The Palestine Exception, a Portland-based documentary film directed by PSU faculty Jan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth, will screen at Cinema 21 on Jan. 26. The screening will be followed by a panel and Q&A moderated by Marlene Eid, producer and psychology faculty member at Portland Community College, and panelists Stephanie Wahab, professor of social work at PSU, Hannah Alzgal, a PSU alum featured in the film, and the film directors.
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.
Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at PSU, a clinical psychologist, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Jennifer Ruth is a professor in the School of Film and an associate dean in the College of the Arts at PSU.