The First Film To Document Campus Antisemitism Both Before & After October 7

Dion Pierre, campus correspondent for the Algemeiner, reflects on his years of daily reporting on campus antisemitism and argues that "higher education ultimately failed to uphold values that 10, 12 years ago, it was destroying lives to defend."

Since 2021, Dion has been documenting Jewish students being gang-assaulted, spit on, called the K-word, expelled from sexual assault survivor groups, and suffering all manner of other indignities and injustices. He points out that if this were happening to Black students, Al Sharpton would be cashing checks every day, because so many people would be calling on him for advocacy.

The politics, he says, ultimately don`t matter - what matters is that universities align themselves with traditional American values of equality and tolerance, and they are not doing so for Jewish students, and that has to be corrected.

He rejects the idea that there is an exception to the law for someone who is progressive, wears ripped jeans, and thinks they are against the system. Racism is not something you get to condemn selectively while telling everyone what a virtuous, open-minded, cosmopolitan person you are.

Dion also observes that the ideology motivating these decisions lazily and destructively projects the history of American race relations onto the very different history of Jews and Arabs, and Israelis and Palestinians - and in doing so, totally erases the experience of Middle Eastern Jews who faced expulsion and persecution and who do not fit America`s conception of "white." ...

Brandy expresses concern about schools that not only allow bullying of Jewish students but also have professors who espouse antisemitism, and administrators who are complicit by knowingly allowing it to happen. She notes that such conduct would result in the firing of professors if it were directed at any group other than Jews or Israel. ...

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) explains why advocating for the Jewish community is not, for him, a question of "why" — it is a question of "why not." He points out that one need not be Jewish to fight antisemitism, just as one need not be Black to fight anti-Black racism, and recalls that Jewish civil rights workers Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner were among those murdered in Mississippi so that people who looked like him could vote and live freely without the undignity of Jim Crow.

He has the sense that we are all in this together, and we have a moral obligation to fight extremism, regardless of which form it takes. He cites Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.`s observation that the greatest tragedy is not the strident clamor of the bad people but the appalling silence of the good people. In a time of rising antisemitism, Torres says, every person faces the same simple moral choice: be appallingly silent, or speak out. Either we can be part of the problem or part of the solution. His values, he says, require him to be part of the solution. ...

UVM student Maya Sobel points out that while right-wing antisemitism on campus is readily recognized, left-wing antisemitism often isn`t - and many people aren`t willing to acknowledge that it exists at all. She traces part of the problem to a culture in which reading a single infographic is enough to make someone feel like an expert on Israel and the Middle East, leaving no room for dialogue or nuance.

Maya shares her own background: a first-generation American whose parents were both born and raised in Israel, where they met before moving to the U.S. in the 1980s. She loves her family, her culture, and her people - and notes that Israelis are themselves often the first to criticize the Israeli government.

In January 2023 she traveled to the West Bank and spoke directly with Palestinians and Israelis, Muslims and Jews. After nine years of studying the conflict, she still won`t call herself an expert, because she doesn`t believe you can learn enough in a short amount of time. She marvels that people who started paying attention to the conflict two or three years ago - or only when rockets were firing in 2021 - were "all of a sudden ...experts." ...

An audience member asks how antisemitic brainwashing on campuses can be countered,and how students can be encouraged to watch Blind Spot without dismissing it as propaganda.

Executive Producer Leonard Gold acknowledges the difficulty of hosting campus screenings of Blind Spot, and suggests alternative ways to counter misinformation. These include teaching Jewish history, explaining that Zionism is not a racist ideology but a common human aspiration for a homeland, and organizing trips to Israel so that individuals can form their own conclusions.

Gold also emphasizes the importance of proactively ensuring that accurate information is taught in schools, balancing faculty perspectives, encouraging critical thinking, fostering civil debate, and teaching students how to disagree respectfully. ...

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) draws a direct link between the historical experience of gay people being told that they have to be in the closet and ashamed of who they are, and the present-day experience of pro-Israel Jews on American college campuses being told that they have to be in the closet about who they are, that they have to be ashamed, and that they have to renounce their sense of identity and history.

That, Torres says, is not progressivism - it is a perversion of progressivism. It is not pride - it is a perversion of pride. He pledges to fight for the right of every American, including Jewish Americans, to be who they are and live freely and openly without fear of intimidation, harassment, or violence, and nowhere more so than on America`s college campuses. Invoking Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.`s ethic of moral interconnectedness, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Torres says that an assault on Jews is an assault on all of us. ...

Brandy believes that certain organizations are hesitant to call out antisemitism from the Black community, Islamist movements, or the far left out of fear of losing allies.

She rejects the idea that confronting antisemitism is somehow a betrayal of solidarity, arguing that it doesn`t matter where antisemitism comes from. If someone expects silence in the face of antisemitism in exchange for partnership on other causes, they were never an ally to begin with. She says it is cowardice to believe that one can partner with someone on climate change or reproductive rights but remain silent about antisemitism from that same person. ...