By Fern Sidman
In a timely cinematic release, “Blind Spot,” a documentary, confronts a troubling phenomena in American academic life: the explosion of anti-Semitism on college campuses.
The film had its television premiere March 30 on Jewish Broadcasting Service.
The film is screening Thurs., April 10, 5:30 p.m., at DU’s Reiman Theater in Margery Reed Hall, Room 113. Hosts are the Center for Judaic Studies, IAC and Hillel of Colorado. A discussion with executive producer Leonard Gold follows.
Produced by Ironbound Films, “Blind Spot” examines anti-Semitism on US campuses both before and after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
Told through the firsthand accounts of more than two dozen Jewish students from over a dozen universities, the film paints a picture of how normalized anti-Israel hostility has metastasized into open anti-Semitism, often escalating into verbal harassment, physical threats and academic discrimination.
The students interviewed are ordinary undergraduates and graduate students — many of whom, until recently, considered their Jewish identity to be a quiet part of who they are. “Blind Spot” makes clear that this is no longer an option in today’s academic climate.
For Gold, a lawyer by training, this documentary is deeply personal. He was first awakened to the problem of school-based anti-Semitism in 2009 when one of his sons endured anti-Jewish hostility at a prestigious private school in New York City. This spurred Gold to expose the ideological rot permeating American campuses and to empower students to stand up for themselves and their people.
“‘Blind Spot’ is not just a film,” Gold says. “It’s a call to action — a refusal to look away from what’s happening to our kids in institutions we thought would help shape them, not break them.”
He says the documentary is a clarion call to Jewish parents, community leaders, donors and policy- makers: The problem is real and widespread, and must be confronted.
“Blind Spot” does not limit its focus to headline-making protests or high-profile incidents. It lays bare a systemic failure of university leadership to protect Jewish students from hostile learning environments, even as they enforce strict standards for other protected groups.
The film’s central theme is that Jewish students are at the front lines of a modern-day civil rights struggle. Whether in lecture halls, dormitories or student government chambers, they are being singled out, marginalized and attacked — not for what they’ve done, but for who they are and what they represent.
The campuses may be picturesque — brick-lined quads, leafy greens and ivy-covered buildings — but the intellectual climate, the social atmosphere and the moral posture toward Jewish identity is, in many cases, toxic.
The documentary exposes a demonization of Israel that morphs into the demonization of Jews. Asking Jewish students to renounce their connection to Israel or face exclusion is not political discourse — it is a modern form of anti-Semitism cloaked in the language of social justice.
One of the most powerful insights of “Blind Spot” is how this escalating hostility is catalyzing a spiritual and cultural awakening among Jewish students. Many of them, raised in environments where Jewishness was an incidental or quiet, are now being forced to reckon with what it means to be Jewish.
This is not just about geopolitics. It’s about personal courage, collective memory and the dignity of self-definition. The students featured in the film are not merely victims. They are the inheritors of a long tradition of resilience, choosing to speak, protest and live proudly in the face of intimidation.
As universities across America continue to grapple — or fail to grapple — with anti-Semitism, “Blind Spot” reminds viewers that silence is complicity, and that the failure to respond to campus Jew hatred is not just an institutional failure — it is a moral collapse.
Through focused interviews, harrowing anecdotes and a gaze at the culture of denial and appeasement, the film challenges viewers to see what so many have chosen not to see. It demands that viewers confront an uncomfortable truth: anti-Semitism is alive and well in American academia and its consequences are devastating.
For anyone concerned about the future of Jewish life in America — or the integrity of higher education — “Blind Spot” is essential viewing, says Gold. It is a mirror held up to a society that must now decide what it will do with what it sees.
Because once you’ve seen it, you can’t look away.
A second screening is scheduled for July 13, 3 p.m., at Broomfield Auditorium.
