NEWS REPORT: College protests reaching a boiling point after days of an encampment…

NARRATION: April 30th, 2024.

Protestors condemning the war in Gaza had barricaded themselves in a building at Columbia University.  

PROTESTORS: The people united will never be defeated! 

NARRATION: They demanded the school sever ties with Israel.

PROTESTORS: I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! I believe that we will win! 

NEWS REPORT: The protestors say on social media, if Columbia tries to remove them by force, the school will, quote, have blood on its hands.

NARRATION: Less than 24 hours later, Columbia University called in the police. 

NEWS REPORT: It looks like a military-grade vehicle that is coming down Amsterdam right now, with protestors on each side.

NEWS REPORT: O.K,. we see an officer approaching the window right now. 

NEWS REPORT: With guns drawn. Guns drawn. 

NEWS REPORT: Wow. 

NEWS REPORT: The first officer has entered the window. People are screaming on the street in response. 

PROTESTOR Shame on you!

NEWS REPORT: I am now seeing the N.Y.P.D., dozens going in through the gate as well.

PROTESTORS: We shall not be moved! [drill buzzing, protestors singing, police whistling, metal clattering]

NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Down! Get on the ground! Stay on the ground! Stay down!

NARRATION: The clashes at Columbia that night were the culmination of months of chaos sweeping across American college campuses….

PROTESTORS: Free, free Palestine! 

NARRATION: … ignited by a war on the other side of the world.

PROTESTORS: Oh, my God! Terrorists! You guys are terrorists! 

NARRATION: From the start…

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: All right.

JAMES JACOBY (REPORTER): October 7th, I think we start it there.

NARRATION: …Frontline and Retro Report have been following the escalating turmoil…   

LEA KAYALI: We’ll be taking to the streets and sending a very clear message.

NARRATION: ….talking to people on all sides of the divide… 

STUDENT: So many students actually seem willing to condone or even justify violence against Israel, violence against Jews.

NARRATION:…investigating how universities have responded…

DR. CLAUDINE GAY (PRESIDENT OF HARVARD UNIVERSITY): Our university rejects hate.

NARRATION:…how powerful interests joined the fray… 

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINA FOXX: Anti-Semitism is spreading like wildfire

JAMES JACOBY: What was it that prompted you to call those hearings?

NARRATION:…and how the conflict over the conflict ultimately spiraled out of control. 

CRISIS ON CAMPUS

CO-PRODUCED BY: CHRIS O’COIN

PRODUCED BY: JOSEPH HOGAN, SCOTT MICHELS

WRITTEN BY:  JAMES JACOBY, SCOTT MICHELS

DIRECTED BY: JAMES JACOBY

NEWS REPORT: We begin with breaking news. The Israeli military is warning that a number of militants have infiltrated Israeli territory from Gaza.
 
NEWS REPORT: A barrage of rockets being fired from Gaza, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. They’ve never seen such an amount of rockets at the same time.

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM (HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL STUDENT): October 7th was the Jewish joyous holiday of Simchat Torah. I’m an orthodox Jew, meaning on the Sabbath, on Jewish holidays, I don’t use electronics, including my phone. Rumors began circulating that there was a terror attack in Israel. I lived in Israel. I have four siblings who currently live in Israel. My grandparents, aunts, uncles. So, I, I break the Sabbath for the first time in my life on the night of October 7, frantically trying to locate my siblings, seeing if, if they’re alive or not. I was not alone. There were dozens of other Jewish students at Harvard doing the exact same thing, frantically locating their, their loved ones. 

NEWS REPORT: Hamas has launched a surprise attack within Israel’s borders.

NEWS REPORT: Palestinian gunmen are inside Israeli cities and towns.

NEWS REPORT: We have reports there have been hostages taken.

NEWS REPORT: Active firefights going on in various Israeli cities and villages around Gaza.

NEWS REPORT: This is in fact Israel’s 9/11.

NARRATION: The attacks would turn out to be the worst loss of Jewish life since the Second World War.

Hamas fighters killed more than 1,000 people and kidnapped more than 200.

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU (PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL): Hamas will understand. We will exact a price that will be remembered by them and Israel’s other enemies for decades to come.

NARRATION: Israel began launching airstrikes in Gaza. 

NEWS REPORT: …the death toll in Gaza spiral as Israel continues to retaliate. So far, at least 198 Palestinians have been killed…

NARRATION: In those very first hours, at Harvard, a group of Palestinian student activists began discussing how to respond.

LEA KAYALI (HARVARD LAW SCHOOL STUDENT): I had a conversation with my dad that day, and he was like, 50,000  Palestinians will be killed because of what happened on October 7th. And I remember at the time being like, Baba, you’re crazy. Like, that’s not going to happen because we hadn’t seen anything like that in our lifetime.

NARRATION: They were members of a group called Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, and for years they had been protesting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.

ISRAA ALZAMLI (HARVARD LAW SCHOOL STUDENT): So we felt like it was necessary to get out some sort of statement, like, immediately, because we saw what was happening and we felt like there were two, like, really urgent needs. One was to, like, contextualize what’s happening. And two, we were scared and we felt like there was a real urgent need to warn people to, um, stand in unwavering, you know, solidarity against retaliation that was going to kill thousands of people.

