By SHANNON O. WELLS
In her report to Faculty Assembly on Oct. 9, Senate Council President Robin Kear saved what she called the “most difficult item,” recent attacks on Jewish students, for last.
“The two recent antisemitic criminal attacks on our students and related antisemitic acts in our city, especially in this well-known neighborhood where many of our faculty, staff and students live, have me greatly concerned,” she said, noting the recent Oct. 7 anniversary of the deadly Hamas attack on Israel. “I’ve heard urgent calls for the security of our Jewish students during the month of October, especially.”
The latest reported incident took place early Sept. 27. As reported by The Pitt News, Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and the FBI, assisted by Pitt Police, received a report of a “hate crime/assault” in the area of Semple and Ward Street at 2 a.m. The victim was reportedly attacked by six to eight males who used antisemitic language. A bystander reportedly “intervened and ended the assault.”
In an earlier incident on Aug. 30 at the Cathedral of Learning, Jarrett Buba, 52, of Pittsburgh, was arrested after a man, wearing a keffiyeh, allegedly struck two Jewish students from behind with a green glass bottle. One student suffered several superficial cuts to his neck, while the other, struck on the cheek with the bottle, was treated for a possible concussion. While this attack was against Jewish students, the FBI is not classifying it as a hate crime.
“I have also heard urgent calls for increased attention to antisemitism efforts more broadly on campus, including administratively,” Kear said. “The Senate officers and I continue to communicate with senior leadership and with Jewish faculty broadly on these questions and concerns and during specific incidents.
“I appreciate that our University has unequivocally condemned antisemitism and antisemitic attacks,” she added.
At Senate Council on Oct. 17, Kear said the Senate leadership is in discussions to set up an ad-hoc committee on antisemitism that will likely be introduced next month.
The increased rhetoric on campus surrounding the conflict in the Middle East has put the University in a difficult position.
“We have been talking about free speech versus hate speech and its impact,” Kear said, “Sometimes there’s impact, regardless of if it incites violence. For over two years we’ve been thinking about this and trying to understand the impact and alleviate the impact without restricting free speech, and it’s extremely difficult … to try and differentiate that and to work for free speech, when I know that it is harmful to some.”
Kris Kanthak, Senate vice president and a professor of political science, said the issue is personal for her because her husband is Jewish and has told her stories from his childhood about the antisemitism that he faced, “and I just can’t abide that my children just have to accept that this is how the world works.”
“A place like the University of Pittsburgh is special because we have the free exchange of idea, we have free speech here, but this is also our home,” she said. “And I think we need to acknowledge that folks are coming into our home and taking advantage of the fact that we believe so strongly in a free exchange of ideas that we let them into our home to say awful things to us and they affect us differentially.”
Some in attendance cited the “Week of Rage,” sponsored by Pittsburgh to Palestine and Pitt Apartheid Divest to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the attack on Israel by Hamas, as speech that could incite people to violence.
“I am absolutely certain that there are students involved in this ‘Week of Rage’ who don’t understand how scary it is for Jews to see a document about the Week of Rage,” Kanthak said. “Clearly not everybody is ignorant. … And it makes the job of our public safety people much more difficult, because we can’t tell the difference between people who are engaging In rhetorical hyperbole and (those) who really want to do our family harm. But we can say we don’t like it and and I don’t like it, and I don’t know how we as a body or as a community can say that louder, but I feel like we should. I feel like we have an obligation.”
Public safety perspective
Kear invited Ted Fritz, vice chancellor for public safety and emergency management, and Pitt Chief of Police Holly Lamb, to update the Faculty Assembly on how their offices are preparing for and responding to protests and instances of antisemitic violence on campus.
Introducing Fritz and Lamb, Kear acknowledged the challenges as tensions related to war and instability in the Middle East affect public and student safety in and around Oakland.
“Last week, this week and Oct. 7 have held and will hold tense and difficult moments for us,” she said. “I want to acknowledge this and say that we are working constructively to address concerns that are brought to the Senate.”
Calling this fall a “highly charged time to many people for many reasons,” Fritz said he and his public safety colleagues acknowledge the challenge of implementing practices that can make people feel safe, “but could make other people not feel safe …
“We have to constantly strike a balance with that, but just know that we are here to protect the faculty, the staff and the students,” he added. “That’s our core mission. Regardless of their beliefs, their affiliations, their views, we have to protect the safety of the entire community.”
Fritz emphasized the fundamental importance of reporting any behavior or incidents to Pitt Police that don’t look or feel right.
“We always encourage people to report things to us, even if you feel like maybe it’s not a big deal,” he said. “We would rather look into those kinds of things and find out that it’s not a big deal. … It’s usually successful for everybody when we do get an early lead or start on certain things.”
Fritz encouraged anonymously reporting concerning incidents and submitting photos via the free Rave Guardian app or on the Pitt Police website, police.pitt.edu.
“I would rather you all err on the side of reporting suspicious things to us, even if you’re not sure about that,” he said. “You’ve all heard that (phrase), ‘See something, say something.’ It really does matter. I would just like to add that our job is to ‘Do something’ as well.”
Fritz and his Public Safety and Emergency Management colleagues also have met with campus groups including the Student Government Board; Campus Utilization, Planning and Safety Committee (CUPS); affinity groups related to religious activities; Staff Council and Student Affairs, as well as parents of students to talk about what’s being done and what more can be done in the name of campus safety and security.
