“Hate Spaces” is a documentary film produced by Ralph Avi Goldwasser and Americans for Peace and Tolerance, who also gave us “The J Street Challenge,” and as the full title suggests, it describes the recent surge of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel activity on American university campuses.
I’ve written about the phenomenon more than once, so I didn’t expect to be surprised by anything in the film. But despite knowing about the various incidents described, the sheer volume and intensity of them taken together left me shaken. Yes, shaken, and I’m not easy to shake.

I was an academic for a short time some decades ago, and the combination of ideological intensity and insulation from the real world that characterizes many students and faculty is not entirely unfamiliar to me, but I couldn’t have imagined that it would focus this way, on one group and one target – my people and my country.

Student activism has always centered on freedom, anti-authoritarianism, opposition to oppression of minorities and support for civil rights, especially free speech. What is happening on campuses is that these principles are being twisted so that the outcome, rather than a reduction in oppression and increased human rights, is the intimidation, marginalization, silencing and even persecution of Jewish and (especially) pro-Israel students.