NARRATION: The statement, signed by a coalition of more than 30 student groups at Harvard, began with the line “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” 

There was no mention of Hamas.

ISRAA ALZAMLI: It’s this idea of, like, if something horrific happens, why and what are the circumstances that lead someone to do something like this? And where does that responsibility lie? And when we’re talking about Palestine and the circumstances in which Palestinians are living, it’s, it’s, they are living under Israeli oppression. And what is happening, um, is they’re, they’re in a pressure cooker, and you think: what is a response that could occur in this pressure cooker?

JAMES JACOBY: Did you contemplate whether to mention Hamas at all?

TALA ALFOQAHA (HARVARD LAW SCHOOL STUDENT): It just didn’t really seem like the purpose of our statement. Like, I think, again, we wanted to contextualize it in a broader structure. I think Hamas is a, like, manifestation of the structure.

MALE VOICE: I was appalled when I saw that letter. The absolute last thing you do is blame the victim.

NARRATION: The statement caused an outcry on campus. 

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: Within a couple of hours of the statement being released, it was all anyone could talk about.

MALE VOICE: Totally whitewashing all responsibility of the people actually engaged in the violence.

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: 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. You know, we Jewish students at Harvard did not have time to mourn. We did not have time to, to discern exactly what was happening. We immediately had to go on, on the defense to explain that what was happening was, was horrific, was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. That Israel not only has a right, but has an obligation to defend itself. 

NEWS REPORT: Deep divisions in the Middle East are currently dividing the Harvard University campus.

NARRATION: The conflict over the conflict had begun.  

NEWS REPORT: Those were pro-Hamas letters, there were many celebrating…

NARRATION: Harvard was at the epicenter.

NEWS REPORT: You can really sense a charged atmosphere here at Harvard.

NARRATION: How the university would respond would set the stage for the months of turmoil to come. 

NEWS REPORT: The statement was met with outcry from several alumni, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who tweeted, “What the hell is wrong with Harvard?”

NARRATION: Almost immediately, there were calls for Harvard to condemn the student groups’ statement.

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: 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. 

NARRATION: Rabbi David Wolpe, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School and one of the most influential rabbis in America, thought the student statement amounted to anti-Semitism. 

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: I don’t think there’s any question that the letter was anti-Semitic because it is inconceivable to me that any other group of people in the world could have gone through the brutality that the Israelis endured and have had people say, well, it’s their fault. I was appalled and shocked, but not entirely surprised because I had seen this ideology before, I knew it existed. I’m referring to the problem of deep animosity towards Israel and derivative animosity towards Jews.

NARRATION: Harvard’s newly appointed president, Claudine Gay, initially made no public comment.

Then, a major escalation.

On October 9th, one of Gay’s predecessors, the former treasury secretary Larry Summers, launched an attack on social media. He wrote: I am sickened. I cannot fathom the administration’s failure to disassociate the university and condemn this statement.

NEWS REPORT: He’s saying he’s never felt more alienated and disillusioned by what is happening now.

NARRATION: The posts made Claudine Gay and Harvard headline news. 

NEWS REPORT: Good for Larry Summers, incidentally, who immediately came out strongly in support of common sense. 

KHALIL MUHAMMED (HARVARD KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT): Here he was turning to social media to shame and embarrass and pressure the current president who, who had literally been in office doing that job for a few months.  

NARRATION: At Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Professor Khalil Gibran Muhammed thought the students’ statement was an inappropriate way to make their point. 

But he was troubled by Summers’ attack. 

KHALIL MUHAMMED: Larry Summers had a huge bully pulpit. He was spending as much of his political capital as possible to say that what’s happening at Harvard University is unacceptable. This university cannot continue down this path. And, uh, ultimately, that Claudine Gay was doing a terrible job.

NARRATION: Later that day, Claudine Gay – who declined our requests for an interview – released Harvard’s first public statement. 

It didn’t condemn the students as Summers was demanding. Instead, it called for “dialogue and empathy” … “at a time of unimaginable loss.” 

KHALIL MUHAMMAD: It was a general expression of concern about what had happened in the Middle East and an affirmation that in this moment people will have different points of view, um, that we have to respect each other’s different points of view. 

NARRATION: The statement did little to calm the situation at Harvard. 

NEWS REPORT: I don’t see why the president could not have issued a statement that both supports Israel, supports Palestine, while denouncing Hamas as a terrorist organization…

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: I went to the Hillel to be with the students and to hear what they were saying and I saw genuine fear, and they showed me some of the messages that they were getting on the internal student channels which were awful, and were filled with anti-Semitic images, and with some veiled and not so veiled threats. And that’s when I recognized that this was not going to go away. 

NARRATION: With many in the Jewish community now expressing concern about anti-Semitism on campus, another powerful voice weighed in. 

On October 10th, Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard donor, called for the university to publish the names of the students from the groups that had signed the controversial statement.

NEWS REPORT: Bill Ackman is saying, look, if you’re one of these students, I want to know who you are, because in the business world, we ain’t going to hire you.

NARRATION: Several groups retracted support for the statement. 

