There’s more than one way to shut people up, and the University of Pittsburgh has dipped into its ideological tool chest to pretend they aren’t censoring students when, in fact, they clearly are.

The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) has apparently used the virtual heckler’s veto to punish The Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the College Republicans for their temerity to invite Michael Knowles and Brad Polumbo to debate the current transgender movement’s initiatives.

The University found the idea that anybody who challenges the Leftist orthodoxy openly should step onto their pristine campus so offensive that they did everything they could to create discord, as of course, all academic institutions do these days whenever a conservative opens his mouth. Remember Riley Gaines in San Francisco? How about Stanford driving a federal judge off its campus, with an actual school administrator hectoring him? There are innumerable examples.

Pitt is no different. The university mobilized to chase Knowles away.

On March 16, Provost Ann Cudd referred to a recent speech by Knowles as “repugnant” and “hate-filled rhetoric” in a message she sent the Pitt Community. And on April 14, a professor advised her students that “[t]he Theatre Arts department, along with many other departments, students, faculty, and staff at Pitt, strongly condemns this event and has called on the University to cancel Knowles’ appearance due to his history of spreading hate speech and inciting violence against trans people.” She added, “Unfortunately, it looks as though the event is still scheduled to take place,” and invited students to participate in “several events planned for Tuesday April 18 in response to Knowles’ unwelcome presence on campus.” After these provocative communications, signs were posted throughout campus calling on students to “Shut Down Michael Knowles” by showing up at Cathedral Lawn on April 18 at 6:45 p.m.—one of the events the professor urged her students to attend.

Inevitably this emotional temperature went through the roof, and the event was disrupted and had to end early, thanks in part to the ginning up of the student body by the university itself.

Now, according to the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, they are adding insult to injury, by demanding a massive payment be forwarded to them forthwith in order to cover the security costs that the university itself contributed to by inciting people to mobilize against the event.

"It’s bad enough that the University of Pittsburgh charged ISI and College Republicans an outrageous and unconstitutional security fee simply out of fear…But it’s worse that the university also encouraged students to disrupt the event and shut it down." – ADF's Philip A.…

— Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal) June 8, 2023

The Alliance Defending Freedom is fighting back against the university and its outrageous demands.

Alliance Defending Freedom sent a letter Monday to the University of Pittsburgh to inform it that the $18,734 security fee the university charged the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and the university’s College Republicans chapter violated the student groups’ First Amendment rights. ADF attorneys are representing ISI and the College Republicans chapter after Pitt officials incited hundreds of protestors to disrupt an event that the conservative student groups sponsored. The university then turned around and charged the two groups for the security necessary to deal with the university-incited disruption.

“Charging students more than $18,000 to host a campus event is prohibitively expensive speech—not free speech,” said ADF Senior Counsel Philip A. Sechler. “It’s bad enough that the University of Pittsburgh charged ISI and College Republicans an outrageous and unconstitutional security fee simply out of fear about how others might react to a particular viewpoint. But it’s worse that the university also encouraged students to disrupt the event and shut it down. This is exactly the type of suppression the First Amendment forbids. Implementing such security fees as part of an attempt to shut down a legitimate campus event is what’s known as a ‘heckler’s veto,’ an action which unconstitutionally allows those who oppose certain speech to censor it simply by protesting it. We urge Pitt officials to swiftly rescind this unlawful fee and amend their policies to protect every student’s freedom of speech.”

Pitt’s anti-free speech strategy is obvious: create a disturbance, and then charge people they dislike to protect themselves from the disturbance the university caused. Not only is this an attack on free speech, this is turning their oppression into a profit-making enterprise for the university.

Almost every academic institution these days is federally funded, and the University of Pittsburgh is a public institution. There is no right to suppress disfavored speech because of this.

Frankly, the university should be reimbursing the ISI and the College Republicans for the expense and covering the costs for one that is properly protected.

Especially since the “security” for which they are charging ISI and the CRs was clearly inadequate.

The academy is lost, and any notion of academic freedom is lost with it. Academic freedom exists to ensure the free flow of ideas and robust debate, not to empower a mob of ideological fruitcakes to use a heckler’s veto to suppress everybody they dislike.