Release: Carnegie Mellon University Censors Pro-Palestinian Speech

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

July 28, 2026

Contact: Mattea Kramer | 413-247-4458 | [email protected]

Carnegie Mellon University Censors Pro-Palestinian Speech

Eight organizations jointly condemn infringement of First Amendment rights as nine students are banned from campus, investigated for pro-Palestinian statements

Pittsburgh, PA (July 28, 2026) — Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Association of University Professors, and six other organizations have joined together to condemn Carnegie Mellon’s censorship of pro-Palestinian speech. Ten campus community members including 9 students have been banned from campus, and one of them is facing expulsion, for the alleged offense of painting pro-Palestinian statements in Yiddish and English on a fence that has been a place of free expression for more than a century.

Carnegie Mellon has a storied history of maintaining a free speech “fence” where community members can paint messages, including those that might be unpopular or otherwise ignored.  But today, by censoring and investigating community members who write pro-Palestinian statements on its fence, Carnegie Mellon has capitulated to the Trump administration in what amounts to a naked attempt to shield the state of Israel from criticism.

“CMU has abandoned its free speech traditions in favor of appeasing rising authoritarian power. By punishing Palestinian solidarity activists for expressing their opposition to apartheid, genocide, and the ideologies that support it, CMU has cast its lot on the wrong side of history,” said Jonah Rubin, Senior Manager of Campus Organizing at Jewish Voice for Peace.

“In censoring our fence paintings, CMU is showing that it is more concerned about the possibility that people find the language we use offensive than the reality of the genocidal violence that Israel and Zionism have perpetrated against Palestinians,” said Rosalyn, one of the students who painted the fence.

The fence painters are now the subjects of discrimination investigations for allegedly inciting, implying, and threatening violence.

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), Coalition for Higher Education (CAHE), Concerned Jewish Faculty and Staff, Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestine Legal, Sunrise Movement, as well as National Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, City University of New York Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine, and University of California Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine have issued a joint letter condemning the censorship and calling on the university to drop its investigations into the fence painters.

Jonah Rubin is available to speak with the media.

Visual for media: Photo of pro-Palestinian painting on CMU fence. Credit: Courtesy of CMU fence painters.

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The Jewish Voice for Peace family of organizations organizes a grassroots, multiracial, cross-class, intergenerational movement of U.S. Jews into solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle, guided by a vision of justice, equality and dignity for all people. Jewish Voice for Peace Action (JVP Action), our 501(c)(4) organization, is now doing business as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), while our 501(c)(3) work continues through JVP Leadership and Culture Lab (JVP Lab).  JVP is the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world.