NEWS REPORT: When they are first presented with the consequence, they fold like a lawn chair, that’s what these Harvard students did.

NARRATION: Although the students who wrote it stood firm on blaming Israel, they clarified that they opposed ‘all violence against all innocent life.’

MALE VOICE: We’re getting constant, constant calls from unknown numbers.

NARRATION: But students were already being doxxed, with their names and personal information posted online.

NEWS REPORT: A digital billboard parked right outside Harvard University is attracting a lot of attention.

NARRATION: At the same time, a conservative watchdog organization sent a billboard truck to Cambridge, branding the students as Harvard’s leading anti-Semites.

ADAM GUILLETTE (PRESIDENT, ACCURACY IN MEDIA): If they’re ashamed of what they did and want to apologize, we’ll remove them. If they’re proud of what they did, they should thank us. 

NARRATION: Lea Kayali and Tala Alfoqaha were both targeted. They said calling them anti-Semitic was an unfair smear to distract from their criticism of Israel.

TALA ALFOQAHA: I got a text of someone screenshotting a tweet from the president, I think, of the Accuracy in Media company, which is the company that runs the doxxing trucks, who was gleefully saying that he has our addresses and is going to send the trucks to our homes.

BYSTANDER ON STREET: This is disgusting. This is sickening. 

LEA KAYALI: You know, like, we wouldn’t wish what happened to us, but also what happened to our, our fellow students on anyone. People got death and rape threats directly to their phone lines, um, lots of online harassment and threats.  

TALA ALFOQAHA: It felt like every hour there was a new crisis.

NARRATION: As her friends were dealing with the doxxing, Israa Alzamli got news about relatives she had in Gaza.  

ISRAA ALZAMLI: And I, like, have a very vivid memory of, like, sitting in a doxxed student’s house and like, writing emails with her, like, trying to help her. She had, like, lost her job. And, and at the same moment I got a text message from my dad saying, like, four more people in my family died. Like, here are their names. Here’s the link where you can read about who died. Like, people, like, my family was dying. Like, my family is dying. And then I was like, things are also like hell here, it was just, like, a truly unbearable situation in, like, so many ways. 

NEWS REPORT: Leadership at Harvard in the hot seat now. 

NARRATION: Amid mounting pressure about her leadership…

NEWS REPORT: You’re worried about offending somebody? We’re talking about the slaughter of civilians.

NARRATION: …and anger and fear among students on all sides…

NEWS REPORT: Some are even now calling it Hamas Harvard.

NARRATION: …Claudine Gay tried once again to quell the controversy.

NEWS REPORT: Harvard’s president says in her third message…

NARRATION: On October 12, she issued a video statement. 

DR. CLAUDINE GAY (VIDEO STATEMENT): Our university rejects terrorism. That includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. 

NARRATION: She had made it clear the students who’d blamed Israel for October 7th were not speaking for Harvard, but she stopped short of rebuking or punishing them.

NEWS REPORT: The president of Harvard should have come out a lot earlier saying that we don’t support terrorist groups. 

NARRATION: It led to charges of a double standard from some Jewish students, like Shabbos Kestenbaum.

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: This is a university that, shortly after the murder of George Floyd, not only condemned white supremacy and racism, but said that as an institution, Harvard was going to do all they could to rid themselves of white supremacy. 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.

NEWS REPORT: Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

NEWS REPORT: This protest inside Harvard Yard attracted over 250 supporters of Palestine. 

NARRATION: Harvard students began coming out in protest against Israel – fueling the charges of anti-Semitism. 

NEWS REPORT: Why have American college campuses become so anti-Semitic?

KHALIL MUHAMMAD: I just want to be clear that everything that is said on this campus that is a critique of Israel is not, in my opinion, anti-Semitic.

NARRATION: Some of Professor Muhammed’s students were at the protests and he took issue with how they were being characterized.  

KHALIL MUHAMMAD: Students on campus were protesting in defense of Palestinians. And I, you know, those, those students are not genocidal. They just don’t believe Israel has a right to occupy Gaza and the West Bank in the way that it has. 

NARRATION: As Hamas continued to hold hostages and the death toll in Gaza soared…

PROTESTOR: From the river to the sea…

NARRATION: …protests were spreading. 

NEWS REPORT: From Arizona State to Indiana to George Mason and many more.

NARRATION: Debate over one of the world’s most intractable and complex conflicts was now gripping American college campuses. 

PROTESTOR: They are about erasing one people and replacing it with another.

PROTESTOR: You cannot expect people who have been oppressed for 75 years to sit down in their rooms, write poetry and not fight back. 

PROTESTOR: We want Israel to be able to defend itself from terrorism.

NARRATION: The rhetoric would quickly grow more heated…

PROTESTOR: You guys are [BLEEP] Nazis. You’re the one killing Jews. You support genocide!

NARRATION: Students shared images from Gaza as a rallying cry…

CRYING WOMAN: Thousands of people around…

NARRATION: …and sounded alarms about anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents.

NEWS REPORT: His hateful screams of [BEEP] you and your people still echo in my ears.

NARRATION: Jewish students reported a wave of anti-Semitic incidents…

 NEWS REPORT: An angry slur and stereotype-laden assault.

