Crisis on Campus

Thanks for listening to the Frontline Audio Cast, the enhanced audio version of our documentaries. We also produce a podcast, the Frontline Dispatch, available wherever you listen. Right now, here is the audio cast of Crisis on Campus. [Music] College protests reaching a boiling point after days of an encampment on campus. April 30th, 2024. Protesters condemning the war in Gaza had barricaded themselves in a building at Columbia University. They demanded the school sever ties with Israel. [Music] The protesters say on social media, if Columbia tries to remove them by force, the school will quote have blood on its ends. Less than 24 hours later, Columbia University called in the police. It looks like a military grade vehicle that is coming down Amsterdam right now with protesters on it. Okay, we see an officer approaching a window right now. The first officer has entered the window. People are screaming on the street in response. I am now seeing how much it doesn't go in as well. [Music] Police officers enter the building and start detaining students. [Music] The clashes at Columbia that night were the culmination of months of chaos sweeping across American college campuses. [Music] Ignited by a war on the other side of the world. [Music] From the start, October 7th, I think we started there. Frontline and retro report have been following the escalating turmoil. We'll be taking the streets and sending a very clear message. Talking to people on all sides of the divide. So many students actually seem willing to condone or even justify violence against Israel, violence against Jews. Investigating how universities have responded. Our university rejects hate. How powerful interests join the fray. Anti-Semitism is spreading like wildfire. What was it that prompted you to call those hearings? How the conflict over the conflict ultimately spiraled out of control. A title appears, crisis on campus. [Music] The cline is made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support is provided by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence in journalism. Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More at Macfound.org. And by the Frontline Journalism Fund, with major support from John and Joanne Hickler. And additional support from Koo and Patricia Ewan, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. [Music] This program contains mature content, which may not be suitable for all audiences. Your discretion is advised. [Music] We begin with breaking news. The Israeli military is warning that a number of militants have infiltrated Israeli territory from Gaza. The barrens of the rockets being fired from Gaza, reaching as far as Tel Aviv and West Jerusalem. They've never seen such an amount of rockets at the same time. October 7th was the Jewish joyous holiday of Simhastora. Harvard Divinity School student, Shabbos Kestenbaum. I'm in Orthodox Jew, meaning on the Sabbath on Jewish holidays I don't use electronics, including my phone. Rumors began circulating that there was a terror attack in Israel. I lived in Israel. I have four siblings who currently live in Israel. My grandparents and uncles. So I break this Sabbath for the first time in my life. On the night of October 7th, frantically trying to locate my siblings, seeing if they're alive or not. I was not alone. There were dozens of other Jewish students at Harvard giving the exact same thing, frantically locating their loved ones. Hamas is lunch as surprise attack within Israel's borders. Palestinian gunmen are inside Israeli cities and towns. And reportedly there have been hostages taken, there are even reports. They'll firefights going on. In various Israeli cities and villages around Gaza. This is, in fact, Israel's 9/11. The attacks would turn out to be the worst loss of Jewish life since the Second World War. Hamas fighters killed more than 1,000 people and kidnapped more than 200. Hamas will understand. We will exact a price that will be remembered by them in Israel's other enemies for decades to come. Israel began launching airstrikes in Gaza. In those very first hours, at Harvard, a group of Palestinian student activists began discussing how to respond. Harvard lost student, Leah Kayali. I had a conversation with my dad that day and he was like 50,000 Palestinians will be killed because of what happened on October 7th. And I remember at the time he was like, "Ball, you're crazy." Like, that's not going to happen because we hadn't seen anything like that in our lifetime. They were members of a group called Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine. And for years, they had been protesting Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Harvard Law Student Israel's family. So we felt like it was necessary to get out some sort of statement immediately. Because we saw what was happening and we felt like there were two really urgent needs. One was to like, contextualize what's happening. And two, we were scared and we felt like there was a real urgent need to warn people to stand in unwavering, you know, solidarity against retaliation that was going to kill thousands of people. The statement signed by a coalition of more than 30 student groups at Harvard began with the line, "We the undersigned student organizations hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence." There was no mention of Hamas. It's this idea of like, if something horrific happens, why and what are the circumstances that lead someone to do something like this? And where does that responsibility lie? And when we're talking about Palestine and the circumstances in which Palestinians are living, they are living under Israeli oppression. And what is happening is they're in a pressure cooker and you think, what is a response that could occur in this pressure cooker? Did you contemplate whether