Film Synopsis
After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that has been described as the new McCarthyism. As students across the country organize protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, decades-long taboos in academia around criticism of Israel–the “Palestine exception”–are shattered.
This film features professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians. Scholars from diverse disciplines explain what is at stake in these protests and why so many young people identify with the Palestinian cause.
The documentary unfolds as a story of college campuses as sites of both rebellion and repression, places where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.
Lead Characters
Meet The Team
Advisory Committee
- Bill Mullen – Professor Emeritus of American Studies, Purdue University
- Cynthia Coleman – Professor of Communications, Portland State University
- Emily Van Gilbert
- Eric Edwards – Cinematographer
- Johanna Brenner – Professor Emerita, Portland State University
- Kristin Hole – Associate Professor of Film, Portland State University
- Lara Sheehi – Assistant Professor, Doha Institute
- Lynne Layton – Psychoanalyst
- Patricia Kullberg – Retired Physician
- Stephanie Wahab – Professor of Social Work, Portland State University
- Tami Gold – Professor of Film Studies, Hunter College