NARRATION: On many campuses, posters of Israeli hostages were ripped down…

Why are you tearing that down?

NARRATION: At Tulane University, a melee broke out at one protest.

PROTESTOR: What is wrong with you? 

PROTESTOR: Terrorists! You guys are terrorists! 

NARRATION: Yasmeen Ohebsion, a Tulane student, was there.

PROTESTOR: You guys are terrorists! 

YASMEEN OHEBSION: Students on the other side were flipping us off, telling us that we smelled and we should go back to the showers. People saying [BLLEP] Israel, a woman who did not seem to look like a student at all approached me and looked at me as I was holding an Israeli flag, um, and have my Magen David necklace on, and she said, “[BLEEP] you, Jew.” 

NARRATION: By this point in the Gaza War, Israel’s military had killed thousands of Palestinians.

 NEWS REPORT: More than 9,000 Palestinians have been killed.

NARRATION: Harvard students were ramping up their anti-war efforts.

LEA KAYALI (AT BUS STATION): Right now we have hundreds of people who have come out to get on buses to go join the national march on Washington. We’ll be taking to the streets and sending a very clear message that we demand a ceasefire, we demand an end to the siege on Gaza.

STUDENT (TAKING PHOTO OF FELLOW STUDENTS): 3,2,1. Cheese.

NEWS REPORT: Thousands are flooding D.C. right now, marching against the war in Gaza. Organizers are expecting up to 30,000 people or so, from all across the country.

PROTESTORS: Guilty! Guilty!

NARRATION: The Harvard students joined thousands of other students and protestors, demanding a ceasefire and protesting America’s longstanding economic and military support for Israel.
 
PROTESTOR: You’re buying the guns that childrens are dying from, the rockets where families are burning under the rubble.
 
PROTESTOR: Guys, make some space! Make some space!

NARRATION: The growing protest movement was appealing to students who saw the war in Gaza as a struggle for liberation linked to other American social justice causes.  

PROTESTOR: As a Black person  in America we understand that these struggles are intertwined. 

PROTESTORS: Not another nickel, not another dime!

PROTESTOR: You can’t free Black people until you free Palestine.

PROTESTORS: Israel bombs, U.S.A. pays. How many kids did you kill today?

DOUGLAS BELKIN: They see children being um, maimed and, and buildings exploding. And 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. 

NARRATION: Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Belkin has been covering the protests and how they have exposed a generational divide for some on the issue of Israel.

DOUGLAS BELKIN: People over probably 40, maybe 50, watched Israel or understand that Israel was, first of all, created out of the ashes of the Holocaust and then attacked and was sort of the underdog in ’48 and again in ’67. They had these, these fights for survival. But what the younger folks have grown up with, is Israel as a mature country that has the most powerful military in the region, and they see Israel as a bully.

PROTESTORS: We don’t want no two states! We don’t want no two states! We want 48! We want 48!

NARRATION: As they had been doing on their campuses, the protestors in D.C. were using provocative chants, with meanings that were being highly contested.

PROTESTORS: There is only one solution! There is only one solution! Intifada revolution! Intifada revolution!

NARRATION: One was for global intifada, or uprising, which many of the students embraced as a call for Palestinian liberation after decades of occupation. 

PROTESTORS: Intifada revolution! Intifada revolution!

NARRATION: For pro-Israel students, it was a call for violence, evoking years of Palestinian terror attacks against Jews.

PROTESTORS: Intifada Revolution!

NARRATION: Another was for Palestine to be liberated from the river to the sea.  

PROTESTORS: From the river to the sea. From the river to the sea. Palestine will be free. Palestine will be free.

LEA KAYALI: That’s the main chant, that’s the main chant of the Palestinian liberation struggle, because historic Palestine has been occupied from the river to the sea since 1947 and 48. It’s, like, critical to our understanding of Palestinian identity, liberation and, and struggle. 

PROTESTORS: From the river to the sea…

NARRATION: But it stirred up fear and anger for supporters of Israel, who saw it as a call for the eradication of Israel as the Jewish homeland and refuge from persecution.

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: The river to the sea chant is ambiguous in the following way.  The Wall Street Journal had a wonderful article, ‘Which River, Which Sea?’  Most students had no idea. They thought they were chanting for peace. But the ones who knew, knew, and have started increasingly to chant it in its original Arabic, which is from the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.

PROTESTORS (CHANTING IN ARABIC)

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: In other words, no Jews. And so for the people who know what they’re saying, they know what they’re saying.  

PROTESTORS: From the river to the sea…

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: It’s very difficult knowing that your classmates are chanting for the eradication of the state where half my family lives.

PROTESTORS: From the river to the sea! From the river to the sea!

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: I mean criticism of the war in Gaza is not anti-Semitic.

PROTESTOR: Free, free Palestine!

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: But the line in the sand is, when you question the right of Israel to exist as a state, when you question the right of Israel to defend itself, that is anti-Semitism. 

NARRATION: With the escalating protests, university administrators across the country were facing the challenge of how to respond to the rhetoric and division on their campuses.

CAROL CHRIST: In earlier times of political protest — for example, about the Vietnam War – the student body often was very united against the administration, but often very  – but this time it’s student against student. It’s faculty member against faculty member.  

