December 11, 2011

Broadcast Date: 
Dec 11 2011

Irvine 11 attorney Reem Salahi on why and how public universities are cracking down on pro-Palestine student speech. Khodorkovsky filmmaker Cyril Tuschi on how Russia's richest man became its most famous political prisoner. And professor Jeffrey Shandler on how to celebrate Christmas...when you're a prewar Eastern European Jew.

Episode segments
  • The Irvine 11 and Beyond
    American Politics, Israel/Palestine, Civil Rights
    Reem Salahi is a civil rights attorney in Los Angeles. She blogs at Objection!
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    With public universities terrified of lawsuits and funding cuts if they allow pro-Palestine students to speak out, the Irvine 11 case--in which eleven Arab- and Muslim-American students were prosecuted for disrupting an address from Israeli ambassador Michael Oren--was just the most dramatic incident in a wave of crackdowns on campus dissent on Israel.

  • The Rise and Fall of Mikhail Khordokovsky
    International Politics, Film, Europe and Russia
    Cyril Tuschi is a filmmaker who lives in Berlin. Khodorkovsky is his first documentary.
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    In 2002, Russian oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was the world’s richest person under 40--but since tussling with the Putin government in 2003, he has been imprisoned in Siberia on trumped up tax evasion charges. Tuschi's film struggles with the question: Has the oligarch become a hero?

  • It's Beginning to Feel A Lot Like Nitl
    Religion, Holidays, Jewish Communities, Jewish Life
    Jeffrey Shandler is a professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University.
    Marissa Brostoff and Kiera Feldman

    Long before American Jews went in for Chinese food and a movie, Eastern European shtetl-dwellers celebrated a range of idiosyncratic Christmas--or Nitl, in Yiddish--traditions of their own.