Jan Haaken is a former nurse and psychology professor who taught at Portland State University from 1980 to 2011, and now works as a documentary filmmaker and radio programmer on the Old Mole Variety Hour, a weekly public affairs program on KBOO community radio.
She recently co-produced The Palestine Exception.
About the film:
After years of right-wing assaults on higher education, attacks took a new form in 2023 and 2024 that has been described as the new McCarthyism. As students across the country organize protests against Israel’s war on Gaza, decades-long taboos in academia around criticism of Israel–the “Palestine exception”–are shattered. This film features professors and students as they join calls for a ceasefire and divestment from companies that do business with Israel and face waves of crackdown from administrators, the media, the police and politicians. Scholars from diverse disciplines explain what is at stake in these protests and why so many young people identify with the Palestinian cause. The documentary unfolds as a story of college campuses as sites of both rebellion and repression, places where personal and collective histories converge in unexpected ways.
This hour also features an interview with the Palestinian scholar, scientist and founder of the Palestine Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, Mazin Qumsiyeh.
- KBOO