to mention Hamas at all? It just didn't really seem like the purpose of our statement. Harvard Law Student, Tallah Al-Fokaha. Like I think, again, we wanted to contextualize it in a broader structure. I think Hamas is a manifestation of the structure. I was appalled when I saw that letter. The absolute last thing you do is you win the Vectamin. The statement caused an outcry on campus. Shabbos, Kastin Baum. Within a couple of hours of this statement being released, it was all anyone could talk about. Like totally whitewashing all responsibility of the people actually engaged in the violence. One of the worst parts of October 7th was not just the horrific terror attack, but it was the fact that our friends and classmates were justifying it. That to me is something that I can never really shake off. We Jewish students at Harvard did not have time to mourn. We did not have time to discern exactly what was happening. We immediately had to go on the defense to explain that what was happening was horrific. It was the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust that Israel not only has a right but has an obligation to defend itself. Deep divisions in the Middle East are currently dividing the Harvard University campus. The conflict over the conflict had begun. Those were pro-Halmask letters. There were many celebrating things that they did. Harvard was at the epicenter. You can really sense a charged atmosphere here at Harvard. How the university would respond would set the stage for the months of turmoil to come. The statement was met without pride from several alumni, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, who tweeted what the hell is wrong with Harvard. Almost immediately, there were calls for Harvard to condemn the student group statement. I thought that any responsible incident was going to happen. would immediately say, "We condemn this letter. We want to meet with the students who wrote this letter. We want to make clear to them that this is not acceptable at an institution of higher education." Rabbi David Wolpy, a visiting scholar at Harvard Divinity School, and one of the most influential rabbis in America, thought the student statement amounted to anti-Semitism. I don't think there's any question that the letter was anti-Semitic because it is inconceivable to me that any other group of people in the world could have gone through the brutality that the Israelis endured and have had people say, "Well, it's their fault." I was appalled and shocked but not entirely surprised because I had seen this ideology before. I knew it existed. I'm referring to the problem of deep animosity towards Israel and derivative animosity towards Jews. Harvard's newly appointed president, Claudine Gay, initially made no public comment. Then a major escalation. On October 9th, one of Gay's predecessors, the former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, launched an attack on social media. He wrote, "I am sick and I cannot froth them the administration's failure to disassociate the university and condemn this statement." He said he's never felt more alienated and disillusioned by what is happening now. The posts made Claudine Gay on Harvard headline news. Good for Larry Summers, incidentally, who immediately came out strongly in support of common sense. Here he was turning to social media to shame and embarrassed and pressure the current president who had literally been in office doing that job for a few months. At Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, Professor Khalil Jibran Muhammad thought the student statement was an inappropriate way to make their point. But he was troubled by Summers' attack. Larry Summers had a huge bully pulpit and was spending as much of his political capital as possible to say that what's happening at Harvard University is unacceptable. This university cannot continue down this path and ultimately that Claudine Gay was doing a terrible job. Later that day, Claudine Gay, who declined our requests for an interview, released Harvard's first public statement. It didn't condemn the students as Summers was demanding. Instead, it called for dialogue and empathy at a time of unimaginable loss. It was a general expression of concern about what had happened in the Middle East and an affirmation that in this moment people will have different points of view that we have to respect each other's different points of view. The statement did little to calm the situation at Harvard. I don't see why the president could not have issued a statement that both supports Israel, supports Palestine, while denouncing Hamas as a terrorist organization. David Walpey, I went to the Hillel to be with the students and to hear what they were saying. I saw genuine fear and they showed me some of the messages that they were getting on the internal student channels, which were awful and were filled with anti-Semitic images and with some veiled and not-so-veiled threats. And that's when I recognized that this was not going to go away. With many in the Jewish community now expressing concern about anti-Semitism on campus, another powerful voice weighed in. On October 10th, Bill Ackman, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Harvard donor, called for the university to publish the names of the students from the groups that had signed the controversial statement. Bill Ackman is saying, "Look, if you're one of these students, I want to know who you are because in the business world, we ain't going to hire you." Several groups retracted support for the statement. When they're first presented with the consequence, they fold like a lawn chair and that's what these Harvard students did. Although the students who wrote it stood firm on blaming Israel, they clarified that they opposed all violence against all innocent life. We're getting