EVANSTON, Ill. (VINnews) — Northwestern University’s Hillel will present a staged reading Tuesday of a play built entirely from the words of people who survived the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, nearly a year after the school agreed to a $75 million federal settlement over allegations of antisemitism.
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The production, “October 7,” is scheduled for Oct. 6 at Cahn Auditorium, the eve of the third anniversary of the attacks. A second performance is set for Dec. 8 at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Both campuses have been flashpoints for anti-Israel activism since the war in Gaza began.
The play is presented by the Unreported Story Society and directed by Jeff Gurner. Irish journalists Phelim McAleer and Ann McElhinney wrote the script from interviews they conducted in Israel after the attacks. Actors deliver the testimony word for word. The producers have said they interviewed survivors, the wounded, the bereaved and people who fought back, then shaped those accounts into a verbatim account of the day. The piece previously had an off-Broadway run at the Actors Temple in New York.
“Hearing survivors’ testimony performed word-for-word turns Oct. 7 from an abstraction into human beings, and that’s something every student needs to encounter,” Noah Oxfeld, a Northwestern senior, told the Jewish News Syndicate. “This is education at its most honest and its most necessary.”
Yali Koch, also a Northwestern student, told JNS the reading is “a great medium for helping people understand the human impact of the atrocities committed on Oct. 7,” and that it could give students a fuller picture of the conflict. Koch said anti-Israel sentiment has been “normalized” on campus and that many students lack the context to form their own views.
Under a November 2025 settlement with the Trump administration, Northwestern agreed to pay $75 million and to end a deal it had negotiated with anti-Israel encampment protesters in 2024. The university admitted no wrongdoing.
At Cornell, Jewish students recently told JNS the school was allowing a student accused of antisemitic conduct to return to campus. At a student event featuring Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., leaders of the campus Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter led a chant of “from the river to the sea” and praised what they called the “student intifada.” Jewish organizations have long said the slogan calls for Israel’s elimination and that talk of an intifada encourages violence against Jews.
“From 30-second videos on social media to flashy campus protests and catchy chants, there is a lot of noise for the average college student to filter through and learn what truly happened on Oct. 7, 2023,” Cornell sophomore Sofia Eliasi told JNS. She said the play “allows eyewitness experiences to circumvent editorializing and illuminate what really occurred that day.”
Cornell senior Davian Gekman told JNS it is “vital that my peers are exposed to the truth.”
“Never again can only hold true if people are educated,” he said.
The readings are part of a campus tour the producers have aimed at universities where they say antisemitism has been allowed to fester.
You spend your life managing the noise, filtering out what demands a reaction and what you can safely ignore until Tuesday morning arrives. Then you look at your calendar and wonder why none of it touches you.