Frontline has released a new documentary called Crisis on Campus. I wouldn't even know about it if it weren't for Pamela Paresky 🟦 (Habits of a Free Mind) noting that "I know it couldn’t possibly have been intentional, but this PBS Frontline documentary went live on Youtube last night... — on the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which ends tomorrow. This means that the observant Jews featured in it can’t comment until then." Buckle up as we look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of Crisis on Campus. 🧵show more

The clip that everyone will likely be talking about and debating is this one featuring Tala Alfoqaha, Israa Alzamli, and Lea Kayali. They discuss the infamous statement that their group, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, drafted up. Thirty other student groups signed onto this statement. Alzamli says Hamas is the result of living in a "pressure cooker" of "Israeli oppression." Alfoqaha says, "Hamas is like a manifestation of the structure."

Shabbos Kestenbaum really shined in this documentary. "One of the worst parts of October 7 was not just the horrific terror attack, but it was the fact that our friends and classmates were justifying it. You know, that, to me, is something that I can never really shake off."

What I liked about this documentary was that you got to hear from so many different people. You get to hear a lot of different perspectives, and these were largely edited together in a fair presentation. This is one nice thing I can say about this documentary. Like in this scene here, Rabbi David Wolpe shares what he thought Harvard should have done. "I thought that any responsible institution would immediately say, 'We condemn this letter. We want to meet with the students who wrote this letter. We want to make clear to them that this is not acceptable at an institution of higher education.'"

The leadership of Dr. Claudine Gay is discussed heavily. Former Harvard President Larry Summers' criticism of Harvard and Gay is shown, and then Summers is described as someone with a "huge bully pulpit." Frontline really dropped the ball here, considering Summer's departure from Harvard was due to him being canceled by the professors. I guarantee you that Summers would have spoken with the documentary team if he had been approached. There was a lot of framing around the student movement being an "anti-war movement" (which it isn't) and not challenging notions of "occupation," but this is one of the clearer moments of bias in the documentary.

In tandem with that, Frontline saw billionaires like Bill Ackman and Leon Cooperman (more on Cooperman later) weighing in on the state of higher education as abuses of their personal power. As you can see here, Ackman is framed as a "donor" and not an alum with an interest in the school. The rights or even interests of alumni at their alma maters were not something Frontline really considered. In the entire documentary, alumni and derivates of alum are only mentioned twice.

Harvard's Tala Alfoqaha, Israa Alzamli, and Lea Kayali discuss the "doxing trucks" and online harassment. Alzamli shares about where she was when she learned that family members died during the war.

From here the documentary shifts in tone and has a very surface level examination of some of the slogans and philosophies influencing the Pro-Palestine student movement and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion on campus. As someone knee deep in studying and presenting these ideas, this was not done well. There is no mention of Decolonization. Intersectionality gets mentioned once. There is nothing about the decades of Marxist influence among Palestinian radical activism. Shabbos Kestenbaum highlighted the hypocrisy of D.E.I. when some groups get "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" while others get ignored. "It really animates the hypocrisy that is at the center of Harvard University, where every minority group gets to be coddled, every minority group gets to have trigger warnings and safe spaces, but Jews do not count."

The Wall Street Journal's Douglas Belkin chimes in with some thoughts and highlights the generational divide. "They see children being maimed and, and buildings exploding and I think that's the single largest driver of the protests. But it fits into this broader complex that does connect to race. They see this as part of a broader worldview of the oppressed and the oppressors."

From the River to the Sea was discussed. Lea Kayali says From the River to the Sea "is like critical to our understanding of Palestinian identity, liberation, and struggle." Rabbi Wolpe notes how protesters "have started increasingly to chant it in its original Arabic, which is 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.' In other words, no Jews."

University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ discussed protests and free speech on campus. I feel they could have invited someone else to speak who was more connected to Columbia and Harvard. My honest thought is that she is a free speech advocate on the Left who wouldn't mention time, place, and manner restrictions. Christ was Chancellor of Berkley back in 2017 and dealt with the chaos that erupted on campus when Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to make a speech. So she certainly has her bona fides.

