WATCH: Thinker’s Daniel Schmidt Slams UChicago’s Booster Mandate on ‘Slightly Offensive’ Podcast

Chicago Thinker staff writer Daniel Schmidt appeared Wednesday as a special guest on Elijah Schaffer’s podcast, Slightly Offensive (episode 219), to discuss the University of Chicago’s booster mandate.

The Thinker‘s editorial board recently published an editorial to demand that the university retract its “unethical” and “unsafe” booster mandate. During his interview, Schmidt similarly argued that the booster mandate must end.

Schmidt was quick to note that, even without the vaccine or booster, college students are at an extremely low risk for hospitalization or death from COVID. Schmidt also highlighted the inconsistency of UChicago’s booster mandate, which applies to students and faculty, but not to UChicago Medical Center employees or select Biological Sciences Division personnel. This means students (among others) are required to get the jab, while doctors and some scientists are exempt.

Schmidt called out the hypocrisy of this policy, before proceeding to lament UChicago’s refusal to name the purported experts crafting its COVID policies. In so doing, he pointed to a recent article he wrote for the Thinker, in which he argued that one of these ‘experts,’ Dr. Emily Landon, has “advocated for numerous unethical and quite frankly anti-science measures,” including vaccinating young children.

Schmidt also expressed disappointment with UChicago’s conformist approach to COVID policies, arguing that,  “…UChicago has always been the school for unorthodox and different thought and to see UChicago now totally just submit to this idiotic and anti-science thought is incredibly disappointing.”

Schmidt urged those “who are enraged at the fact that students who are not at… a serious risk of hospitalization or dying of COVID [are being mandated to take the vaccine] to sign [the Thinker editorial board’s recent petition against UChicago’s booster mandate].”