In early March, the University of Pittsburgh placed the officially registered student organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) on interim suspension — a chilling attack on free speech that went so far as to prohibit the organization’s off-campus organizing.
In response, the American Civil Liberties Union wrote a letter of support for SJP, challenging the university’s arbitrary and retaliatory student conduct processes.
The ACLU is now considering legal support for action against the university, which has remained silent in response to repeated appeals for clarity.
At this juncture, we feel that it behooves us, as staff and faculty of the University of Pittsburgh, to call on the administration to lift the suspension against Students for Justice in Palestine immediately.
Before this interim suspension, the university had initiated a conduct hearing against the leadership of SJP for a silent study-in at the Hillman Library during fall finals.
At this study-in, students taped political slogans to their laptops and wrote a few messages on whiteboards. The protest didn’t disrupt library access, and similar fraternity or sorority actions have never received comparable scrutiny — indicating that it was the content, not the activity, that so upset the university.
This would be a clear violation of Pitt’s own free speech policies regarding content neutrality.
The university has regularly hosted controversial speakers — some of whom have sparked unrest in Oakland. Yet the administration appears to draw the line for “disruptive” free speech at handwritten signs taped to the back of MacBooks.
The disciplinary hearing borne out of this quiet library study session never clearly identified the student conduct rules that the participants had allegedly violated. The process itself was opaque: only one faculty member was allowed to be present at a time, and even then, only for a brief portion of the hearing.
After university administrators announced that SJP would be put on probation following this hearing, student groups and community organizations signed an open letter of support for SJP. In response, the university claimed that the letter — and other communications from student organizations and community groups to the Conduct Hearing Board — were evidence of collusion. The administration took the position that, simply by seeking support from the broader Pitt community, SJP had “improperly engaged in communications” with the board through the response of others. This is a strikingly flimsy pretext — one that treats solidarity and civic engagement as violations rather than the lifeblood of a democratic campus.
But the university began harassing SJP long before the events at the Hillman Library. Individual students associated with the group have faced honor code violations stemming from their involvement in peaceful campus activism and civil protest. Regardless of public opinion on these demonstrations, Pitt has a responsibility to uphold fair and consistent disciplinary procedures for all students.
University-backed charges are ruining young people’s lives, bankrupting them with legal fees, and preventing them from finding future employment. And, given the accusations of antisemitism levied against SJP, it is worth noting that many students targeted by university police and conduct hearings are Jewish, a fact the students themselves have noted with bitter frustration.
The stakes are high. If the university fails to defend free speech on Palestine, it risks undermining free speech across all other issues: gender, sexuality, reproductive rights, race, climate change, even vaccine science. Nothing will be safe from censorship.
We ask: Would an administration comfortable with banning SJP not be equally as comfortable with ICE assailing its own students? What is the administration’s red line? When will the administration begin to dictate what we can and cannot teach?
We do not wish to be the next Columbia University, tacitly accepting the kidnapping of our students, our departments subject to direct oversight from the President of the United States. Our job as faculty is to facilitate discussion, conduct research, and find solutions to important, difficult, and contentious topics.
A university that silences its students cannot support genuine teaching or research. It risks becoming less a space for inquiry and more a vehicle for institutional control — one that signals to students that dissent will be punished, and that they should expect the status quo to go unchallenged.
The history of student organizing teaches us that there is always a better world worth fighting for. We demand that the University of Pittsburgh develop a fair, transparent, and consistent student code of conduct, and that it immediately reinstate Students for Justice in Palestine.
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Pitt (FSJP), an organizing group at the University of Pittsburgh of faculty and staff advocating for Palestinian rights, justice, and freedom through education, solidarity, and action.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2025.
