Opinion | Pitt taught me to stand up against injustice and then sent the police to beat up my classmates

Here is a list of things I learned in my three years at Pitt.

1. During my first year orientation, I was told that Pitt Police and university officials are here to protect and support me. I was told to add the police phone number to my contacts.
2. In the first year course, “Anti-Black Racism: History, Ideology, and Resistance,” I was informed via the Canvas site that “various institutions, including universities, have attempted to address anti-Black racism and injustices within their own organizations. The University of Pittsburgh has chosen to use this course to increase its students’ awareness and knowledge of anti-Black racism.” I was offered further reading on how to be anti-racist, the history of colonialism, and how Keisha N. Blain writes in one of the articles linked in the course “The fight against racism has always been a global fight.”
3. I’ve learned in introductory and advanced courses that every decision we make in reporting a story matters. Words matter, context matters, what we cover and what we don’t cover matters.

Chancellor Joan Gabel Email dated 5 June vividly characterized what looked like plywood as “with the intent to ignite.” It’s beautiful prose, and I recommend it be bookmarked for a novel about a secret conspiracy to overthrow a government. Speculation has no place in an email from a university administrator to affected employees – most of whom had no further information about the situation at the time.

The email said that anti-Semitic graffiti was sprayed on the Frick Fine Arts building. The only photo I have seen online is of graffiti that reads “Free Gaza,” and some students report that other graffiti reads “Cops beat students” – which they did – and “F– Israel.” While some find the latter disturbing, it falls into the tiring trap of confusing criticism of the State of Israel with anti-Semitism. worsens rather than correctsAnti-Semitism. It also obscures the presumed meaning of the graffiti, if it was indeed sprayed by someone protesting against a state that commits incredible violence against civilians.

When asked for comment, a university spokesperson said, “For some, the graffiti sprayed on the Frick Fine Arts building may not meet the definition of anti-Semitism. For others, the graffiti was close to other acts of vandalism, including throwing a gun through a building window, as well as concurrent calls for the dissolution of Jewish student organizations and calls for the abolition of certain international definitions of anti-Semitism, all of which created context and the resulting description.”

While Gabel is not a journalist, her words land in the inbox of every Pitt employee, and she has an ethical responsibility to provide accurate and complete updates on what is happening at the university.

1. I learned from a lawyer in “Constitution and Civil Rights” that students’ right to free speech does not disappear when they enter the classPublic universities in particular are seen as forums for intensive exchange and debate. The suppression of political expression maintains the highest level control at the legal level. But freedom of expression is not just a legal protection – it is a cultural value that we must protect.

Some of the most famous nonviolent protests in history have involved the disruption of private property — lunch counters, the site of the Boston Tea Party, and yes, even university halls. Defending free speech is not limited to pleasant, planned, quiet protests on sidewalks. Attempts to characterize it that way, from the right or the left, are dangerous. Almost all of the protests we have seen at Pitt and across the country — by students attempting to peacefully and earnestly protest politically on their own campuses — are exactly the same. Spirit of free speech, but they are characterized as inherently violent, anti-Semitic, dangerous and full of external intruders. This portrayal is then used to justify brutal violence.

The Chancellor’s email ended with a rather hollow reiteration of the University’s “commitment to free speech and critical inquiry,” claiming that the protests “are attempts to destroy property in the historic core of our campus and accompanying actions that in no way encourage open inquiry or facilitate peaceful advocacy.” Yet the University has shown superficial interest in an open inquiry, as evidenced by its refusal to with the intention of seriously are considering divestment and their deafening silence on the suffering of Palestine, even if it is immediately sentenced the events of October 7. The attempt to portray these political protests as a willful desire for property destruction is ridiculously easy.

When asked for comment, a university spokesperson said, “We are committed to free speech and civil discourse and we care about how our students feel about that. We meet with students regularly on a variety of topics and issues, including a recent discussion about the university’s investments. We do so in accordance with the appropriate time, place and manner guidelines that exist to ensure the safety of our community. Any suggestion that members of this administration have refused to meet and speak with students is completely false.”

1. In my course “Rights and Human Rights”, PHIL 1400, I learned that during the genocide in Rwanda, the United States and other countries consistently rejected to use the “G-word” because it would oblige them to act within the framework of the Genocide Convention.

I learned that the United States and other nations, to quote from a handout from my professor, which Pulitzer Prize-winning book “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide,” by Harvard professor Samantha Power, “tend to downplay the violence and claim that firsthand accounts are exaggerated because of trauma. Repeated cases now show that persistent firsthand accounts of genocide are reliable and accurate.” History has shown that the Genocide Convention is usually not invoked until a genocide has occurred, at which point the perpetrators are “held accountable” and the world congratulates itself on its morality.

I learned that the Definition of genocide The term also includes murder with the intent to destroy a group in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jewish lawyer who coined the term after World War II and advocated its adoption, unwilling UNbelieved that a group did not have to be physically wiped out to experience genocide.

He argued that the eight components of genocide were “the disintegration of the political and social institutions, the culture, language, national feeling, religion and economic existence of national groups and the destruction of the personal security, freedom, health, dignity and even life of individual members of such groups.”

While writing my thesis, I learned that in 1985 Israel began to implement a parking spot above the Maman Allah cemetery, where companions of the Prophet Muhammad and thousands of Islamic scholars are buried. 95% of his graves were exhumed to build the parking lot and – no satire – the Museum of Tolerancenot yet completed. According to the Simon Wiesenthal Center The finished museum will be “Hate, human dignity and responsibility, and the promotion of unity and respect among Jews and people of all faiths.”

What more can be said? It hurts my heart when I think of the professors and fellow students who, in class, could not believe that history has repeatedly allowed such unbelievable violence and hatred, but who now speak about Palestine only in hushed tones or not at all.

The university’s response on Monday makes me ashamed to be associated with Pitt, as does its silence on Gaza all these months. This university is ready to cool the students’ freedom of expression and shell out thousands of dollars for a violent police force that beats his own students bloody apparently in the name of protecting the cathedral grass from bare patches. But it will not say “Palestine.“ It is easier to maintain a facade of academic neutrality than Thousands of children close to starvation and their parents and siblings lose their limbs and their lives.

Why is it so unbelievable that students feel deep compassion for the people being murdered and living under occupation and demand real reparations? Why is it controversial that no university should invest in companies that are even remotely connected to the military? Why is it not standard policy for public universities to make their endowment funds public?

I urge the Pitt administration to have the courage to face the University ranks Turning to Palestinian liberation. Pitt, your education has taught me time and time again that the world is not meant to be this way. Palestine will be free, and the unwillingness to be part of that process will forever be an example of complicity in your classrooms. Attend your own classes.

Livia Daggett is a final year student of English Writing and Political Philosophy. You can write to her at (email protected).