She organised the screening of an anti-Zionist film. Then Emerson College fired her

Anna Feder, who worked at the famed arts institution for 17 years, told Middle East Eye that the Bright Lights Cinema Series, which she founded 12 years ago, had often shown boundary-pushing films, many of them made by former students.

“There were alumni making these really critical social justice films… No one ever told me that I couldn’t show this. I couldn’t show that,” she said. “This was the first time internally I heard anything from anyone negative.”

Emerson’s student newspaper, the Berkeley Beacon, called the festival a “pillar of the community in large part due to the work put in by Head of Film Exhibition and Festival Programming Anna Feder”. The article said the festival “introduced three generations of Emerson students to hundreds of independent films, highlighting social issues and marginalized perspectives”.

The documentary in question is 2023’s Israelism, which follows two young Jewish Americans as they travel to the occupied West Bank and witness the segregation and subjugation of Palestinians. The protagonists begin a journey to disavow the loyalty to Israel that is expected of them, questioning their Zionist Jewish identity.

The film’s directors told MEE that trying to distribute their project was “very difficult” and that no major film festival accepted it, even though it had been completed long before the 7 October 2023 Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel, which then led to the ongoing war on Gaza.

So Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen were delighted when Feder picked their film for Bright Lights, for a scheduled screening in November 2023.

MEE reached out to Emerson College for comment but did not hear back from the college by the time of publication.

Backlash

But not long after she announced the programme in August of that year, Feder said a faculty member emailed her to dissuade her from showing the film, calling it biased.

“I said, ‘Oh, no, I’ve seen it… I don’t know if you know, but I’m Jewish… it will be done really thoughtfully’,” Feder recalled responding.

By September, a member of the board at Emerson began texting Feder with similar concerns about Israelism, and Feder again issued her response about being Jewish and that the film was made by Jewish filmmakers.

“This was all done with care, you know, care for my audience, care for the community,” Feder told MEE.

Then October came around, and everything “shifted dramatically”, Feder said.

“There were three things that I was told if I wanted to show the film in November as planned… that the college would publicly disavow it, that I would have to have armed police in the theater, and that my programme would be ‘revisited in the future’,” she recalled.

The climate forced her to push the screening to February 2024, and by then, Israelism was on a 40-city screening tour across North America, having gained momentum as the pro-Palestine movement gained ground.

“We could fit 180 people in that cinema, and I’ve packed it before, and we’ve even had to turn away an audience before, but we’ve never had people who were turned away go and have their own impromptu screening… and then join us on Zoom,” for the post-show discussion, Feder said.

Emerson College, just as it had warned months before, put out a statement disavowing the screening.

“I had to have an undercover Emerson College police department officer in the cinema who, by the way, came up to me at the end of the screening and thanked me for the film,” Feder said.

Within weeks, student encampments in support of Gaza and calling for divestment from companies tied to Israel popped up on campuses across the country, including at Emerson.

Feder had not been shy about expressing her support for the movement.

By mid-August 2024, she was told that the Bright Lights Cinema Series had been cancelled due to budget constraints and that she was being let go.

The programme only cost some $20,000.

But that, she told MEE, was the school fulfilling its promise to “revisit” her programme if she showed Israelism.

‘Inconvenient’ voices

Israelism‘s co-directors, Axelman and Eilertsen, told MEE they did not expect this kind of outcome for Feder, whom they call a friend.

“The idea of a Jewish professor being fired for showing a film made by American Jews about the American Jewish experience is absolutely insane and is incredibly pathetic and cowardly by Emerson, especially at this time of surging authoritarianism,” Axelman said.

While Joe Biden was president at the time, Donald Trump was already the Republican nominee and surging at the polls.

Trump’s administration has since pushed for a crackdown on academics who criticise Israel.

Those moves, Eilertsen says, “wake up members of the Jewish community”.

Actions targeting pro-Palestinians are “so reminiscent of things, horrific things, that have happened in Jewish history [like] people being seized off the street and thrown into unmarked vans”, Eilertsen added.

Axelman said anti-Zionist Jewish voices are being sidelined or shut down to avoid the impression that discourse on Palestine has any nuance.

“Our voices are incredibly normal in the Jewish community. They are just very inconvenient for pro-Israel organisations who like to pretend that all American Jews are united on Israel.”

Feder agreed.

“Those of us who are Jewish complicate that narrative,” she told MEE.

“If all of this is being done in the name of Jewish safety, and Jews are saying, ‘Hey, no, actually, this does not make me feel safer,’ that’s a real problem.”

Israelism secured a distributor last year: Watermelon Pictures. It is also available to view on YouTube via Al Jazeera and Vice, which together have racked up nearly two million views.

Feder is currently fundraising online for her legal battle, and according to her lawsuit, is seeking more than $280,000 in damages from Emerson, as well as compensation for her legal fees.

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