Pitt is seeking more than $18,000 in security costs from the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the Pitt College Republicans, which hosted the April 18 debate at the O’Hara Student Center between conservative commentator Michael Knowles and libertarian journalist Brad Polumbo.
But the Alliance Defending Freedom — a conservative nonprofit legal group that focuses on free speech issues — has sent a letter to Pitt saying the charges violate the two groups’ constitutional rights by “(i) assessing an improper security fee on the event, (ii) deliberately fomenting unrest designed to shut down the event, and (iii) failing to control the riotous crowd and instead urging termination of the event before it even concluded.”
The ADF wants Pitt to rescind the security fee, revise its policies governing security fees, and reimburse ISI and College Republicans for the costs of the event. The letter asked for a response from Pitt by June 12, “Otherwise, we will have no option but to advise our clients to pursue other avenues of relief.
A University spokesman said Pitt “has received this letter and is carefully reviewing it. Given that this letter was only recently received along with an implicit threat of legal action, the University is not in a position to comment about these specific assertions and allegations. For more information, please visit https://freespeech.pitt.edu/."
The debate on “Should transgenderism be regulated by law?” sparked a large protest outside the building, during which the University closed some buildings for a time. A smoke bomb and firework were also set off during the protest, but no injuries were reported.
Several groups on and off campus asked Pitt to cancel the Knowles event and two others by conservative groups, but Chancellor Patrick Gallagher said prior to the events that “a university is not a place to limit or quash ideas, no matter who is espousing them. You can infringe on that freedom of ideas by limiting who’s allowed to participate in it. So if the University was only open to certain people and not others, that’s limiting that freedom as well. And that’s what our diversity programs are all about.”
— Susan Jones
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