NARRATION: Carol Christ is the Chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley – a school with a long history of student protest. 

NEWS REPORT: Two conflicting protests happening at the same time at U.C., Berkeley.

CAROL CHRIST: I think a  protest is – it’s certainly within the DNA of Berkeley, and the right of public protest, it’s really absolutely essential to a democracy. What was complicated about this protest was the way in which for some people protesting, it shaded into kinds of prejudice – anti-Semitism, Islamophobia – even though the center was legitimate political statement.  

PROTESTOR: Free, free Palestine! Free, free Palestine!

NARRATION: For university leaders like Christ, the protests presented a critical dilemma: balancing free speech with the need to prevent harassment and discrimination, which they are required to do under Title 6 of the Civil Rights Act. 

CAROL CHRIST: Everyone has a right to feel welcome, to feel comfortable, to feel that they can enjoy the, the opportunities that the university has, without discrimination or bias. But sometimes that runs athwart of free speech protections. You are protected, as you well know, in saying some pretty abhorrent things.

PROTESTOR: Free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!

PROTESTOR: Look at this! Look at this baby!

NARRATION: This dilemma played out vividly on the campus of Columbia University in New York City.

PROTESTORS (SINGING IN HEBREW)

NARRATION: Columbia had been divided from the beginning of the crisis. 

The day after October 7th, a prominent Middle East studies professor described the Hamas attacks as innovative, and wrote that they were a “stunning victory” for the Palestinian resistance. 

Tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding he be fired. 

PROTESTORS: From the river to the sea…

NARRATION: Columbia’s two main pro-Palestinian student groups also came out publicly after the attacks, saying they stood in full solidarity with Palestinian resistance.

NEWS REPORT: A large rally held this evening at Columbia University, students there telling us they are protesting the anti-Semitism happening on campus…

PROTESTOR: Flatten Gaza.

NARRATION: We spoke to Jewish students at Columbia in late October. Benjamin Weiss, a freshman, was attending a pro-Israel rally.

BENJAMIN WEISS: You see people supporting terrorism on campus and that makes you unsafe. And so I think it’s about laying down the line and saying, here is where we say no. When you support Hamas, this is not O.K. This is not, you know, acceptable on our campus.

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: We here at Columbia can play the long game.

NARRATION: The recently appointed President of Columbia, Nemat Minouche Shafik, tried to defuse the tensions, calling for common ground but warning against “language that vilifies, threatens, or stereotypes entire groups of people.”

DOUGLAS BELKIN: The needle she has to thread is between speech rights for the students and the Title 6 regulations which say that students have a right to get an education unimpeded by harassment. The problem that Shafik and all the college presidents have is that where that line gets drawn isn’t written in stone anywhere, it’s really not been adjudicated.  

NEWS REPORT: Fox Business Alert, we are back with billionaire investor and Omega Family Office chair and CEO, Leon Cooperman.

NARRATION: On October 25th, another prominent donor, billionaire investor Leon Cooperman, entered the fray.

NEWS ANCHOR: Where are we in the world when 1,300 Israeli civilians–

LEON COOPERMAN: I think these kids at the colleges have [BLEEP] for brains.

NARRATION: Cooperman was part of a revolt by donors over the allegations of campus anti-Semitism. 

MARC ROWAN (APOLLO GLOBAL MANAGEMENT CEO): We already have seen 150 million that would have come to the university, move away from the university.

NARRATION: They were threatening to pull hundreds of millions of dollars. 

LEON COOPERMAN: I’ve given to Columbia probably about $50 million over many years, and I’m gonna suspend my giving. I’ll give my giving to other organizations.

LEON COOPERMAN (FOUNDER, OMEGA ADVISORS): The president of Columbia University called me up when I made my comment on TV, and I said, look, all you’ve got to do is come out and say the professor who praised Hamas does not reflect the views, the views of the university. We would terminate him if we could, but he has tenure, we can’t, and there’s no room for hate speech of any kind against any organized group on the campus. Period. Paragraph. They didn’t say that. They equivocated.   

JAMES JACOBY: To the pro-Palestinian students and professors that say that they’re simply concerned about the war, they’re not targeting Jews in particular, what do you say to that?

LEON COOPERMAN: [BEEP]. They’re anti-Israel. They’re anti-Jews. They’re anti-Semitic. That’s my view.

JAMES JACOBY: And it’s not more nuanced than that?

LEON COOPERMAN: I don’t know. I’m not trying to be too intellectual here. I don’t think so.

NEWS REPORT: Rallies underway at Columbia in solidarity with two student groups that have been suspended for the Fall semester…

NARRATION: President Shafik soon ordered a crackdown on the protests.

NEWS REPORT: This is a live look behind me at the hundreds of students gathered here at the center of campus. 

NARRATION: Columbia suspended the two groups that had come out in support of Palestinian resistance. The university said they had been holding unauthorized protests, and noted an event that included threatening rhetoric and intimidation.

One of the groups was Students for Justice in Palestine. The other, Jewish Voice for Peace, a progressive Jewish group critical of Israel.

