Op-Ed | The University of Pittsburgh is vindictively intimidating anti-genocide protesters to discourage people from speaking out

As the 2024-2025 academic year began, incoming students were corralled into the Petersen Events Center for convocation to join the University of Pittsburgh in its commitment to developing “a caring community where compassion for others and freedom of thought and expression are valued.” Student and faculty inboxes were flooded with messages from Chancellor Joan Gabel declaring an extension to the “Year of Discourse and Dialogue.” The University revisited its “Plan for Pitt,” which reiterates Pitt’s desire to “cultivate belonging and a welcoming culture” and “promote accountability and trust.” 

This posturing from the University is laughable. As the administration parades around hollow values of “compassion” and “free expression,” they fail to acknowledge one of the most well-documented genocides currently raging in Palestine. Further, students and community members who embodied the University’s values to fight for a better world — one where the University discloses its 5.5 billion dollar endowment and divests from genocide — are currently the subjects of a clear legal and psychological intimidation campaign led by the University of Pittsburgh in concert with Allegheny County’s District Attorney. 

The District Attorney’s Office, at the behest of the University of Pittsburgh, is currently prosecuting at least 17 anti-genocide protesters who allegedly participated in the Gaza Solidarity encampments. Both encampments were set up to urge the University to disclose their investments and fully divest from any entities associated with Israel. During the second encampment, held on the Cathedral of Learning’s lawn, protesters were barricaded inside the encampment and violently brutalized by police, resulting in at least one hospitalization. 

These instances of appalling violence against young student protesters will, in all likelihood, go unprosecuted. Instead, students and community members who raised their voices against genocide and apartheid are facing heavily inflated counts, including at least nine individuals facing felony charges. 

From start to finish, students and community members’ experiences have been overwhelmingly distressing, riddled with uncertainty and misconduct perpetuated by the University and the County.

Many protesters said they never received an arrest warrant in the mail, only knowing to turn themselves in because of peers checking the police docket. In one interview, Cole Florkewicz stated that, despite turning himself in earlier that day, police officers entered his house and showed up at his job looking for him. Florkewicz’s boss and property manager were alerted to the charges, potentially jeopardizing his employment and housing. 

“It was violating,” Florkewicz said. “Despite doing exactly what I was supposed to do, it didn’t prevent the police from showing up at my work and home.”

The University has sent many community members “Persona non grata” letters banning them from Pitt’s campus, effectively characterizing community members as unwelcome outside agitators. The terms of these letters are unclear, given that Pitt’s open campus stretches across most of Oakland. Those with UPMC insurance are unsure whether they can see their doctors. One community member, Justine Lechner, canceled their therapist in Oakland to avoid accidentally stepping onto campus. No one from the prosecution has meaningfully clarified the ban’s boundaries, leaving looming uncertainty for community members. Lechner said, “It feels like a loophole hanging over my head.”

Characterizing community members fighting for a more just Pittsburgh as outside agitators is a bad-faith argument. Community members have a stake in how the University of Pittsburgh operates, especially given the University’s ever-increasing influence on the City at large. Furthermore, student and resident populations are not discrete entities but a united community standing in solidarity with Palestine. The perpetuated false dichotomy is particularly disgusting, considering many community members who attended the encampment did so to support students, witnessing the brutal violence perpetrated by police against students. 

In an interview, Lechner said, “The whole reason I was there was to bring sunscreen and granola bars to the protesters. When I got there, it was militarized and horrifying. I felt like I couldn’t leave a bunch of 19-year-olds to be batoned by the cops.”

While awaiting preliminary hearings, many protesters faced consistent rescheduling throughout July and August. In one instance, 12 protesters had their hearings pushed to Aug. 2, only being rescheduled due to a key police officer’s pre-approved vacation. 

“We’re expected to plan ahead, show up on time, be well-dressed and do all the right things, and they can’t tell us about a pre-approved absence,” Florkewicz said. 

Each time this occurs, students and community members unnecessarily take off work, risking their jobs and sacrificing their earnings while waiting for hours in the oppressively dismal courtrooms, just to be informed to come back next time.

On Aug. 2, one student, Muhammad Ali, and their lawyer refuted the continuance, arguing that the police officer for whom they were rescheduling was not listed on the initial affidavit used to file the charges. Ali’s family had traveled from Abu Dhabi to attend the hearing, yet it would have to be rescheduled due to a foreseeable absence from the prosecution. When Ali and their lawyer objected to the continuance, the prosecution, represented by James Sheets, threatened to incarcerate Ali, stating he would put out a felony warrant and take them into Allegheny County Jail that day. It should be noted that — if this threat was executed — the prosecution’s weaponization of its legal authority to subject Ali to an unnecessary additional arrest constitutes the crime of official oppression as per Section 5301 of the Pennsylvania Penal Code. 

