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—including Portland State University, City University of New York and more—as sites of both rebellion and repression, places where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.

D: Jan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth, US, 2024, 1h10m, Closed Captions

Discussion follows with the film's consulting producer. Co-sponsored by the Department of Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies, American Association of University Professors – Dartmouth College Chapter, JAM - Junction Arts & Media, Upper Valley for Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, VT-NH Chapter