The war in Gaza and the adverse reaction of U.S. colleges to the pro-Palestinian movement have completely changed students’ relationship to higher education, according to the maker of a new film about last year’s protests.
A new documentary, The Encampments, follows the movement from Columbia University, where the first tents were erected in April 2024, as protests spread to hundreds of campuses worldwide, including the University of Tokyo and Copenhagen University.
Not just isolated to Ivy League institutions in the U.S., the movement spread to many traditionally Republican-dominated states as well, Michael Workman, co-director of the film, told Times Higher Education.
“These are not just places where the coastal elite are,” he said. “This movement touched and reached into the middle of America. In places like [Idaho], there were protests every day in solidarity and support.”
He hopes that the film, which he sees as a “counternarrative” to the media’s negative portrayal of the encampments, will “haunt” higher education leaders for being on the wrong side of history.
Although the conflict in Gaza continues, the student movement has had a much smaller impact this year, with many students facing severe repercussions from both their universities and the White House.
“For some reason camping out on the lawn demanding an end to a genocide made all these administrators around the world, and especially in the U.S., lose their minds,” said Workman.
He said the encampments arrived at a time of “heightened” organization and engagement among the student body. These movements are not sustainable but always “ebb and flow,” he added.
Along with demanding that universities lend their voices to Gaza, students have called on institutions to divest from companies that they believe are funding a genocide.
Workman said the “twin demands” of many of the students were to support Palestinians and to take universities, which they were paying lots of money, back to being educational institutions.
“Students have seen their educations get turned into moneymaking machines, [instead of institutions] that are primarily there to teach students,” he said.
“This has completely changed this generation’s relationship to higher education, and I think their relationship to the U.S. and U.S. foreign policy.”
He said the war in Gaza has “woken up this generation,” which is why colleges reacted with such force.
“It’s why they responded in the way that they did, because they felt they couldn’t do anything else. The cat was out of the bag,” he said.
“These students are not going to go back to thinking what Israel is doing in Gaza was justified … and they’re going to continue to grow their movement to raise awareness around what’s happening and to fight against it.”
Workman, who also teaches documentary film production at the University of San Francisco, said the response by faculty in the U.S. is “not a monolith” but that it is becoming increasingly supportive of the students.
This has been particularly evident since the detention of activist and green card–holder Mahmoud Khalil, who features in the documentary, he said. Khalil, an international student who moved to the U.S. in 2022, was arrested in March following a crackdown on student protesters by President Donald Trump’s administration.
“The more they repress the movement, in a lot of ways, the stronger it gets, because people aren’t backing down,” Workman said.
“That doesn’t mean that we have this huge moment like the encampment moment, but we’re building a sustained foundation that is continuing to grow with really committed organizers.”