Ali is an exceptionally active member of their community. They participate in food distributions weekly to support unhoused folks across Pittsburgh. Ali also leads a club at the University of Pittsburgh focused on community building and mutual aid and uses their free time to help mentor students from the University of Pittsburgh, Carnegie Mellon and Point Park. When the prosecution threatened them, Ali was wearing a kaffiyeh and a kufi. 

The University’s continued cooperation in the case demonstrates its comfort with the prosecution’s deplorable treatment of Muslim student activists. They willingly collaborate with a prosecution that carries out misconduct, a prosecution that threatens Muslim students with violent incarceration for inflated charges that have not even been taken to trial. In turn, they reveal the farce of the Univerisity’s celebration of diversity, as if the chancellor’s failure to divest from genocide or even acknowledge the suffering of Palestinians wasn’t enough. 

To characterize students and community members as delinquent outsiders and threaten them with incarceration is vile. Ali is no exception regarding the protesters’ community involvement — many are engaged in efforts to empower Pittsburgh’s community, most commonly through food, water and clothing distribution for unhoused populations. They are materially invested in Pittsburgh, likely doing more than most administrators to personally extend care toward Pittsburgh’s most marginalized. However, we should not have to levy anyone’s character to shield them from inhumane imprisonment, especially for exercising their right and embodying their responsibility to protest injustice. 

The uncertainty and misconduct associated with the cases have left protesters overwhelmed. In one instance, community member Erin Bollinger states they were so anxious awaiting their arraignment in the Allegheny County Jail, witnessing its abhorrent conditions, that they needed to be taken to the hospital. The day after their release, their anxiety remained so intense that they immediately went to their doctor to begin pharmacological treatment. Other protesters have mentioned how the stress from the case has bled into every aspect of their lives, impacting their loved ones as well. Some noted how cases affect their ability to organize, leaving them frozen and burnt out.

Exhausting protesters appears to be one of the intended consequences of these cases.

“It feels like part of the goal is to create instability to discourage people from speaking out, that the social and economic ramifications will be more than most people can cope with,” Florkewicz said. 

Such a reading is given even more credence considering many of those who have received plea deals have been banned from protesting for 90 days.

Vindictive is the operative word here. It is clear the University is silencing students and community members, utilizing this legal and psychological intimidation campaign to punish them for daring to stand against an institution complicit in genocide. 

This is nothing new — Black and brown protesters in Pittsburgh and across the United States have historically been incarcerated as “rioters” for daring to resist the oppressive brutalization endemic to white supremacist capitalism. 

Further, the University’s current repression tactics draw from a legacy of universities across the country using similar strategies to restrict students’ right to protest. Much like Pitt students, potential incarceration as felons looms for CUNY student organizers. CUNY students note how charging protesters with felonies serves to scare community members away from organizing with the threat of life-altering arrests. Subtler forms of repression are carried out at other universities. Rutgers University has caged off a designated “free speech zone” in chain-link fence, requiring that demonstrations be authorized by Student Centers and Activities. Right next door, Carnegie Mellon University now requires that “expressive activity” with over 25 members have each individual registered with the university or risk police intervention and disciplinary action.

The University of Pittsburgh claims to uphold values of tolerance, diversity and freedom of expression so long as they dictate what constitutes “civil” protest, so long as they retain their power predicated on their ability to profit from violence and exploitation. Once demands for justice threaten that power, it is clear the University will stop at nothing to eradicate that threat — brutalizing protesters, threatening them with incarceration and destabilizing their housing, employment and psychological well-being. In short, inflicting terror, intimidation and repression. Perhaps this is why, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the University of Pittsburgh ranks as one of the worst colleges in the country for free speech, 208th out 251 schools ranked.

In the face of this violence, it is natural to feel afraid. But we must not allow that fear to prevent us from acting against injustice. Protesters have repeatedly expressed immense gratitude for the community’s overwhelming support, with folks showing up en masse to arraignments and preliminary hearings and providing other forms of financial and interpersonal support. 

The Pittsburgh community is watching. We will not forget how the University treats those standing against genocide. If the University of Pittsburgh wishes to retain whatever scraps of trust the community has in it, it will stop collaborating in the prosecution of protesters, effectively dropping the charges. Repression cannot destroy decolonial movements — “You can jail a revolutionary, but you cannot jail a revolution.”

Quotes are pulled from interviews with four anti-genocide protesters charged after the first and second Encampments.