Aljazeera Source A new, moving documentary by Fault Lines on “The Palestine Exception: The crackdown on Palestine advocacy on US campuses” premiered this week on Al Jazeera English featuring Palestine Legal.
The documentary features Palestine Legal’s senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath, our brave client Maryam Alwan who is a plaintiff in our lawsuit against Columbia University alongside the New York Civil Liberties Union, and our fierce colleagues Dr. Lara Sheehi and Lara Friedman.
Together, they chronicle the ongoing and severe wave of repression that students and faculty are facing on campus as they protest Israel’s genocidal attack on Palestinians.
“They think that if they attack us enough, then everyone else will be quiet. But they don’t realize that we can’t be silent and it’s just going to motivate people to rise up more,” said Maryam Alwan.
Fault Lines investigates what the crackdown on Palestine advocacy means for academic freedom in the United States.
Doxxing. Blacklists. Terminations. Investigations. Hate mail and death threats. And accusations of anti-Semitism and material support for terrorism. These are some of the ways in which pro-Israel advocacy groups have tried to silence and intimidate pro-Palestinian voices in the US for years.
But since October 7, these kinds of attacks have intensified. Constitutional rights advocates have called this a McCarthy-era moment for speech, suppression, and university campuses are on the front lines.