constant, constant calls from unknown numbers. But students were already being doxed, where their names and personal information posted online. A digital billboard parked right outside Harvard University is attracting a lot of attention. At the same time, the conservative watchdog organization sent a billboard truck to Cambridge, branding the students as Harvard's leading anti-Semites. Adam Gillette, a VACUARICY INMITIAL If they're ashamed of what they did and want to apologize, we'll remove them. If they're proud of what they did, they should thank us. Leah Keale and Tala Fokahau were both targeted. They said calling them anti-Semitic was an unfair smear to destruct from their criticism of Israel. I got a text of someone's screenshotting a tweet from the president, I think, of the accuracy in media company, which is the company that runs the doxing trucks, who was gleefully saying that he has our addresses and is going to send the trucks to our homes. This is disgusting. This is sickening. You know, like we wouldn't wish what happened to us, but also what happened to our Tala students on anyone. People got death and rape threats directly to their phone lines, lots of online harassment and threats. It felt like every hour there was a new crisis. As her friends were dealing with the doxing, Israel's Emily got news about relatives she had in Gaza. And I have a very vivid memory of sitting in a dox student's house and writing emails with her, trying to help her. She had lost her job. And at the same moment, I got a text message from my dad saying like four more people in my family died. Like here are their names. Here's the link where you can read about who died. Like people, like my family was dying. Like my family is dying. And then I was like, things are also like hell here. And it's like I don't like, it was just like an un. It was like truly an unbearable situation in like so many different ways. Leadership at Harvard in the hot seat now. Amid mounting pressure about her leadership. You're worried about offending somebody. We're talking about the slaughter of civilians this way. An anger and fear among students on all sides. Some are needing now calling it Hamas Harvard. Claudine Gay tried once again to quell the controversy. Harvard's president says it heard a third message that they think about it. On October 12th, she issued a video statement. Our university rejects terrorism. That includes the barbaric atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. She had made it clear the students who'd blamed Israel for October 7th were not speaking for Harvard, but she stopped short of rebuking or punishing them. The president of Harvard should have come out on blood earlier, saying that we don't support terrorist groups. It led to charges of a double standard from some Jewish students, like Sharples Custom Bomb. This is a university that was shortly after the murder of George Floyd. Not only condemned white supremacy and racism, but said that as an institution, Harvard was going to do all they could to rid themselves of white supremacy. It really animates the hypocrisy that is at the center of Harvard University, where every minority group gets to be coddled. Every minority group gets to have trigger warnings and safe spaces. But Jews do not count. Free free Palestine! Free free Palestine! Free free Palestine! This protest inside Harvard Yard attracted over 250 supporters of Palestine. Harvard students began coming out in protest against Israel, fueling the charges of anti-Semitism. Why have American colleges become so anti-Semitic? The Kennedy School's Khalil Jibrat, New Hamid. I just want to be clear that everything that is said on this campus that is a critique of Israel is not in my opinion anti-Semitic. Some of Professor Muhammad students were at the protests, and he took issue with how they were being characterized. Students on campus were protesting in defense of Palestinians, and I, you know, those students are not genocidal. They just don't believe Israel has a right to occupy Gaza and the West Bank in a way that it has. As Hamas continued to hold hostages of the death toll in Gaza's sword, protests were spreading. From Arizona State to Indiana to George Mason and many more. Debate over one of the world's most intractable and complex conflicts was now gripping American college campuses. They're about erasing one people and replacing it with another. You cannot expect people who have been oppressed for 75 years to sit down in their rooms right poetry and not fight back. We want Israel to be able to defend itself from terrorism. The rhetoric would quickly grow more heated. Guys are f*cking Nazis. You're the one killing Jews. Students shared images from Gaza as a rallying crime. The massacre has been sent to people around. That sounded alarms about anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents. His hateful screams of f*cking you and your people still echo in my ears. Jewish students reported a wave of anti-Semitic incidents. An angry, slur, and stereotype laden assault. On many campuses, posters of Israeli hostages were ripped down. Why are you tearing that down? At Tulane University, a melee broke out at one protest. [Screaming] (all shouting) - Yasmino Hebsim, a two-lane student, was there. (beep) - Guys, our team is here! - Students on the other side were flipping us off, telling us that we smelled and we should go back to the showers, people saying, "Israel, a woman who did not seem to look like a student "at all approached me and looked at me "as I was holding in Israeli flag "and have my McGon de Vee de Necklesson," and she said, "beep, you, Jew." (dramatic music) - By this point in the Gaza War, Israel's military had killed thousands of Palestinians. (crowd shouting) - When the 9,000 Palestinians have been killed, Harvard students were ramping up their