NADIA ABU EL HAJ: I mean, I think the administration really believed that if they came down hard, they would break the movement. 

NARRATION: Nadia Abu El Haj is the co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia. She was an outspoken opponent of the crackdown and the characterization of the protests as anti-Semitic.  

NADIA ABU EL HAJ: The space of the university is to protect students as they explore their political and intellectual commitments in this particular time in life where they’re learning how to be an adult, and unless they really cross a line into racism and harassment, they have the right to express what they believe, even if other students find it uncomfortable-making or offensive. 

PROTESTORS: From Korea to Palestine, stop the U.S. war machine!

NARRATION: President Shafik declined to be interviewed. 

Her crackdown would backfire, fueling more conflict and division on campus.

JELANI COBB:  I heard a lot of people say that it was a no-win situation.

NARRATION: Jelani Cobb is the dean of the journalism school at Columbia.

JELANI COBB: And it did seem like  almost any kind of like statement, anything that was like said or done it was like kind of a quicksand situation where moving in any way, you know, only gets you deeper into it. 

PROTESTORS: Minouche Shafik, open your eyes!

NARRATION: In late November, we filmed with protestors who were continuing to turn out despite the suspension. 

PROTESTORS: Free, free Palestine!

SAFIYA: As a movement, we are feeling this massive suppression both on our Columbia’s campus and in the country as a whole.

NARRATION: Safiya, who was hiding her identity for fear of doxxing, was one of the organizers for Students for Justice in Palestine. 

SAFIYA: They want us to feel afraid, and they don’t want us to host these events on campus, and they want to make us personally afraid that there will be consequences against us as individuals. 

PROTESTORS: While you’re talking, bombs are dropping!

SAFIYA: We’re outside of Low Library right now as the event is going on. And while we were protesting administrators came and approached us and said to our legal liaisons that we were in violation of school policy, and this just shows exactly the kind of suppression that we face. 

NARRATION: As the activists gathered outside the building, President Shafik was speaking at an event called The War in Gaza: Constructive Campus Conversations.

MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Here at the university, the question should not be which side are you on? Instead it can be, what can we learn from history?

SAFIYA: We have been notified that they can hear us inside! Minouche Shafik! The more you try to silence us the louder we will be! The more you try to silence us the louder we will be! The more you try to silence us the louder we will be! The more you try to silence us the louder we will be! The more you try to silence us the louder we will be!

NEWS REPORT: The presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania will testify before the House education committee. 

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINIA FOXX: The best time for college presidents to have stood up for their Jewish students was October 7th. That did not happen. The second best time is today. 

NARRATION: In December, a Republican-led congressional committee, citing what it called anti-Semitic protests, confronted the heads of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania.

NEWS REPORT: So really what you’re going to see here is more of a public shaming, I think.

NARRATION: President Shafik of Columbia was summoned too, but she was out of the country at the time.

VIRGINIA FOXX (CHAIR, COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION AND WORKFORCE): We decided that the way to investigate what was happening on the campus was to start with the presidents of these universities because that was where the most egregious behavior was occurring. It was really a concern for the safety of the Jewish students. 

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINIA FOXX: Good morning. The Committee on Education and the Workforce will come to order.

NARRATION: North Carolina Republican Virginia Foxx chaired the hearings. She said had a brief conversation with Claudine Gay beforehand. 

VIRGINIA FOXX: 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.

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINIA FOXX: Today, each of you will have a chance to answer to and atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic, hate-filled anti-Semitism on your respective campuses.

NARRATION: All of the presidents denounced anti-Semitism. 

DR. CLAUDINE GAY: There is no place for anti-Semitism at Harvard.

NARRATION: All supported Israel’s right to exist.

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINIA FOXX:  Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation?

DR. SALLY KORNBLUTH: Absolutely, Israel has the right to exist.

NARRATION: Many of the questions also reflected a much broader set of conservative concerns about the direction of higher education. 

REPRESENTATIVE JOE WILSON: What is the percentage of conservative professors at your institutions?

REPRESENTATIVE MARY MILLER: Would you allow President Trump, who is a graduate of UPenn, to speak at UPenn if a student group invited him?

NARRATION: But the five-hour hearing would be remembered for the presidents’ responses to a hypothetical question posed by Representative Elise Stefanik – herself a Harvard graduate.

ELISE STEFANIK: Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Penn’s rules or code of conduct, yes or no? 

ELIZABETH MAGILL (PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA): If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment, yes. 

NARRATION: Throughout the exchange, the presidents struggled to explain the legal challenge of determining when protected free speech, however abhorrent, crosses the line into intimidation and harassment.    

CAROL CHRIST: The presidents misunderstood the nature of the interchange, and they were prepared to go into a deposition, and it was much more like a Broadway play. 

ELISE STEFANIK: So, is your testimony that you will not answer yes? 

ELIZABETH  MAGILL: If it is, if the speech becomes—

ELISE STEFANIK: Yes or no.

ELIZABETH MAGILL: If the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment, yes. 

ELISE STEFANIK: Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide?  

CAROL CHRIST: There is an element of the current situation on campus that requires a detailed legal knowledge of what you are able to do in response to very specific actions that protestors are taking, and then there’s an element of it that’s speaking from the heart, and they did the former and not the latter.  

