary restraining order against Northwestern Monday afternoon in NU Graduate Workers

for Palestine’s class-action lawsuit, which claims the University’s bias training is discriminatory. “Because the plaintiffs have failed to meet their burden in this threshold inquiry, we do not move on to conduct a balancing of the harms,” Judge Georgia Alexakis (Pritzker ’06) said. “For that

reason, I have to deny the motion.” NU Graduate Workers for Palestine and two graduate students filed the lawsuit against the University in federal court for the Northern District of Illinois on Wednesday. They allege NU unequally applies student conduct policies, prohibits “Palestine

solidarity speech” and uses an “unscholarly and discriminatory definition of antisemitism.” The bias training was first sent to students in a February email. It features videos discussing University policies, changes to the

» See LAWSUIT, page 9

With the greater Chicago area becoming an epicenter for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, churches across Evanston have braced for impact. ICE agents have taken multiple people in Evanston as part of Operation Midway Blitz, a federal immigration crackdown targeting undocumented immigrants in Chicago. Amid swelling enforcement, Evanston’s religious organizations have become a key player in the local response and advocacy efforts. Some congregations have devised plans of action if ICE agents enter their places of worship. Executive pastor at First United Methodist Church of Evanston Rev. Britt Cox said her church started working on a contingency plan in February because of the likelihood of the Trump administration enacting stricter immigration policies. “It’s pretty evident what the playbook would be, that this is something that has been planned long before January,” Cox said. “For us, being able to think thoughtfully about our faith and what our response should be as

a congregation that values justice and mercy, we knew that we had to think ahead about it.” This plan was developed in collaboration with other religious communities across Evanston. Cox said much of her church’s devised plan came from a training held by Interfaith Action of Evanston and the Evanston Interfaith Clergy. The collaboration wasn’t restricted to this single training — many of these faith communities have been in contact with one another about the best practices and procedures to respond to an officer entering their space, according to Rev. Eileen Wiviott from the Unitarian Church of Evanston. Cox, Wiviott and other religious leaders did not disclose the details of their plans, but Cox emphasized their intention was creating a sense of safety and care for all people within the community. People often come to church for community and connection — something that is declining in the midst of this period of increased ICE activity, according to Wiviott. “That assurance and that comfort is being compromised by the fear of an authoritarian invasion into our sacred spaces,” Wiviott said. “We’re doing everything that we can to try to maintain a sense of calm and peace and safety within our other sacred houses of worship.” Outside of their services,

» See FAITH, page 9

Council finalizes Joel Mokyr makes a case for progress Curiosity fuels Nobel laureate economics and history professor Envision draft Comprehensive plan saw fourmonth debate By MARISA GUERRA ECHEVERRIA

daily senior staffer @marisa_g_ech

After a summer spent entrenched in line edits and wording debates, City Council approved the last edits to the Envision Evanston 2045 draft comprehensive plan and set a tentative final review for November on Monday night. The process encompassed six special City Council meetings and two public hearings over almost four months. The final edits come nearly a year after the city released its first Comprehensive Plan draft in November 2024 and five months after the Land Use Commission recommended Council adopt the plan. “I want to just thank all the members of the council and the staff and community for providing a ton of effort and time and input throughout what has been a very methodical process,” Mayor

Recycle Me

Daniel Biss said at the meeting’s conclusion. After the final draft has been released to the public, councilmembers will have at least two weeks to review it and vote on it as a special order of business at the next regularly scheduled council meeting. Biss noted the special item would appear at the city’s Nov. 10 regularly-scheduled meeting at the earliest. The final 51 planned edits to the document were left over from the Sept. 15 meeting, leaving the nine councilmembers to vote on edits from the plan’s housing chapter and appendix, as well as additional consent agenda items. Several of the remaining proposed edits for the plan passed unanimously or upon some deliberation. Ald. Parielle Davis (7th) suggested and passed a motion to “evaluate and develop solutions” addressing underlying cultural factors that she said were contributing to the housing crisis. Council unanimously approved the edit, after which Davis

» See ENVISION, page 9

By YONG-YU HUANG

daily senior staffer @yong_yuhuang

One leg hanging over the arm of his chair, Prof. Joel Mokyr wore a bright blue button-down and a leather jacket, a can of Diet Coke in hand. Outside his Kellogg office, Lake Michigan lay glassy, the Chicago skyline sharp against the horizon. It’s the same body of water he’s worked near for the past five decades, but the world around it has continued to improve since Mokyr first came to Northwestern. For all of the pessimism about the present moment, he said, the past was harsher. “The good old days may have been old,” Mokyr said. “But they weren’t good.” By almost all measures, human life has never been better, and the modern world is proof of how far ingenuity can take us, Mokyr said. It’s an idea he has spent much of his career exploring. Yet there are some aspects of life that withstand the test of time. At 79, the Nobel laureate still cooks dinner every night for his wife Margalit — a professor emerita at the

University of Illinois-Chicago — mentors new generations of scholars and insists that human progress is worth believing in. The morning before he spoke to The Daily, Mokyr was at his vacation home in Western Michigan with Margalit, packing up to return to Illinois for on-campus commitments. It became a very different kind of return when he found out that he had just won a Nobel Prize. “Everybody has a list about whom they think should win, could win, will win,” Mokyr said. “I wasn’t on my list.” University of Toronto Prof. Kevin Bryan worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond in 2006, several years before he became one of Mokyr’s advisees at NU. Ever since, he and a few former colleagues have kept up a Nobel Prize fantasy draft, and Mokyr has “definitely been on the list.” Soon, Mokyr was fielding congratulations from across the world — students, colleagues, highschool classmates, even the mayor of Haifa, Israel, where he grew up. Margalit’s first response to the news was practical. “That’ll pay for the grandkids’ private school,” she said. The Netherlands, Israel and

Christina Lin/The Daily Northwestern

Nobel laureate Prof. Joel Mokyr has mentored generations of scholars over half a century.

America Born in the Netherlands in 1946, Mokyr moved to Israel at nine years old. After his state-mandated military service, he started at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Students were required to declare two majors from the outset. Mokyr showed up planning to study history and was blindsided when the registrar asked for another subject. The registrar suggested that Mokyr try English. His response to that was that he already knew English. After also dismissing political science “with a snide remark,” he chose economics instead.

Throughout his undergraduate career, he took almost nothing outside of economics and history, barring some “Mickey Mouse courses.” Upon obtaining his undergraduate degree and completing two years of graduate work, Mokyr arrived at Yale, accompanied by his wife Margalit, whom he had met in university and eventually married. Though Mokyr has spent most of his life in the United States, he considers his years in Israel as formative to his identity. “You can take the boy out of Israel,” Mokyr said. “But you cannot

» See MOKYR, page 7