anti-war efforts. - Law student, Mia Kayali. - Right now we have hundreds of people who have come out to get on buses to go join the National March on Washington, will be taking the streets and sending a very clear message that we demand a ceasefire. We demand an end to the ceasefire. (crowd shouting) (crowd shouting) - Thousands are flooding DC right now, marching against the war in Gaza, organizers are expecting up to 30,000 people or so from all across the country. (crowd shouting) - The Harvard students joined thousands of other students and protesters demanding a ceasefire on protesting America's longstanding economic and military support for Israel. - You're buying the guns that children are dying from, the rockets where families are burning under the rubble. Guys, let's have a quick space. - The growing protest movement was appealing to students who saw the war in Gaza as a struggle for liberation, linked to other American social justice causes. - As a black person in America, we understand that these struggles are intertwined. (crowd shouting) - You can't free black people without a free power sign. - Israel, you are safe, K! - How many kids did you feel today? - They see children being maimed and buildings exploding and I think that's the single largest driver of the protests, but it fits into this broader complex that does connect to race. They see this as part of a broader worldview of the oppressed and the oppressors. - Wall Street Journal reported Douglas Belkin has been covering the protests and how they have exposed a generational divide for some on the issue of Israel. - People over probably 40, maybe 50, watched Israel or understand that Israel was, first of all, created out of the ashes of the Holocaust and then attacked and was sort of the underdog in 48 and again in '67. They had these fights for survival but with the younger from so growing up with, is Israel as a mature country that has the most powerful military in the region and they see Israel as a bully. (crowd shouting) - We don't want no Tuesdays. - We don't want no Tuesdays. - We want for it. - As they had been doing on their campuses, the protesters in DC were using provocative chance with meanings that were being highly contested. (crowd shouting) - One was for global anti-fada or uprising, which many of the students embraced as a call for Palestinian liberation after decades of occupation. (crowd shouting) For pro-Israel students, it was a call for violence. The evoking years of Palestinian terror attacks against Jews. (crowd shouting) Another was for Palestine to be liberated from the river to the sea. (crowd shouting) - From the river to the sea. - Palestine will be free. - Harvard lost a little bit of a carry. - That's the main chant. That's the main chant of the Palestinian liberation struggle because historic Palestine has been occupied from the river to the sea since 1947 and '48. It's like critical tar understanding of Palestinian identity, liberation and struggle. - Rambla river to the sea. - But it stirred up fear and anger for supporters of Israel who saw it as a call for the eradication of Israel as the Jewish homeland and refuge from persecution. - Rambla David Walpe. - The river to the sea chant is ambiguous in the following way. The Wall Street Journal had a wonderful article which river which sea most students had no idea. They thought they were chanting for peace. But the ones who knew knew and have started increasingly to chant it in its original Arabic which is from the river to the sea, Palestine will be ours. (crowd shouting) In other words, no Jews. And so for the people who know what they're saying, they know what they're saying. - Harvard Divinity School student, Shabbos Kestin Bell. - It's very difficult knowing that your classmates are chanting for the eradication of the state where half my family lives. - I mean, criticism of the war in Gaza is not anti-Semitic. - I think I'm sorry. - But the line in the sand is when you question the right of Israel to exist as a state, when you question the right of Israel to defend itself, that is anti-Semitism. - With the escalating protests, university administrators across the country were facing the challenge of how to respond to the rhetoric and division on their campuses. - In earlier times of political protests, for example, about the Vietnam War, the student body often was very united against the administration, but often very united. But this time, it's student to get student, it's faculty member against faculty member. - Carol Christ is the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, a school with a long history of student protest. - It's a conflict in protests happening at the same time at UC Berkeley or chopper. - I think protest is, it's certainly within the DNA of Berkeley and the right of public protest. I think it's really absolutely essential to a democracy. What was complicated about this protest was the way in which for some people protesting, it shaded into kinds of prejudice, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, even though the center was legitimate political statement. - Free, free, political! - For university leaders like Christ, the protests presented a critical dilemma, balancing free speech with the need to prevent harassment and discrimination, which they are required to do under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. - Everyone has a right to feel welcome, to feel comfortable, to feel that they can enjoy the opportunities that the university has without discrimination or bias. But sometimes that runs a thwart of free speech protections. You are protected, as you well know, in saying some pretty important things. - Free, political! - Free, political! - This dilemma played out vividly on the campus of Columbia University in New York City. - Columbia had been divided