Leadership Quote by Jane Byrne

“Our universities and museums are respected around the country” is the kind of civic brag that tries to do two jobs at once: polish a city’s self-image and quietly justify the power structures that claim to steward it. Jane Byrne, a hard-edged Chicago politician and the city’s first female mayor, isn’t offering a dreamy love letter to culture. She’s staking out legitimacy. In urban politics, “respected” is a proxy for “safe to invest in,” “worth visiting,” “not in decline,” and - crucially - “we’re still in the big leagues.”

The line’s specific intent is boosterism with a purpose. Universities and museums aren’t just amenities; they’re prestige factories. They attract donors, federal grants, conferences, and the kinds of headlines that drown out stories about corruption, budget holes, crime, or crumbling services. Byrne’s choice of institutions is telling: they read as neutral, above the fray, even when they’re deeply entangled with real estate development, policing priorities, and whose history gets curated and funded.

There’s also a quiet defensive note in “around the country.” Chicago has long been stuck in a national narrative tug-of-war: architectural icon and political punchline, cultural capital and cautionary tale. Byrne’s sentence wants to lock in the former. It’s a rhetorical move that elevates “education” and “culture” as shared civic assets while sidestepping the more divisive question: respected by whom, and for whom are these institutions actually working?