ELISE STEFANIK: And Dr. Gay. At Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard’s rules of bullying and harassment. Yes or no? 

DR. CLAUDINE GAY: It can be, depending on the context.

STEFANIK: What’s the context?

DR. CLAUDINE GAY: Targeted at an individual.

ELISE STEFANIK: It’s targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of anti-Semitism? 

RABBI DAVID WOLPE: For me to watch the hearing was extraordinarily painful. I turned to the person next to me and said, this is a disaster. I mean, it was obvious that legalistic, equivocating answers were sinking all of them.  

DR. CLAUDINE GAY: Anti-Semitic rhetoric, when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation – that is actionable conduct, and we do take action.

ELISE STEFANIK: So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s code of conduct. Correct?

DR. CLAUDINE GAY: Again, it depends on the context.

ELISE STEFANIK: It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board.

NEWS REPORT: We have heard for almost a decade now that speech is violence. 

NEWS REPORT: And now all of a sudden speech that promotes violence is protected speech.

NARRATION: The hearings ignited a firestorm across the political spectrum. 

NEWS REPORT: We’ve got parents around this country thinking, are they about to send their kids off to college in an unsafe environment where they can’t even walk across campus?

NARRATION: The presidents had been contending with pressure from students, faculty and donors.

NEWS REPORT: Our institutions of higher learning have become institutions of liars earning big money for doing nothing.

NARRATION: Now they faced an onslaught, especially from the right.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO (HARVARD INSTITUTE): Harvard has abandoned its classical motto, ‘veritas’ meaning truth, all for racial politics. This is the story of our time.

NARRATION: Conservative political activist Christopher Rufo seized on the hearing.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: This is hugely important because 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.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: Diversity, equity and inclusion, you may have heard this phrase…

NARRATION: Rufo had long argued that elite universities were corrupted by a progressive, left-wing ideology, obsessed with race and the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion. 

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: We are declaring war against the D.E.I. bureaucracy and, and I know I am not going to stop until it’s been abolished and until we salt the earth.

NARRATION: Now, he argued that progressive ideology was at the heart of the campus anti-Semitism controversy. 

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: It all stems from the logic of so-called intersectionality, which deems any group with power, any group that has high achievements, the oppressor, and any group at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder the oppressed.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: I want to recapture the institutions. I want to enact a conservative counterrevolution in the United States of America, and I’m not going to stop until we do it.

NEWS REPORT: Liz McGill has voluntarily resigned.

NARRATION: Within days of the hearing, the University of Pennsylvania president resigned.

NEWS REPORT: The congresswoman who led the questioning on Capitol Hill just posted a message on social media saying, one down, two to go. 

NARRATION: Rufo and his allies kept up the pressure on Harvard.  

RANDALL KENNEDY: What we are seeing here is an ideological fight, and that people are using the emotions, the sentiments that have been let loose to advance their, you know, agenda.  

NARRATION: Randall Kennedy is a longtime professor at Harvard Law School. He’s defended Claudine Gay and Harvard against Rufo’s criticisms. 

RANDALL KENNEDY: These people, as far as I’m concerned, are very clever enemies of the university. And they are perfectly willing to use anything at hand to advance their attack. There has been a concerted and very effective effort to iron out complexity, make a very simple story. There’s been a concerted effort to make the university and the university society, university culture seem, you know, one-dimensional, they all think this. It’s ridiculous.  

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: I’m never going to back down, I’m going to keep coming after the university. 

NARRATION: Rufo quickly took his campaign to a new level. He published allegations that Claudine Gay had plagiarized sections of her dissertation years earlier. 

NEW REPORT: I looked through what Christopher Rufo had assembled, it looks pretty bad to me. 

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: We now have pressure from multiple angles, reputational pressure, financial pressure, political pressure. We really worked the squeeze, this kind of activist tactic. Textbook. 

NEWS REPORT: Fox News alert. Brand new allegations of plagiarism piling up against Harvard’s embattled president, Claudine Gay.

NARRATION: More allegations would surface. Gay stood by her work but acknowledged some citation errors. 

NEWS REPORT: It’s not about the president, it’s about the rot that has taken place throughout the campus for so long. 

NARRATION: Harvard said the errors it reviewed didn’t amount to research misconduct. 

NEWS REPORT: We begin with a shake-up at the top of one of the nation’s most prominent universities. 

NARRATION: On January 2nd, under a cloud of controversy, Claudine Gay resigned.  

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: 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.

NARRATION: With two Ivy League presidents toppled in the space of a month, the pressure would now fall on a third.  

REPRESENTATIVE VIRIGINIA FOXX: Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best, and at worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people.

NARRATION: In April, Virginia Foxx’s committee held another hearing, this time with Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik. 

DR. MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Trying to reconcile the free-speech rights of those who wanted to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country.

NARRATION: President Shafik took a very different approach from the other presidents. 

REPRESENTATIVE SUZANNE BONAMICI: Does calling for the genocide of the Jews violate Columbia’s code of conduct, Dr. Shafik?

DR. MINOUCHE SHAFIK: Yes, it does.

