Hampshire College is often credited with being the first US college to divest for the occupation, and this video attempts to understand the group and the campaign that made it happen. The video is constructed from interviews with over a dozen student activists from Hampshire College’s Students for Justice in Palestine.
“To Know is Not Enough” is a video by Will Delphia, a film and social science student at Hampshire College.
Hampshire College is a small liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts. Hampshire was started in the early 1970s to be a new sort of experiment in non-traditional education emphasizing independent work and allowing students to choose every facet of their own course of study.
Hampshire College describes itself as “experimenting” rather than “experimental” in order to emphasize the changing nature of its curriculum. From its inception the curriculum has generally had certain non-traditional features (Wikipedia).
It was in this context where a student group managed to win for themselves a victory in the international movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions.
Will Delphia (director):
SJP and their campaign caught my attention like it caught the attention of the entire campus, I hope that this film serves the larger movement for Campus BDS just as it would serve Hampshire College as an document encapsulating an exciting and intense moment in the school’s history.
The title “To Know is Not Enough” is in reference to Hampshire College’s official motto: Non satis scire. – and in the opinion of the filmmaker it cannot mean anything unless it means that one must act on their knowledge. There is no better example of putting ideas into action at Hampshire College than the story of Students for Justice in Palestine and divestment.