Editorial: Brandon Johnson’s unconscionable treatment of Dr. Allison Arwady

Has any public servant in the history of Chicago been treated more shabbily than public health chief Dr. Allison Arwady, who was fired late Friday afternoon by Mayor Brandon Johnson?

The decision to remove Arwady, who got us through what inarguably was the biggest health crisis to hit Chicago in living memory, was bad enough. But the timing and manner of her dismissal were nothing short of unconscionable. Reportedly, Arwady was not given the chance to meet with her boss, who was on his way to a Bruce Springsteen concert.

The firing was also a dictatorial power move over the Chicago Board of Health, which held a special meeting Thursday night and announced it was asking Johnson to keep Arwady in her post. “I’m in charge,” Johnson clearly wanted to say, getting rid of Arwady after that wise recommendation barely had time to reach his desk.

Arwady was, of course, a holdover from the previous administration and, being a political realist, she knew that her job was very much at risk. During the campaign, Johnson dissed her during a debate. “We have different views of public health, so no, she will not stay on in my administration,” he said last March, shooting from the hip. Arwady’s main sin? Working in tandem with then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot to get Chicago’s schools open again, even as the Chicago Teachers Union wanted to keep them closed.

But let’s remember that Arwady was no ordinary city employee.

She helped this big city get through COVID, using skills learned getting her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, her master’s from Columbia and a medical degree from Yale, as well as time on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention fellowship in Botswana. She studied methods of diagnosing tuberculosis in a place with few X-ray machines and spent time in Liberia studying Ebola. She also had experience in the CDC’s Epidemic Intelligence Service, an entity specifically set up to figure out how to deal with public health crises.

As a city fell into panic, Arwady coolly and calmly delivered the facts about the virus in a variety of settings, avoiding judgment where possible and establishing herself as a figure who could be trusted, not just by her mayor but by everyday Chicagoans.

Then Johnson, who had said he had “different views” from her — as if the COVID crisis was all about views and opinions rather than scientific expertise and personal competence — became her boss. Most people in Arwady’s position would have headed for the hills, waving the kind of resume that could attract lucrative offers in the private sector.

At one especially humiliating point this spring, Arwady had to stand there in public while another candidate for the job was being discussed by the media. It appeared that she never flinched, but we cannot imagine what she was feeling inside.

Why? It all boils down to Johnson’s allegiance to the CTU, which did all it could to fight Lightfoot and Arwady’s attempts to open the schools and get the city’s kids back in the classroom, alongside the city’s kids in private and parochial schools who were already back, as were children in the Chicago suburbs, in Europe and in many other U.S. states.

We know of no entity other than the CTU that actually believes Arwady should not have tried to reopen the schools when she did. On a national level, union leaders like Randi Weingarten now are trying to walk back their vehemence when it came to keeping schools closed. That’s because there is an abundance of data to suggest that Arwady and Lightfoot were right to push the union to get Chicago kids back in school, given the lack of evidence of widespread COVID classroom transmission. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear that the price paid in learning loss was much too high.

In a paper on the subject, the University of California, Berkeley’s Shamik Dasgupta wrote that extended school closures during the COVID pandemic were a moral catastrophe. “By this I don’t just mean that they were wrong (though they certainly were that),” Dasgupta wrote. “Rather, I mean that school closures were wrong and the harms they inflicted are sufficiently large that we are obliged to reflect on our mistake and ensure it never happens again.”

In a March 2021 profile of Arwady for Chicago magazine, Kim Brooks described the doctor as a “systems person.”

“She believes that public health officials must do everything they can to protect not just the patients but the systems that keep health care going,” Brooks wrote. “She has also learned that patients and the systems that sustain them are interconnected in delicate ways that often don’t become apparent until a crisis comes along.”

But in that same conversation, Arwady also said many things that surely speak to many of this mayor’s core beliefs.

“We can’t just ask how people catch and spread COVID,” Arwady told Brooks. “We also have to ask the more uncomfortable questions: Why is this the only country where having health insurance is linked to employment? Why are we a country that hasn’t set up the structural supports that allow people to stay home when they’re sick? Why doesn’t everyone in this country have parental leave or family leave when they need it?”

Arwady’s tenure was not perfect. Last summer, we were critical of the debacle that initially allowed Southside Recycling, formerly known as General Iron, to move operations from Lincoln Park to East 116th Street along the Calumet River, where long-suffering residents deserved better. Eventually, the highly politicized situation was reversed and Arwady got a disproportionate share of blame that belonged elsewhere.

But Arwady was right about most things. Not only was (and is) she supremely qualified for this job, she deserved the keys to the city for all she did for Chicago during COVD. The Chicago Board of Health was right. This post should not have been so politicized.

Even beyond that, firings of distinguished public servants on Fridays around 5 p.m. are no way to run a city. At a minimum, Johnson owes Arwady an explanation and an apology for his treatment of her. While he is at it, he should stand up in public and convey this city’s thanks to Arwady for all she has done.

Better yet, he could demonstrate his independence from the CTU cabal, reverse course, and rehire a remarkable Chicagoan who saved many lives here and yet whom it appears we never deserved.

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