\n<\/p>\n
The war in Gaza and the adverse reaction of U.S. colleges to the pro-Palestinian movement have completely changed students\u2019 relationship to higher education, according to the maker of a new film about last year\u2019s protests.<\/p>\n
A new documentary, The Encampments<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n Not just isolated to Ivy League institutions in the U.S.,\u00a0<\/em>the movement spread to many traditionally Republican-dominated states as well,\u00a0Michael Workman, co-director of the film, told\u00a0Times Higher Education<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are not just places where the coastal elite are,\u201d he said. \u201cThis movement touched and reached into the middle of America. In places like [Idaho], there were protests every day in solidarity and support.\u201d<\/p>\n He hopes that the film, which he sees as a \u201ccounternarrative\u201d to the media\u2019s negative portrayal of the encampments, will \u201chaunt\u201d higher education leaders for being on the wrong side of history.<\/p>\n 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. <\/p>\n \u201cFor 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,\u201d said Workman.<\/p>\n He said the encampments arrived at a time of \u201cheightened\u201d organization and engagement among the student body. These movements are not sustainable but always \u201cebb and flow,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Workman said the \u201ctwin demands\u201d 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.<\/p>\n \u201cStudents have seen their educations get turned into moneymaking machines, [instead of institutions] that are primarily there to teach students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThis has completely changed this generation\u2019s relationship to higher education, and I think their relationship to the U.S. and U.S. foreign policy.\u201d<\/p>\n He said the war in Gaza has \u201cwoken up this generation,\u201d which is why colleges reacted with such force.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s why they responded in the way that they did, because they felt they couldn\u2019t do anything else. The cat was out of the bag,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cThese students are not going to go back to thinking what Israel is doing in Gaza was justified\u00a0\u2026 and they\u2019re going to continue to grow their movement to raise awareness around what\u2019s happening and to fight against it.\u201d<\/p>\n Workman, who also teaches documentary film production at the University of San Francisco, said the response by faculty in the U.S. is \u201cnot a monolith\u201d but that it is becoming increasingly supportive of the students.<\/p>\n This has been particularly evident since the detention of activist and green card\u2013holder 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\u2019s administration. <\/p>\n \u201cThe more they repress the movement, in a lot of ways, the stronger it gets, because people aren\u2019t backing down,\u201d Workman said.<\/p>\n \u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean that we have this huge moment like the encampment moment, but we\u2019re building a sustained foundation that is continuing to grow with really committed organizers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The war in Gaza and the adverse reaction of U.S. colleges to the pro-Palestinian movement have completely changed students\u2019 relationship to higher education, according to the maker of a new film about last year\u2019s protests. A new documentary, The Encampments, follows the movement from Columbia University, where the first tents were erected in April 2024,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1234,1233,807,1235,437,781],"class_list":{"0":"post-9226","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-encampments","9":"tag-gaza","10":"tag-leaders","11":"tag-lose","12":"tag-minds","13":"tag-university"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}