By SUSAN JONES
The pro-Palestinian protests roiling college campuses across the U.S. came to Pitt during finals week and remained peaceful — with only two arrests for trespassing on University property on April 28. The group that had set up camp April 23 in Schenley Plaza, with nearly 50 tents, dispersed on April 29.
“We’ve been able to create a really peaceful community here, where people can bring their kids, and we have programming and teach-ins,” Cameryn Gray, a rising Pitt senior who was acting as a media liaison for the Pitt Divest From Apartheid group, said as they were packing up. “And if we stay longer, there’s threat of arrest.”
Pittsburgh Police Chief Larry Scirotto was at Schenley Plaza, which is owned by the city, as protesters collected the remaining tents and supplies on April 29. Seen speaking with organizers, he said there was no hard deadline for the protesters to leave, other than before the end of the day.
Scirotto discussed how police handled the protests in a news-media briefing the day after the encampment came down, WTAE reported. He said that “honest brokers” negotiating for the police and protesters helped to keep the demonstrations peaceful.
The chief said Pittsburgh police made clear certain conditions for the encampment to continue on city property: No antisemitic speech or behavior and no violence or destruction of property. The police also said demonstrators could not impede traffic arteries, given the number of hospitals in Oakland, nor interrupt Pitt’s commencement ceremony on Sunday.
Gray said there was no specific threat of arrest, but “the mayor has given us a certain amount of time that we can stay. And we never know what the police are going to do. … We didn’t want the nature of this camp to change. We want people to remain to have their trust in us, so we decided to close down so we can refocus on our community-building and putting pressure on the University.”
In a statement on its Instagram page, Pitt Divest From Apartheid took exception to media outlets saying the group’s interactions with police were “cooperative,” instead saying the conversations were negotiations “in order to keep the people at the encampment safe.” The group said Pitt “intentionally threw us off our own campus to make our situation more precarious,” and that the elevated presence of police outside the encampment “kept many people on high alert for the duration of our stay.”
The main demand of the protesters — which Gray said included students, faculty, staff and members of the broader community — is that Pitt divest from all holdings connected to Israel. They also want Pitt to cut ties with all Israeli universities and for Pitt’s administration to issue a statement in support of Gaza and condemning Israel’s military actions in Gaza. The group is asking supporters to sign an online petition calling on Pitt to “Stop Supporting Israeli Apartheid, Occupation, and Genocide.”
“I think the point that’s been proven is that administration doesn’t seem to have any interest in coming to the table,” Gray said. “We have to continue to apply pressure on them to do that, so that we can work toward divestment. But I think that there was a point made about the large community of people here who refused to have their labor and their money go toward a genocide in Gaza.”
Israel’s attacks throughout the Gaza Strip came after Hamas militants broke through Israel’s border defenses on Oct. 7, 2023, attacking communities along the border for hours and killing 1,200 people, most of them civilians, while taking roughly 250 hostages into Gaza. More than 100 people remain hostages.
In March, the United Nations reported that since the war began more than 31,184 Palestinians have been killed and 72,889 injured, according to the local health authorities. And as of March 12, 247 Israeli soldiers had been killed in Gaza with 1,475 injured since the start of the ground operation, according to Israeli army data.
A group of 31 Pitt faculty members signed an op-ed addressed to Chancellor Joan Gabel that ran in The Pitt News last week that said they stood “in solidarity with the students who established the ‘liberation zone’ in support of Palestine on Schenley Plaza.”
The column urged Pitt’s administration to refrain from punitive measures, such as suspensions, expulsions and arrests, against students “using their freedom of speech in establishing Gaza solidarity encampments to protest ongoing violence in Gaza and to call for University disinvestment from the war on Gaza. We call on the University of Pittsburgh to set a different example, one that upholds our students’ civil rights and refrains from using force or intimidation to suppress students’ free speech.”
The protest began April 23 with students and others gathering inside the Cathedral of Learning and then on the lawn after they were asked to leave the building. Protesters set up tarps and a tent on the lawn, but the University asked them to take down the tent.
