Op-Ed/Letters Archives - The Pitt News

‘Things are pretty grim out there’: Media censorship under the Trump administration

By Maxine Van Nortwick, Staff Writer • February 19, 2025

After a polarizing 2024 presidential election, some social media users may be feeling media burnout. But this onslaught of change isn’t slowing down anytime soon, according to Dr. Paul Johnson — especially with predictions of media censorship on the rise.

Op-Ed | Pennsylvania residents need to pay attention to energy discussions, even outside of presidential election years

By Grace DeLallo, Pitt News Alumnus • November 1, 2024

While it would be wonderful if we had presidential candidates that support a more aggressive transition to renewables and advocate for protective measures, only an act of Congress could nationally ban fracking. The president doesn’t have that kind of authority, and most protective action that’s come down the pipeline has been at a municipal, county and state level.

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

By Hiba Siddiqui, Psychology Major • October 15, 2024

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.

Op-Ed | A staff union will safeguard Pitt’s vital work

By Leah McKown, Research Project Manager • August 26, 2024

We are fighting for fairness in promotion and advancement, and we seek a level of transparency and consistency around work rules that will match the scrupulous precision that scientists, researchers and lab technicians bring to Pitt’s groundbreaking research projects.

Op-Ed | An open letter to my signatory colleagues and to the silent ones

By Diego Holstein, Professor of History • May 4, 2024

In an open letter to the Chancellor published on Apr. 25, a group of 49 educators claimed that Pitt students’ dedication to human rights and justice displayed in the Palestine Solidarity Encampment should...

Op-Ed | An open letter to Chancellor Joan Gabel

By Contributors • April 25, 2024

We, a group of University of Pittsburgh educators, are standing in solidarity with the students who established the "liberation zone" in support of Palestine on Schenley Plaza.

Op-Ed | We will not wait for the next school shooting

By Andrew Sun and Alexander Denza, UNC Chapel Hill March for Our Lives • January 24, 2024

Students at March for Our Lives UNC wrote an op-ed signed by 144 student leaders, which over 50 student newspapers including The Pitt News published on Jan. 24. The op-ed demonstrates the shared concern about gun violence on college campuses across the country.

Op-Ed | Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism

By Samuel Weiner, Channah Weiner, and Alexandra Weiner • November 17, 2023

We outright reject the conflation of Jewishness and Israel and the corollary equation of antisemitism and anti-Zionism. Our freedom and safety as Jews are more tied up in ending oppressive and inhumane systems than it is an ethnostate predicated on the dispossession of the Palestinian people.

Five Years Later: A Squirrel Hill Jew looks back at Tree of Life shooting, and forward to collective liberation

By Bella Markovitz, Senior Staff Writer • October 27, 2023

In the fall of 2018, after graduating high school that spring, I began my first semester at Pitt. I can’t remember if I started considering dropping out before or after the Tree of Life attack happened.

Op-Ed | Many Pitt students are disenfranchised, upcoming bills can change that

By Joshua Summers, Mechanical Engineering Major • September 18, 2023

There are 1.2 million independent voters financing primaries, watching their friends go out to vote and being barred from the democratic process by the state. I’m one of them.