"The Palestine Exception" screens at The People's Forum

The Palestine Exception, a Portland-based documentary film directed by Jan Haaken and Jennifer Ruth, will screen in New York City in the theater at The People's Forum headquarters. The film will be followed by a panel discussion including the directors. FREE and open to the public.

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.

About the Directors:

Jan Haaken is professor emeritus of psychology at Portland State University, a clinical psychologist, and award-winning documentary filmmaker. Her documentary films focus on work carried out in contested social spaces and sites of political controversy. Haaken has directed nine feature films, including most recently the 2-part Necessity Series: Oil, Water, and Climate Resistance and Climate Justice & the Thin Green Line and Atomic Bamboozle: The False Promise of a Nuclear Renaissance. Jennifer Ruth is a professor in the School of Film and associate dean in the College of the Arts at Portland State University. She writes extensively about academic freedom and higher education. She is the co-editor, with Valerie Johnson and Ellen Schrecker, of The Right to Learn; Resisting the Right-Wing War on Academic Freedom.

Host or Publisher The Palestine Exception