from the beginning of the crisis. The day after October 7, a prominent Middle East studies professor described the Hamas attacks as innovative, and wrote that they were a stunning victory for the Palestinian resistance. Tens of thousands of people signed a petition demanding he be fired. Columbia's two main pro-Palestinian student groups also came out publicly after the attacks, saying they stood in full solidarity with Palestinian resistance. - A large rally held this evening at Columbia University. Students there telling us they are protesting the anti-Semitism happening on campus. - I'm Yitz Rai El-Qai. Thank you guys. - We spoke to Jewish students at Columbia in late October. Benjamin Weiss, a freshman, was attending a pro-Israel rally. - You see people supporting terrorism on campus and that makes you unsafe. And so I think it's about laying down the line and saying, "Here is where we say no." When you support Hamas, this is not okay. This is not, you know, acceptable on our campus. - We here at Columbia can play the long game. - The recently appointed president of Columbia, Namaat Menus Shafik, tried to diffuse the tensions, calling for common ground, but warning against language that vilifies threatens or stereotypes entire groups of people. - Wall Street Journal reporter Douglas Belkin. - The needle she has to thread is between speech rights for the students and the title six regulations, which say that students have a right to get an education unimpeded by harassment. The problem that Shafik and all the college presidents have is that where that line gets drawn is written in stone anywhere. It's really not been adjudicated. (crowd cheering) - Fox Business Alert, we are back with billionaire investor and Omega Family Office Chair and CEO Leon Cooperman. - On October 25th, another prominent donor, billionaire investor Leon Cooperman entered the fray. - Where are we in the world? when 1300 is Rayleigh Sivir. - I think he's key. - To college, it's a f*** for brains. - Cooperman was part of a revolt by donors over the allegations of campus anti-Semitism. - We already have seen 150 million that would have come to the university, move away from the university. - They were threatening to pull hundreds of millions of dollars. - I've given to Columbia probably about $50 million over many years, and I'm gonna suspend my giving. I'll give my giving to other organizations. - President of Columbia University called me up. I made my comment on TV, and I said, "Oh, yeah, do as Commander-in-Chief, "the professor who prays the most "does not reflect the views of the university. "We would terminate him if we could, "but he has tenure we can't. "There's no room for hate speech "from any kind against any organized group "on the campus, period paragraph." They didn't say that, they equivocated. - To the pro-Palestinian students and professors that say that they're simply concerned about the war, they're not targeting Jews in particular. What do you say to that? - Bullshit. - They're anti-Israel, they're anti-Jews, they're anti-Semitic. That's my view. - And it's not more nuanced than that? - I don't know. I'm not trying to be too intellectual here. I don't think so. - Raleigh is underway in Columbia in solidarity with two student groups that are suspended for the fall semester. - President Chafique soon ordered a crop down the protest. - This is a live look behind me at the hundreds of students gathered here in the center of campus. - Columbia suspended the two groups that had come out in support of Palestinian resistance. The university said they had been holding unauthorized protests, a noted and event that included threatening rhetoric and intimidation. One of the groups was students for justice in Palestine. The other, Jewish voice for peace, a progressive Jewish group critical of Israel. I mean, I think the administration really believed that if they came down hard, they would break the movement. - Nadia Abu Al-Haz is the co-director of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia. She was an outspoken opponent of the crackdown and the characterization of the protests as anti-Semitic. - The space of the university is to protect students as they explore their political and intellectual commitments in this particular time in life where they're learning how to be an adult and unless they really cross a line into racism and harassment, they have the right to express what they believe, even if other students find it uncomfortable-making or offensive. - You're coming out to fall asleep! - Stop the US war machine! - President Shefique declined to be interviewed. Her crackdown would backfire, fueling more conflict and division on campus. - I heard a lot of people say that it was a no-win situation. - Jalani Cobb is the dean of the journalism school at Columbia. - And it did seem like almost any kind of statement, anything that was like said or done. It was like kind of a quicksand situation where moving in any way, you know, only gets you deeper into it. - Nadia Abu Al-Haz. - In late November, we filmed with protesters who were continuing to turn out despite the suspension. - We're free for all of us! - As a movement, we are feeling this massive suppression, both on our Columbia's campus and in the country as a whole. - Sophia, who was hiding her identity for fear of doxing, was one of the organizers for students for justice in Palestine. - They want us to feel afraid and they don't want us to host these events on campus and they want to make us personally afraid that there will be consequences against us as individuals. - What a talking, monster, talking! - We're outside of low library right now as the event is going on. And while we were protesting, administrators came and approached us and said to our legal liaisons that we were in violation of school policy. - Let me stand