The War in Gaza and the ‘Conflict Over the Conflict’ on College Campuses

It was April 30, 2024. Protesters condemning the war in Gaza and demanding that Columbia University sever ties with Israel had taken over a building on the prestigious school’s New York City campus and barricaded themselves inside.

The opening scene of the FRONTLINE and Retro Report documentary Crisis on Campus, embedded above, shows what happened less than 24 hours later. Citing a “clear and present danger” to the school’s functioning, Columbia University called in the police to clear the building, which protesters had renamed Hind’s Hall after a young girl killed in Gaza. Officers arrived en masse with helmets, zip ties and riot shields, some of them entering the building through windows.

The chaotic scene at Columbia that night was a dramatic escalation after months of discord sweeping across American college campuses. Those tensions were ignited by the devastating Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel that amounted to the worst loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, and Israel’s catastrophic war in Gaza, in which tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed.

FRONTLINE and Retro Report’s documentary, which is now available to stream online and in the PBS App, chronicles how the “conflict over the conflict” on colleges reached a boiling point.

“In earlier times of political protest — for example, about the Vietnam War — the student body often was very united, against the administration, but often very united,” Carol Christ, the chancellor of the University of California at Berkeley, says in the documentary. “But this time, it’s student against student. It’s faculty member against faculty member.”

Since Oct. 7, director James Jacoby and Retro Report producers Scott Michels and Joseph Hogan have been following the escalating campus turmoil and talking to people on all sides of the divide: faculty members and administrators, key players in Washington, D.C. and beyond, journalists who have covered the divisions, and Jewish and Palestinian students and their supporters from Columbia and Harvard — two epicenters of the campus tensions — for whom events in the Middle East and at school feel existential.

The resulting film examines how universities have responded amid allegations of antisemitism and anti-Arab and anti-Muslim discrimination, how the protests have raised the dilemma of balancing free speech with preventing harassment and discrimination, and how and why powerful interests have joined the fray.

As Hamas still holds Israeli hostages and the death toll in Gaza continues to rise, Crisis on Campus is an illuminating look at how debate over one of the world’s most intractable and complex conflicts has gripped and divided American college campuses.

For the full story, watch Crisis on Campus:

Crisis on Campus premiered on June 11, 2024. It is available to watch on FRONTLINE’s website, FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel, the PBS App and the PBS Documentaries Prime Video Channel. Crisis on Campus is a FRONTLINE production with Retro Report. Directed by James Jacoby. Produced by Scott Michels and Joseph Hogan. Written by James Jacoby and Scott Michels. The senior producer is Dan Edge. The executive producer of Retro Report is Kyra Darnton. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath.

This story has been updated.