Description:

Join the Political Science Department as we host Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss for a conversation with Mayor Daniel Biss about the challenges of leading a city under pressure from the current federal administration. Mayor Biss will discuss the impact of federal policy on Evanston and surrounding communities, including ICE’s targeting of local residents and efforts in Evanston to protect and support its community members in the face of these threats. Catered reception to follow. 

About the Speaker

Daniel Biss grew up in Bloomington, Indiana, and moved to Chicago to join the University of Chicago’s mathematics faculty after completing his Bachelor’s degree at Harvard University and his Ph.D. in mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He was first drawn to activism at the age of 25, speaking out to oppose the Iraq War and organizing support for progressive candidates and ideas. Through that work, Daniel became more engaged with the critical issues facing Illinois, leading him to run for the state legislature, first being elected in 2010.

As a legislator in the Illinois House and Senate, Daniel delivered pragmatic progressive solutions covering a wide range of issues and has a proven record of not just fighting the important fights, but winning. That includes passing protections for LGBTQ+ youth, enacting major abortion rights legislation, providing retirement savings options to hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans who otherwise wouldn’t have access, and strengthening technology privacy requirements to protect civil liberties.

After serving eight years in the state legislature, Daniel was elected mayor of Evanston in 2021. As mayor, Daniel has gone up against money and entrenched power to enact desperately-needed campaign finance reform and pass a first-in-the-state Healthy Buildings Ordinance to curb carbon emissions. While others talk about reform, Daniel worked with police and community leaders to create the Crisis Alternative Response Evanston (C.A.R.E.) program, a non-police response to low-risk service calls, where social workers and others have already answered more than 1,500 calls dealing with mental health emergencies and other needs that have helped Evanston achieve a record decline in violent crime. Daniel continues to stand up to Donald Trump on immigration, preserving access to abortion, expanding mental health services, and more.

Daniel lives in northwest Evanston with his wife, Karin, a former Peace Corps volunteer and a professor at National Louis University, and their two children, Arya and Sparrow.

Moderated by

Jaime Dominguez is Associate Professor of Instruction in Political Science at Northwestern University and the principal architect of the Chicago Democracy Project (CDP), a thirty-year (1975-2005) online political database that measures policy outcomes for the City of Chicago. Professor Dominguez's teaching and research interests center on race, ethnic, immigration and Latino politics. He is also a frequent commentator for local and major news outlets including NPR, PBS, Univision and Telemundo.