The Palestine Exception tells the story of the largest anti-war movement since the 1970s as students, faculty, and staff demand divestment from companies doing business with Israel and an end to the war in Gaza. 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.

After decades of right-wing assaults on higher education, conservatives have partnered with academic institutional leadership in intensified attacks on free speech and academic freedom for those advocating for the rights and safety of Palestinians.

The Palestine Exception opens as college encampments that seeded a global student-led anti-imperial, anti-war movement have withstood these violent assaults and now vow to continue their liberatory organizing.