Statement on the University of Chicago Board of Trustees

The University of Chicago chapter of the American Association of University Professors (UChicago AAUP) expresses the concern and dismay of our members at the ethical state of the Board of Trustees of our institution.

Two members of the UChicago Board are now under separate clouds of significant national and international controversy:

Antonio Gracias, the founder and CEO of private equity firm Valor Equity Partners, spent the first half of 2025 working at the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE). While Mr. Gracias was employed at DOGE, the agency in general committed direct harm to the university’s research program and its scholarly community, as well as our country’s democratic institutions.

During the time he worked at DOGE, Mr. Gracias deceived the public during a political rally in Wisconsin with Elon Musk, by promoting false claims of widespread voter fraud supposedly based on evidence drawn from his DOGE portfolio, the Social Security Administration. Since the departure of Mr. Gracias from DOGE in July 2025, two unnamed members of the DOGE Social Security team have been referred for investigation of violation of the Hatch Act, which restricts federal employees from abusing their office for political purposes. The investigation is concerned with DOGE employees’ conferral with a political advocacy group about how to “find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States.” Mr. Gracias was included on emails related to this conferral. Additionally, another member of the DOGE Social Security team is now under investigation for stealing data to provide a subsequent employer.

Since Mr. Gracias is at minimum implicated in deception of the public and negligence in oversight of sensitive public data, his continued presence on the Board of Trustees of the university, nominally its highest fiduciary and ethical body, is intolerable.

Tom Pritzker, until recently the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels, has been exposed in the revelations of the Epstein files as a close friend and frequent correspondent of Jeffrey Epstein. This correspondence included discussion of Mr. Pritzker’s “scoring” with women while being hosted by Epstein. Mr. Pritzker traveled on Epstein’s plane, made arrangements to visit his island, and contacted Epstein on the day of his release from prison in 2009. Mr. Pritzker also secured a job interview at Hyatt at Epstein’s request for someone whom Epstein described as the “girl from romania that you met at my house.”

Mr. Pritzker already has resigned from the board of Hyatt. Does UChicago have lower ethical standards than a hotel corporation? We echo the call of the Undergraduate Student Government College Council to immediately remove Mr. Pritzker from the Board.

The presence of not one but two members of the Board who are at the very least under a cloud of serious suspicion is damaging to our entire university’s reputation and integrity. The fact that both men are major donors creates the appearance that the university and its reputation are for sale. This situation compromises the ability of our institution to uphold its own standards of scholarly and pedagogical integrity. It is an insult to every student, instructor, and scholar engaged in serious inquiry here.

In matters of controversy, the university often turns to the Kalven Report. On the topic of these disgraceful Board members, however, Kalven could hardly be clearer: “The sources of power of a great university should not be misconceived. Its prestige and influence are based on integrity and intellectual competence; they are not based on the circumstance that it may be wealthy, may have political contacts, and may have influential friends.”

We remind the university of its own commitment in Kalven, and we urge it to be consistent in its application through the immediate removal of Mr. Gracias and Mr. Pritzker. We hope this can be the beginning of a process of deliberation about the problems of an unelected and unaccountable board selected for its wealth and influence, to whose intellectual and moral authority faculty, staff, and students are expected to submit regardless of qualification; and about how our structures of governance might better represent the ethical commitments necessary for a preeminent institution of higher education.