The University, while affirming the rights of community members to engage in peaceful and orderly demonstrations, communicated with the demonstrators multiple times over the course of several hours and requested that they move to a different location.
“During those conversations, information regarding the demonstrators’ rights and responsibilities, including reminders regarding space reservation guidelines and expectations of student organizations, was shared with the demonstrators,” a University said in a statement. “The demonstration was not a registered event and was taking place in an area that is not designated as an event space.”
Late in the afternoon on April 23, the demonstrators relocated to Schenley Plaza, where they remained until April 29. The protesters remained peaceful throughout the week. On April 25, well-known political activist Cornel West, an independent presidential candidate, visited the encampment during a pre-scheduled stop in Pittsburgh.
On April 28, shortly after undergraduate commencement ceremonies ended at the Petersen Events Center, more than 100 protesters staged a march on the streets and sidewalks around the Cathedral, eventually ending with a rally on the William Pitt Union lawn.
Various media reports said Pitt Police lined up to keep the protesters off the Cathedral lawn and there was some pushing and shouting between protesters and police. Supporters formed a human chain around some tents that had been moved to the WPU lawn. Protesters stayed at the union lawn until around midnight, the Tribune-Review reported.
The two people arrested on April 28, including one Pitt student, were charged with trespassing after disregarding repeated requests from Pitt Police to stay off the Cathedral lawn, a University spokesman said. Organizers at the Schenley Plaza site on Monday said the other person was also a student, but did not specify which university they attended.
In a statement on its Instagram page on April 29, Pitt Divest From Apartheid had a list of demands for Pitt’s administration, including no punishment for the arrested students and total immunity for faculty, staff and students who engage in protests against Pitt now and in the future.
It said that money raised during the weeklong encampment will be used to fund legal support for those arrested, as well as for Palestinian relief programs, Pittsburgh community mutual aid groups and future initiatives to support Palestinian liberation.
The group also wants an apology from Chancellor Joan Gabel because of the Sunday night encounter between Pitt Police and protesters. The statement also asks that the University revise its definition of anti-semitism “to avoid the problematic conflation of anti-Zionism with anti-semitism.” This distinction has been an issue at several college campuses during the protests.
Jewish students — including some at Pitt (see story from The Pitt News) — around the country have said they feel unsafe and vulnerable, with some saying protesters have hurled anti-semitic taunts at them. In contrast, protesters say their issues are with the state of Israel and its political and military decisions, and not with Jewish people.
What’s happening at other schools?
Since April 18, more than 2,000 people associated with pro-Palestinian protests have been arrested at more than 36 U.S. college and university campuses, according to the Associated Press.
Many of the protests ended this week, either peacefully like at Pitt or under police pressure.
Columbia University was the early epicenter of the protests, where students set up an encampment starting on April 18. The protests led Columbia to move classes online and for a rabbi associated with the school to urge mostly Orthodox Jewish students to stay home.
A group of people took over the school’s Hamilton Hall for 20 hours this week before New York City police raided the building on Tuesday night, arresting 112 people. CNN reported on Thursday that 32 of those arrested were not affiliated with Columbia.
On the other side of the country, UCLA became another flashpoint for protests. A large encampment that blocked access to parts of campus was attacked by counter-protesters on Tuesday. Early Thursday morning, police moved in and cleared out the encampment, making 132 arrests.
At Portland State University in Oregon, where former Pitt Provost Ann Cudd is now president, protesters, who until then had been peaceful, took over the main library on Monday. Cudd said Wednesday that anyone inside the library was criminally trespassing. On Thursday morning, those holed up in the library fled as police moved in, according to Oregon Public Broadcasting. The campus remained closed Thursday.
President Biden on Thursday spoke for the first time about the unrest on college campuses.
"Violent protest is not protected," he said. "Peaceful protest is. It's against the law when violence occurs. Destroying property is not a peaceful protest. It's against the law." When asked if the protests have forced him to reconsider American policies toward the Middle East, Biden said "no."
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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