NADIA ABU EL HAJ: President Shafik’s approach to that hearing was to figure out how she was going to survive in a way that at least the presidents of Penn and Harvard did not. She could have started by challenging the assumption that we are in a crisis. What if Columbia is not a hotbed of anti-Semitism? What if there’s a debate on campus about whether anti-Semitism is a problem? But for political expediency, that did not happen.

NARRATION: She told the committee she was already taking a hard line on the student protestors and would continue to do so.

DR. MINOUCHE SHAFIK: We have already suspended 15 students from Columbia, we have six on disciplinary probation.

DOUGLAS BELKIN: 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.  

DR. MINOUCHE SHAFIK: And I promise you from the messages I’m hearing from students, they are, um, they are getting the message.

PROTESTORS: We shall overcome!

NARRATION: But that same day in New York, Columbia students were trying to shift the focus back to Gaza, where by now, tens of thousands of Palestinians had been killed. They set up an unauthorized encampment, demanding that Shafik sever Columbia’s financial and educational ties with Israel. 

DOUGLAS BELKIN: I think she felt pressured very much to act because she said she would. She had to crack down. 

PROTESTORS: Disclose, divest!

NARRATION: The day after the hearing, she called in the New York Police Department, saying there was a clear and present danger to the functioning of the university. 

NADIA ABU EL HAJ: It was pretty horrifying to watch. Why are we hauling off students in zip ties who were not only protesting peacefully but had barely been there a day? But she had promised Congress, and it was clear she was going to come through.

NARRATION: That night, students who’d been arrested were released. 

MARYAM ALWAN: After our arrests, the student body just mobilized more, which I actually predicted and which the administration should have expected at this point.  

MARYAM ALWAN (HUGGING FRIEND): Hey!

FRIEND: Oh my God, hi!

NARRATION: Maryam Alwan was one of the arrested protest leaders.

MARYAM ALWAN: We saw it happen after every crazy, repressive measure that they’ve taken, and, and with this violent action where they’ve arrested more than 100 of their own students in front of the entire campus, like its – I think it’s going to lead to actual change.  

NARRATION: Once again, the crackdown backfired.

PROTESTORS: Onward to liberation.

NARRATION: Students set up a new encampment and continued to press their demands. 

PROTESTORS: Justice is our demand. 

NARRATION: And hundreds more protestors, some of whom were not students, began converging on the campus, many just outside the gates. 

JELANI COBB (DEAN, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM SCHOOL): We started to see various constituencies from outside the campus, uh, begin to show up.

PROTESTORS: Palestine is free, free! Zionists get out!

JELANI COBB: The people who were coming from outside began, you know, saying and chanting clearly, like, wildly anti-Semitic things.  

PROTESTOR: Go back to Poland!

PROTESTOR: Never forget the 7th of October! The 7th of October is going to be every day for you! 

NARRATION: Hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and parents signed an open letter to President Shafik, warning her the situation on campus had become unsafe for Jewish students. 

ASHER STRELL: People are scared, not in, like, a theoretical sense, but they are physically scared and actively scared to walk on campus.  

NARRATION: One of them was Asher Strell, a sophomore.

ASHER STRELL: 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, we – Jews, Jews, we don’t want no Jews here. They’ve said that here on campus.

NARRATION: At the encampment, the protestors issued a statement rejecting “any form of hatred or bigotry” and said they had been victims of harassment, too.  

Some of the protestors filed a civil rights complaint against Columbia, alleging discrimination against Palestinian students and their allies.

PROTESTORS: Disclose! Divest! We will not stop! We will not rest! 

NARRATION: On April 29, President Shafik warned the protestors they would be suspended if they remained in the encampment.

PROTESTORS: We will not stop! We will not rest! Disclose!

NARRATION: That night, protestors seized Columbia’s iconic Hamilton Hall.  

They renamed it for a young girl who’d been killed in Gaza and began the occupation that would end with the N.Y.P.D. storming the building. 

NEW YORK POLICE DEPARTMENT: Down! Get on the ground! Stay down!

NARRATION: The showdown at Columbia set off a new wave of student protest.   

NEWS REPORT: Across the universities of Melbourne, Sydney…

NEWS REPORT: Newcastle and Warwick and Manchester…

NEWS REPORT: In Berlin, police block…

NEWS REPORT: It is an echo of the sit-ins at American universities…

ISRAA ALZAMLI: I’m going to keep fighting, and I’m going to keep working, and I’m going to keep organizing.

NARRATION: At Harvard, Israa Alzamli has joined a civil rights complaint against the university alleging harassment and intimidation of Arab and Muslim students and their supporters.

ISRAA ALZAMLI: 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.

NARRATION: Shabbos Kestenbaum is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Harvard alleging pervasive anti-Semitism. 

SHABBOS 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.  

SHABBOS KESTENBAUM (AT A PROTEST): And for those chanting in front of me, all my siblings live between the river and the sea and I got news for you guys, they are not going anywhere.

NARRATION: Eight months into the war, the division and discord on campuses continue to run deep. 

CAROL CHRIST: What to me is the most troubling thing in these circumstances is it’s very hard to bring the students together on the two sides of this issue, that they really resist that. 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.  

(END)