Back to billionaire Leon Cooperman! Once again, Cooperman is framed as a "donor" and not a Columbia alum with a personal connection to the school. I feel like the framing here from PBS is that Cooperman, as a billionaire, should just fund the school out of the goodness of his heart and not have any thoughts about how his money is being spent or critics of the school's public image, which is a ridiculous idea. Cooperman is framed as a boor who doesn't want to be intellectual. Frankly, I would rather work for someone blunt and direct like Cooperman than some of these college administrations who speak in euphemisms and niceties.

I loved hearing from @virginiafoxx who spilled the tea about what she said to Dr. Claudine Gay before the infamous hearing. "What Claudine Gay said to me was, 'What is your vision for this hearing?' So I said, 'Well, my vision is that you will get a spine and that you will speak with moral clarity about what's happening on your campus, and that you will make some decisions that will stop the bad behavior that's going on on the campuses.'" Frontline framed the Committee on Education & the Workforce as political theater and had talking heads state the college presidents simply misunderstood the questions and answered using too much "legalese." So the brilliant academics in charge of the Ivy League are just too stupid to answer questions correctly? Come on now! There was a lot of emphasis on this being "Republican-led," which technically is correct, but the Committee on Education & the Workforce is very bipartisan, with 24 Republicans and 20 Democrats.

The only time this documentary remotely engaged with the philosophy and political ideology of the pro-Palestine student movement was during the interview with @realchrisrufo. "In the span of just a few minutes, a few small video clips that were circulated in the media billions of times, for the first time, millions of Americans saw the empty nihilism that had taken over the heart of academic life." Intersectionality is a massive talking point at rallies and teach-ins. The archival footage of Rufo is the only mention of intersectionality in the entire documentary.

It was interesting to see Rufo paired with Harvard's Randall Kennedy. Kennedy knew Dr. Derrick Bell, the co-founder of Critical Race Theory. Kennedy knew Bell and described their relationship as "mentor, friend, and adversary." Since Bell's passing, Kennedy has championed the ideas of Bell but has some critiques. The rest of this segment focuses on the criticisms of Dr. Claudine Gay and her eventual resignation. @realchrisrufo: "This is a long war, and this is only the opening gambit." Randall Kennedy: "I thought that she had been upended by a very clever, absolutely ruthless campaign that gave voice to some very dangerous ideas." What these "dangerous ideas" are is never explained, but whenever I hear something like that, I file it away with words like "problematic." You just want to malign something and not engage with it.

I have a ton of criticism surrounding the depiction of Columbia and what all went on there this year. Columbia's Nadia Abu El-Haj argues that there is no Anti-Semitism on campus. WSJ's Doug Belkin states, "I think the Jewish students by and large and folks who are in support of Israel felt like she had their back. This was a high-wire act and she was trying to steer her institution through a really fine hole in a needle to make sure that she would bring some kind of calmness to it but also placate the Republicans on the committee who were demanding that she crack down harder." I have no idea why Belkin thinks that Jewish students felt supported by President Shafik. Once again, we see blame put on the Republicans for some reason and not the insanely radical students. Once again, the Committee on Education & the Workforce is bipartisan.

Asher Strell shares his experience at Columbia. "They chant to us; they yell, 'Yehudi, Yehudi' which is 'Jew, Jew' in Arabic at us, as we leave. They tell us, they, they say, 'BLEEP you, Zionists.' 'BLEEP you, Jews. Jews, Jews-- we don't want no Jews here.' They've said that here on campus." There is no mention of outside people at the encampments. There is no mention of all the wild nights that led up to the occupation of Hamilton Hall. There is no mention of the students holding the janitorial staff hostage. There is no mention of classes going online, as the campus was shut down. Is this how history books will remember this time because I have so many corrections?

The documentary starts to wrap up and looks at the current state of things which I imagine was filmed at over a month ago. The team checks in with Kestenbaum. "Things have only gotten worse. My parents didn't want me to come back after Passover, but my attitude was and is we have to confront these people."

Israa Alzamli has also joined a Civil Rights Complaint. "I'm going to keep fighting, and I'm gonna keep working, and I'm gonna keep organizing... What we're doing on these college campuses, it's bigger than Harvard. This is about American foreign policy. The student uprisings are just one spark, and I think that's major. I think that's huge." Alzamli worked for Morriston Forrester last summer, a company that touts its strong Israeli practice. Hypocrisy much?

Chancellor Christ closes the documentary out. "I think as a society we're losing our ability to have discussions among people with very different political points of view, and it's one of the most important things the university has to teach its students."

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