with the parties. - And this just shows exactly the kind of suppression that we faced. (audience applauding) - As the activists gathered outside the building, President Chafique was speaking at an event called The War in Gaza, constructive campus conversations. - Here at a university, the question should not be, what side are you on? Instead, it can be, what can we learn from history? - We have been notified that they can hear us in search! So we-- (audience cheering) (upbeat music) - Oh, Chafique! - We use the feet! - The more you try to follow us! - The more you try to silence us! - The louder we will be! - The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be! The presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania will testify before the House Education Committee. - The best time for college presidents to have stood up for their Jewish students was October 7th. That did not happen. The second best time is today. - In December, a Republican-led Congressional Committee, citing what it called anti-Semitic protests, confronted the heads of Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania. - So really what you're gonna see here is more of a kind of a public shaming, I think. - President Sheffique of Columbia was summoned too, but she was out of the country at the time. - We decided that the way to investigate what was happening on the campus was to start with the presidents of these universities because that was where the most egregious behavior was occurring. It was really a concern for the safety of the Jewish students. Good morning, the Committee on Education and Workforce will come to order. - North Carolina Republican Virginia Fox chaired the hearings. She said she had a brief conversation with Claudine Gay beforehand. - What Claudine Gay said to me was, "What is your vision for this hearing?" So I said, "Well, my vision is that you will get a spine, and that you will speak with moral clarity about what's happening on your campus, and that you will make some decisions that will stop the bad behavior that's going on on the campuses." - Today, each of you will have a chance to answer to an atone for the many specific instances of vitriolic hate-filled anti-semitism on your respective campuses. All of the presidents denounced anti-semitism. - There is no place for anti-semitism at Harvard. - Paul supported Israel's right to exist. - Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation? - Absolutely, Israel has the right to exist. - Many of the questions also reflected a much broader set of conservative concerns about the direction of higher education. - What is the percentage of conservative professors at your institutions? - Would you allow President Trump, who's a graduate of U Penn, to speak at U Penn if a student group invited him? - But the five-hour hearing would be remembered for the president's responses to a hypothetical question posed by representative Elise Stefanik, herself a Harvard graduate. - Does calling for the genocide of Jews violate pens, rules, or code of conduct, yes or no? - If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment. - Yes. - Throughout the exchange, the president struggled to explain the legal challenge of determining when protected free speech, however, the warrant crosses the line into intimidation and harassment. - You see Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ. - The president's misunters stood the nature of the interchange, and they were prepared to go into a deposition and it was much more like a Broadway play. - So is your testimony that you will not answer? - Yes. - If it is, if the speech becomes, if the speech becomes conduct, it can be harassment. - Yes. - Conduct meaning committing the act of genocide? - There is an element of the current situation on campus that requires a detailed legal knowledge of what you are able to do in response to very specific actions that protesters are taking. - And then there's an element of it that's speaking from the heart, and they do the former and not the latter. - And Dr. Gay at Harvard, does calling for the genocide of Jews violate Harvard's rules of bullying and harassment? Yes or no? - It can be, depending on the context. - What's the context? - Targeted as an individual. - It's targeted at Jewish students, Jewish individuals. Do you understand your testimony is dehumanizing them? Do you understand that dehumanization is part of antisemitism? - Rabbi David Wolpe. - For me to watch the hearing was extraordinarily painful. I turned to the person next to me and said, "This is a disaster." I mean, it was obvious that legalistic, equivocating answers were sinking all of them. Anti-Semitic rhetoric when it crosses into conduct that amounts to bullying, harassment, intimidation. That is actionable conduct and we do take action. So the answer is yes, that calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard Code of Conduct. Correct. Again, it depends on the context. It does not depend on the context. The answer is yes and this is why you should resign. These are unacceptable answers across the board. We have heard for almost a decade now that speech is violence. And now all of a sudden speech that promotes violence is protected speech. The hearings ignited a firestorm across the political spectrum. An MSNBC. We've got parents around this country thinking are they about to send their kids off to college in an unsafe environment where they can't even walk across campus. The presidents had been contending with pressure from students, faculty and donors. On Fox News. Our institutions of higher learning have become institutions of liars earning big money for doing nothing. Now they faced an onslaught, especially from the right. Harvard has abandoned its classical motto Veritas meaning truth. All for racial politics. This is the story of our