“It’s easy for us to just sit back and say, ‘Well, this is what we should do,’ but actually making those meetings happen sometimes isn’t as easy as you think. So I really appreciate our officers’ outreach in doing that,” Fritz said. “But moreover, I appreciate the different governance groups willing to listen to us and to have us.”
Fritz said liking or following Pitt Police on Instagram, Facebook and X (Twitter) pages “will give you information that’s not necessarily urgent, like an ENS message would.” For instance, the alerts might say there’s a big crowd in the intersection of Forbes and Bigelow, and what does that mean for traffic.
Preparing and sharing
The Campus Climate Assessment Team, which meets every other Wednesday to discuss impending events or protests, includes representatives from the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, the provost’s and chancellor’s offices, Student Affairs, Health Sciences and others who share what’s happening in their areas and what should be on the Pitt Police radar.
“This really is a great tool (for) keeping us all on the same page,” he said. “If you all have events coming up that you’re concerned about … we will meet with your point of contact and give advice about how you can best prepare to keep that event safe, or things we might want to be on the lookout for related to that event.”
Pitt’s threat assessment team, a group of six to eight people, has assembled to consider threats that “could evolve and could be dangerous to our community members,” he said, noting that Scott Argiro, assistant vice chancellor for Public Safety and Emergency Management, chairs the team. “He comes to us from the FBI, where he was the head of the Joint Terrorism Task Force for the last several years. We are pleased to have him with us.”
Pitt also partners with federal, local and state public safety organizations, including the Joint Terrorism Task Force. Pitt’s task force representative is the liaison for all colleges and universities in Western Pennsylvania and neighboring West Virginia, he noted.
“We share information with them. They share information with us about potential threats. This is happening on a daily basis here at Pitt.”
Pitt also partners with the city of Pittsburgh Police and Carnegie Mellon University police. “We haven’t had a better relationship, I think, ever, than right now,” Fritz said. “We are constantly sharing information with other law enforcement agencies and with other community organizations as well.”
For her part of the presentation, Holly Lamb noted the improvements in communication she’s seen among public safety agencies and the public.
“I really hang my hat on communication, because if you don’t have communication, you’re not going to build any relationships with anybody,” she said. “When I first started here, the police never talked to anybody.” Within the past 10 years or so, however, “that’s what we do. We talk to everybody, whether it’s student groups or local police departments or our partners, CMU and Carlow (University).
“Our relationships have grown so much because of that communication and some of the programming we have within our department that we’ve been passing along to others,” she added.
Fritz said Pitt Police also underwent special training on hate crimes over the summer and they work with the FBI and the district attorney’s office to determine when language and conduct together make a hate crime.
Magnet for violence?
Jennifer Murtazashvili, founding director of the Center for Governance and Markets and a professor at the Graduate School of Public & International Affairs, expressed concern about the uptick in antisemitic incidents around campus. She referred to Kear’s earlier statement about the violent events.
“This is the second statement that you heard in a month about antisemitism,” Murtazashvili said of Kear’s messages to shared governance. “I think to many members of the community, hearing such a heartfelt message is badly needed.
“But it’s shocking that our students are facing such a high level of violence. I think this is kind of unprecedented on our campus. And I just wanted to know from all of you, why do you think it has become a magnet for such violence?”
Lamb said while she didn’t know if she “had the answer for that,” she emphasized that officers within the police department, are “out there. We’re watching what’s happening. We’re responding to things,” she said. “I’m not sure if I would say (campus is) a magnet. We’re trying to get our message out, to use our programming, use those things and report anything that they see like that.”
Addressing the two violent incidents in August and September, Lamb said there was “an arrest right away,” in the earlier incident, of a suspect who was “not affiliated in any way with the University. The second incident is ongoing. I really can’t talk much about that. They have not been identified yet, but we did receive some recent information, so hopefully we can identify someone.”
Turning down the heat
Carey Balaban, professor of otolaryngology in the School of Medicine, expressed skepticism that the incidents indicate a full-blown crisis is at hand.
“I mean, some of us remember facing this kind of stuff on an individual basis growing up, and you just sort of fought it out,” he said. “We have to keep our eye on it, be vigilant. But let’s face it, people are hypersensitive. … Let’s practice proper vigilance like you’re doing, OK? Keep everybody informed and just keep our heads cool.
“We don’t really have an insider threat problem in the University, and that’s really good to know and good to hear,” he added. “But I’m a little concerned about people becoming, I’ll say hypersensitive, and creating the appearance of a problem that really doesn’t exist (and perhaps is) no worse than it’s been for 50 or 60 years.”
On the other hand, Chris Bonneau, former Senate Council president and professor of political science, said although he’s not been a member of a group targeted by hate speech or violence, he’s surprised at the number of texts and messages he and his colleagues have received from “students who I know, who I do not consider alarmist, who have found these incidents to be distressing.
“Not only because they’re occurring, even if they’re occurring from non-affiliates,” he added, “but when you see fellow students and faculty and staff chanting slogans that are antisemitic, that seem to be increasing in intensity, when you have (pro-Palestinian) student groups calling for a ‘Week of Rage,’ I don’t think it’s hyperbolic for these students to feel unsafe. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable feeling.”
Because the “temperature is very high, both in the country and on campuses in particular,” Bonneau said Faculty Assembly needs to work with the administration and “do whatever we can to make these folks feel safe. … If rules are violated, we need to go through a student conduct program. We need to go through the (persona non grata) status to ban people from campus, and we need to issue statements that condemn this kind of violence in unequivocal terms and not equivocate with kind of both sides, which I think we’ve had a tendency to do.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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