The following post and photos are by Amos Wolf, our community engagement editor, who is reporting from Pittsburgh while I'm off reporting in Brasil for the month. Donate to help pay our staff $32-an-hour.
Last Friday, the voices of around 100 students echoed through Carnegie Mellon’s University Center building with loud chants of “ICE Out Now!” and singing songs that questioned the guilty consciences of ICE agents, “Maybe you know you’re doing wrong and that’s why you’re full of fear.”
Historically, Carnegie Mellon students have been known to be apolitical, but the campus newspaper, The Tartan, notes “a rising trend of political involvement on campus.”
While more students are coming out for rallies, history student Abriana Bensch thinks that many international students she knows fear ICE, that they “are definitely (afraid to leave campus) because there’s such a large international population.”
Student chants and speeches from Friday’s walkout at Carnegie Mellon University (Amos Wolf)
This could be a problem for Pittsburgh’s 21st century “eds, meds, and tech” economy. Carnegie Mellon’s international reputation and highly-regarded tech programs have made it a selling point for the region.
The University enrolls Pittsburgh’s largest population of international students with 37% hailing from abroad, around five thousand in total. Luis von Ahn, CEO and Founder of Pittsburgh’s most prominent startup, Duolingo, is a Guatemalan immigrant and Carnegie Mellon alumnus.
Carnegie Mellon was roiled by unexpected student visa cancellations last spring, and only months later hosted an “artificial intelligence” summit with Donald Trump. The visit provoked a round of clashes between student protestors and University President, Farnam Jahanian, who took steps to quash them.
Friday’s walkout, organized by CMU BRICK (a queer-focused activist organization), College Democrats, College Progressives, and Sunrise Movement Pgh, united attendees across nationalities, as well as across schools. Speakers noted that this was a refreshing disruption of the siloed campus where most studiously toil away in their separate departments.
“This campus is in some senses designed to isolate certain groups of people from each other,” explained protest leader and student organizer Ilyas Khan. “I know that because my parents are architects and I know what isolative design is.”
Friday’s rally united students as well as faculty and staff. They applauded when a couple of professors stopped by to share words of encouragement. Two members of the University Center dining staff walked over to express solidarity with the students.
“We take care of ourselves! We don’t need ICE!” shouted one of the staff, as the crowd cheered loudly in response.
Afterwards, the protestors marched to Warner Hall, the main administration building. There, Savi Bhat, president of the College Democrats called on campus leaders to “reaffirm their commitment to international students, provide training for faculty and staff on what to do if ICE shows up on campus, and publicly condemn ICE for their actions in Minneapolis and Los Angeles and all across the country.”
Currently, the University provides resources to help international students maintain their visa status, but protesters want them to do more. One protester pointed up to the administration building exclaiming, “Where’s Farnam at?” The crowd erupted in chants of “F— you Farnam!” and “Show your face!”
“This school is an international school,” Khan told the crowd. “We have thousands of students here from outside of the United States, and they are beloved classmates, friends, family even. We go everywhere with them every day and they deserve the same protections that any of us who are citizens have.”
“Let’s protect our immigrant students together. That's what we’re here for!” exclaimed Kahn, before leading the protestors in a chorus of, “Which Side Are You On, Farnam?”
“There has been an ICE sighting in Squirrel Hill recently,” Khan informed the crowd, referring to a neighborhood that borders Carnegie Mellon. “They were at Alderdice High School (and) expected to lurk and try to round people up after school let out.”
Khan shared two tip-line numbers “which you should all write down (and call) if you suspect you see ICE,” for local organizations Casa San Jose (412-736-7167) and Frontline Dignity (412-536-6323).
“We’re also here because there are so so many people who have already lost their lives at the hands of the terrorist organization that is ICE,” explained Khan. “We’re here to act as the beginning of a reckoning to demand better for our fellow Americans from all over the world and every walk of life,” said Khan before directing the crowd to repeat the names of 39 people killed by ICE.
After the names were read, the crowd took a moment for silent reflection.
Then, student activists from the crowd stepped up to share their insights, stories, and calls for further political action.
“We’re standing on the campus of one of the biggest and most influential tech schools in the country, and what is that tech going for? It’s being used to surveil in the country and outside of it, in Minnesota, in LA, in Palestine, and all over the world,” one speaker noted.
“We all know the names of companies that use the surveillance that is being used to oppress. Palantir, BlackRock, Lockheed Martin.” Firms, the speaker noted, which regularly recruit at CMU.
Since 2019, Palantir has been a target for student protests. Campus groups like BRICK, who co-sponsored Friday’s protest, are trying to block them from job fairs on campus.
One of BRICK’s leaders, an immigrant student who preferred to remain anonymous for safety concerns, told Payday Report, “Unfortunately there are a lot of people who see (the military industrial complex) as an evil that they have to deal with, or an option that they really want to have open, so they’re afraid of giving it up, but that’s something that we need to do.”
Despite these challenges, rallies like this one are creating a sense of urgency and potential for resistance on a campus that hasn’t always been a hotbed of political action.
“Most everybody in BRICK is from an immigrant background, so we all care a lot already,” one of BRICK’s organizers told Payday Report. “As for CMU in general, I’m pretty sure that everyone has that feeling that they should be doing something. We need to activate all the people that we can. That’s what’s good about this event, it’s getting people out.”