time. Conservative political activist Christopher Rufo seized on the hearing. This is hugely important because in the span of just a few minutes, a few small video clips that were circulated in the media billions of times. For the first time millions of Americans saw the empty nihilism that had taken over the heart of academic life. Diversity, equity and inclusion, you may have heard this phrase. Rufo had long argued that elite universities were corrupted by a progressive left-wing ideology, obsessed with race and the promotion of diversity, equity and inclusion. We are declaring war against the DEI bureaucracy, and I know I'm not going to stop until it's been abolished and until we salt the earth. Now he argued that progressive ideology was at the heart of the campus anti-Semitism controversy. It all stems from the logic of so-called intersectionality which deems any group with power, any group that has high achievements, the oppressor, and any group that is at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder, the oppressed. I want to recapture the institutions. I want to enact a conservative counter revolution in the United States of America and I'm not going to stop until we do it. Liz McGill has voluntarily resigned. Within days of the hearing, the University of Pennsylvania president resigned. The congresswoman who led the questioning on Capitol Hill just posted a message on social media saying, "One down, two to go." Rufo and his allies kept up the pressure on Harvard. What we are seeing here is an ideological fight and that people are using the emotions, sentiments that have been let loose to advance their, you know, agenda. Randall Kennedy is a longtime professor at Harvard Law School. He's defended Claudine Gay and Harvard against Rufo's criticisms. These people, as far as I'm concerned, are very clever enemies of the university. And they are perfectly willing to use anything at hand to advance their attack. There has been a concerted and very effective effort to iron out complexity. Make a very simple story. There's been a concerted effort to make the university and the university, society, university culture, seem, you know, one-dimensional. They all think this. It's ridiculous. I'm never going to back down. I'm going to keep coming after the university. Rufo quickly took his campaign to a new level. He published allegations that Claudine Gay had plagiarized sections of her dissertation years earlier. I looked through what Christopher Rufo had assembled. It looks pretty bad to me. We now have pressure from multiple angles, reputational pressure, financial pressure, political pressure. We really worked the squeeze. This kind of activist tactic, textbook. Boxing is a lot of brand new allegations of plagiarism piling up against Harvard's embattled president Claudine Gay. More allegations would surface. Gay stood by her work, but acknowledged some citation errors. It's not about the president. It's about the rot that has taken place throughout the campus for so long. Harvard said the errors it reviewed didn't amount to research misconduct. We begin with a shakeup at the top of one of the nation's most prominent universities. On January 2 under a cloud of controversy, Claudine Gay resigned. Christopher Rufo. This is a long war, and this is only the opening gambit. Randall Kennedy. I thought that she had been upended by a very clever, absolutely ruthless campaign that gave voice to some very dangerous ideas. With two Ivy League presidents toppled in the space of a month, the pressure would now fall on a third. Columbia stands guilty of gross negligence at best, and it worst has become a platform for those supporting terrorism and violence against the Jewish people. In April, Virginia Fox's committee held another hearing. This time, with Columbia's president, Minus Sheffique. Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who wanted to protest, and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of discrimination and harassment, has been the central challenge on our campus and numerous others across the country. President Sheffique took a very different approach from the other presidents. Does Colling for the Genocide of Jews violate Columbia's code of conduct, Dr. Sheffique? Yes, it does. Nadia Abu El-Haj of Columbia Center for Palestine Studies. President Sheffique's approach to that hearing was to figure out how she was going to survive in a way that at least the presence of Penn and Harvard did not. She could have started by challenging the assumption that we are in a crisis. What if Columbia is not a hotbed of anti-Semitism? What if there's a debate on campus about whether anti-Semitism is a problem, but for political expediency that did not happen? She told the committee she was already taking a hard line on the student protestors and would continue to do so. We have already suspended 15 students from Columbia. We have six on disciplinary probation. Douglas Belkin, Wall Street Journal. I think the Jewish students by and large and folks who are in support of Israel felt like she had their back. This was a high wire act and she was trying to steer her institution through a really fine hole in a needle to make sure that she would bring some kind of calmness to it, but also placate the Republicans on the committee who were demanding that she correct down harder. And I promise you from the messages I'm hearing from students, they are getting the message. But that same day in New York, Columbia students were trying to shift the focus back to Gaza, where by now tens of thousands of Palestinians had been killed. They set up an unauthorized encampment, demanding that she seek several Columbia's financial and educational ties with Israel. I think she felt pressure very much to act because she said she would. She had to crack down. The day after the hearing, she