Photo by Judy Goldstein
On March 8th 2025, Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent resident of the U.S., was detained by ICE. He had committed no crime, only exercising his free speech as one of the primary organizers of pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. The day before his detention, President Trump cut $400 million in funding to Columbia due to its failure to “combat antisemitism on campus,” pressuring Columbia to eventually capitulate to his demands. This sequence of events is despicable, but unsurprising, driven by a desecration of free speech and liberties particular to President Trump and his democratically elected ideology. Yet these threats to free speech have long existed under democratic and republican leadership alike, and nowhere else was that more apparent than the pro-Palestinian encampment on Columbia’s campus in April 2024.
The Encampments, a documentary directed and produced by Kei Pritsker and Michael T. Workman, chronicles these encampments and the movement it inspired. Centering on its student organizers–namely Mahmoud Khalil, Sueda Polot, and Grant Miner–this documentary details this extraordinary mobilization from their perspective. The media has thus far only covered the encampments from a measured distance, at best regarding the movement as frivolous and idealistic and at worst as violent and rabidly antisemitic. In taking back the narrative, The Encampments ultimately succeeds, squashing every accusation thrown at the movement.
That the encampments were antisemitic? Well, the film shows Jews in yarmulkes sitting among the tents, hosting Havdalah and a community Seder.
That they made Jews unsafe? The film shows Zionist counter-protestors pressing up against the encampments, precariously close to those they claimed to be afraid of while screaming threats of rape.
That they were violent? Disorderly? Dangerous? The film shows the protestors peacefully organizing, engaging in civil disobedience no different from the 1968 Columbus anti-Vietnam protests that are now championed as beacons of free speech.
The Encampments smartly traces the long legacy of campus protests to give credence to contemporary student organizers while exposing the blatant hypocrisies coming from the Columbia administration. These hypocrisies are best exposed by an anonymous employee of Columbia University who details how Columbia administrators tried to obfuscate the ongoing genocide while routinely sabotaging negotiations with their students. In one memorable scene, Khalil recalls how Columbia administrators offered a deal with the ominous promise that, if not accepted, the police would raid the encampments the following day. Khalil called his political connections to learn that this was a completely empty threat. So the negotiations continued, wracked by mistrust and Columbia’s abuses of power. By exposing the moral fallibility of the university as an institution, Pritsker and Workman reframe the students as the sole party upholding the values of academic honesty and freedom. In a way, they were not just trying to save Palestine, but the idea of the university itself.
But what do the politics of a university matter if there isn’t a university at all? The Encampments is quick to remind us that there are currently no universities left in Gaza–Israel has destroyed them all. And it is in this duality that the core ethos of the film is most visible. Student protestors standing arm in arm are paralleled with footage of a Palestinian child being detained by the IDF while his friend, no older than 13 himself, tries to tear him out of the soldier’s grasp. Interviews with indicted mayor Eric Adams decrying Columbia’s descent into violence fail to find resonance against clips of bombings and corpses on Gaza’s rubbled streets. The minutiae of campus protest seem almost absurd to contemplate in the midst of an ongoing genocide, yet by showing the horrors unfolding, the film underlines the importance of the encampments. A Columbia professor asks a student if she is really participating for the sake of Palestine or if it’s all for herself, as if risking arrest or expulsion are exercises in vanity, but clips of Palestinian children thanking Columbia’s students for raising their voices diffuse the baited question for her. The college encampments disrupted more than just their universities: they disrupted the world’s consciousness, too. Even as Columbia’s campus seemed to echo the West Bank, with its checkpoints and overly policed streets, the students demonstrated a certain resilience, an acknowledgment that their work matters and their privileges demand even more.
This film captures not only the difficulties of the encampments, but also the joys, the dreams, and the moments of levity. At a Q&A after a screening of the film, director Pritsker admitted to living inside the encampment for days at a time, smuggling himself in and out with the blessing of the student organizers. Pritsker also details how he took special care to protect the identities and rights of the students featured. Thus, the film holds a palpable trust between director and subject, revealing a deeper truth and vulnerability behind the fight for divestment. In that way, I cannot imagine a more honest documentary on the subject. I anticipate some pro-Israel publications will argue that this film is one-sided, that it is biased towards the protestors and their story, which I will not disagree with. But against the previously one-sided vilification of the encampments and the movement for Palestinian liberation, this “bias” becomes far more necessary as both a powerful antidote and a vehicle for truth.
After a wave of students were arrested on the first day of the encampments, other students set up camps at their universities across the country and the world at large, culminating in one of the largest student protests in American history. 8% of U.S. college students were estimated to have participated. It was not despite the initial arrests that this happened, but precisely because of it. Repression, the film argues, ignites us. It reminds us of the fragility of our rights. Therefore Mahmoud Khalil’s detention, and the detention of other anti-genocide student activists, could be the reignition of that flame of protest. For the first time since October 7th, Democrats have stood on the side of pro-Palestinian protestors and demanded their rights be protected. Perhaps this moment precipitates a shifting tide, and if it is, The Encampments make it clear that we should be ready to fight.
It has been a while since I’ve walked out of a theater so motivated to fight, to write, to speak up, and that, I think, is this film’s greatest gift. At this moment, amidst Israel’s violent disruption of the ceasefire in Gaza, that sort of rallying call is imperative. One can only hope that we rise to meet it.