called in the New York Police Department, saying there was a clear and present danger to the functioning of the university. Nadia Abu El-Hazh. It was pretty horrifying to watch. Why are we handling off students in zip ties who were not only protesting peacefully but had barely been there a day? But she had promised Congress and it was clear she was going to come through. That night, students who had been arrested were released. After our arrest, the student body just mobilized more, which I actually predicted and which the administration should have expected at this point. Oh my god, hi. Mariam Al-Wan was one of the arrested protest leaders. We saw it happen after every crazy repressive measure that they've taken and with this violent action where they've arrested more than 100 of their own students. In front of the entire campus, I think it's going to be tax change. Once again, the crackdown backfired. Onward deliberation. Students set up a new in-cantland and continued to press their demands. And hundreds more protesters, some of whom were not students, began converging on the campus. Many just outside the gates. Journalism School Dean Jalani Kod. We started to see, various constituencies from outside the campus begin to show up. - Zionists, get out of our land. - The people who were coming from outside began saying and chanting clearly, like wildly anti-Semitic things. - No, Dr. Watt! - Go back to Poland. - Everybody, get the sevens of October! - Seventh of October is going to be every day for you. - Hundreds of students, faculty, alumni, and parents signed an open letter to President Sheffique. Warning her, the situation on campus had become unsafe for Jewish students. - People are scared, not in like theoretical sense, but they're physically scared and actively scared to walk on campus. - One of them was Asher Strow, a sophomore. - They chant to us, they yell, "Who do you who do?" Which is "Ju-Ju" and "Arbic Attices" we leave. They tell us, they say, "You Zionists, you Jews, Jews, we Jews, Jews, we don't want no Jews here." They've said that here on campus. - At the encampment, the protesters issued a statement rejecting any form of hatred or bigotry and said they had been victims of harassment, too. Some of the protesters filed a civil rights complaint against Columbia, alleging discrimination against Palestinian students and their allies. - [crowd cheering] - On April 29th, President Sheffique warned the protesters they would be suspended if they remained in the encampment. - [crowd cheering] - That night, protesters seized Columbia's iconic Hamilton Hall. [crowd cheering] They renamed it for a young girl who'd been killed in Gaza and began the occupation that would end with the NYPD storming the building. [crowd cheering] [crowd cheering] The showdown at Columbia set off a new way of student protest. - Across the universities of Melbourne, Sydney, Queensland. - Council Warwick, Manchester, Lynn, Police Board. - These are echo of these citizens at American universities. - I'm gonna keep fighting, I'm gonna keep working, I'm gonna keep organizing. - At Harvard, Israel Zamly has joined a civil rights complaint against the university, alleging harassment and intimidation of Arab and Muslim students and their supporters. - What we're doing on these college campuses, it's bigger than Harvard. - This is about American foreign policy. The student uprisings are just one spark and I think that's major, I think that's huge. - Sharba's Kustenbaum is now a plaintiff in a lawsuit against Harvard, alleging pervasive anti-Semitism. - Things have only gotten worse. My parents didn't want me to come back after Passover, but my attitude was and is, we have to confront these people. - It was chanting in front of me, all of my siblings lived between the river and the sea and I got news for you guys. - They are not going anywhere. - Eight months into the war, the division and discord on campuses continue to run deep. - UC Berkeley Chancellor, Carol Christ. - What to me is the most troubling thing in these circumstances is it's very hard to bring the students together on the two sides of this issue that they really resist that. I think as a society, we're losing our ability to have discussions among people with very different political points of view and it's the one of the most important things the university has to teach students. (dramatic music) - Go to PBS.org/frontline to see our coverage of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, including an archive of interviews. - Someone says do you want the word to continue or stop? The answer is of course stop. Is this a place where I can have a tomorrow? - You cannot ignore the Palestinian people. - Connect with Frontline on Facebook, Instagram and X, formerly Twitter and stream anytime on the PBS app, YouTube or PBS.org/frontline. (dramatic music) - Frontline is made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. Thank you. - And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support is provided by the Abrams Foundation committed to excellence in journalism. Park Foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. The John D. and Catherine T. McArthur Foundation committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world, more at Macfound.org. And by the Frontline Journalism Fund with major support from John and Joanne Hickler. And additional support from Koo and Patricia UN. Committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) Crisis on campus was directed by James Takobi. Written by James Takobi and Scott Michaels. Produced by Joseph Hogan and Scott Michaels. And co-produced by Chris O'Coyne. The senior producer was Dan Edge. (dramatic music) The managing editor of Frontline is Andrew Metz. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of Frontline is Rainy Aronson-Raff. (dramatic music)