The Devil and Webster

At the center of the Webster College campus stands the Stump, a flat remnant of a great elm that has long served as the site of student protests, rallies, and rituals. Founded in 1762 to educate Native Americans, Webster was once a conservative, all-male institution before undergoing a radical transformation in the 1970s. By the time Naomi Roth becomes its seventeenth president, and its first female one, the college is among the most selective and progressive in the nation.

Naomi's path to the presidency began a decade earlier during a crisis over gender identity. When a transgender sophomore selected a room in Radclyffe Hall, a women-only residential house, Naomi, then a professor of feminist and gender studies and dean of women's affairs, handled the national controversy with calm authority. Her composure impressed trustee Will Rennet, who championed her candidacy, and the presidential search committee nominated her.

Naomi is raising her only child, Hannah Rosalind Roth, a fiercely principled sophomore at Webster. Mother and daughter share Sunday dinners at the Stone House, the president's residence, though their relationship carries unspoken tensions. One evening, Naomi receives a call reporting that students have begun driving tent poles into the Billings Lawn around the Stump. Before leaving, Hannah retrieves sleeping bags for herself and for a fellow protester named Omar, and Naomi realizes her daughter has joined the protest.

The protest centers on the tenure denial of Nicholas Gall, a popular anthropology professor whose sole monograph contains plagiarized passages. The denial is final, but Naomi is legally barred from disclosing the plagiarism, as the tenure process is protected by strict confidentiality. This constraint haunts her throughout the crisis.

Naomi requests Omar Khayal's application file from her closest friend, Francine Rigor, Webster's dean of admissions. Omar's essay recounts growing up in Bureij, a Palestinian refugee camp, losing his father and brother to violence, his mother's death, and his passage through American foster homes to Oklahoma. Francine reveals that Omar is deeply close to Gall, practically living in the Gall household during school breaks. Naomi's review of Omar's transcript reveals a pattern of academic failure: F's in most courses, with the only passing grades coming from Gall's classes. When she visits the encampment and invites the group to her office for dialogue, no one comes.

After Thanksgiving, the protest grows dramatically. Students from other schools arrive, and media vans line the Quad. Naomi holds a "Day of Campus Discourse" that only non-protesting students attend and sends daily emails to protest leaders. Only Hannah responds, via terse texts.

In January, a hate crime escalates the crisis. Someone smears a racial slur in human feces on the basement walls of the Sojourner Truth House, the campus residence for students of color. That night, Omar delivers a galvanizing speech revealing that his father and brother were the subjects of a famous photograph of a Palestinian boy and his father caught in Israeli crossfire, and that he was nearly recruited as a suicide bomber before fleeing to America. He credits Gall with saving him and frames the tenure denial as institutional racism. Naomi, unrecognized in the crowd, is shaken by claims absent from Omar's original application.

The movement formally names itself Webster Dissent, with Omar and Gall as its public figures and Hannah as media liaison. Joint television interviews portray the tenure denial as racially motivated, and a celebrity attorney announces Gall's intention to sue Webster. Naomi, bound by confidentiality, cannot counter the narrative. She attempts to use Omar's failing grades as leverage, emailing him about academic probation, but he does not appear for the meeting. Before a rescheduled meeting can occur, Chava Friedberg, a fellow protest leader, announces on CNN that Omar has been "summarily suspended without warning." The board of trustees convenes an emergency call that Naomi did not initiate, and Milton Russell, a conservative retired professor, calls for her resignation.

A conservative website called the Clarion publishes a leak revealing Gall's plagiarism. Hannah storms into Naomi's office, accusing her mother of betrayal and using the past tense to say she was once proud of her. That evening, Francine delivers a painful observation: The problem is not that Naomi can no longer speak truth to power; the problem is that she is the power, and the students are trying to speak truth to her. Francine then confides that her husband, Sumner Rigor, headmaster of an elite private school called Hawthorne Academy, is on the verge of being fired.

In February, a small incendiary device detonates in Naomi's office, causing fire and smoke damage but no injuries. Omar vanishes that night, and in the following weeks the encampment slowly empties.

Naomi presses forward with the Native American Gathering, a conference she conceived months earlier to honor the history between Webster and its Native students. Robbins Petavit, a historian from the Nipmuc nation, a Native people indigenous to the region, and a Webster alumnus, chairs the event. The Gathering opens warmly, but a final student panel turns critical: Undergraduates describe systemic racism on campus, a Chippewa pre-med student announces she is transferring to the University of Minnesota, and a Seminole student ties the discussion to Webster Dissent.

That night, Petavit visits Naomi at the Stone House, and a quiet romantic connection forms between them. At three a.m., campus security calls: A body bearing a Webster ID in Omar's name has been found in Hartford, Connecticut. Robbins drives Naomi to the medical examiner's office, where she identifies the body. In the corridor, she encounters a grieving woman whose son Eduardo was killed in a gang-related shooting that same night. Naomi comforts her without understanding the connection. Robbins grasps the truth first: Eduardo Sombra and Omar Khayal are the same person. The boy Naomi knew as a Palestinian refugee was a Hartford teenager who fabricated his entire identity to gain admission to Webster.

The revelation devastates the campus. Media scrutiny redirects toward the admissions office. At a press conference, Francine explains that colleges operate on an honor system and do not verify every applicant's claims. Afterward, Leanne Gall, Francine's assistant and Nicholas Gall's wife, reveals to Naomi that Francine admitted the daughter of a Hawthorne board member as a quid pro quo to secure Sumner's contract renewal. Naomi confronts Francine, who does not deny it but counters that she also admitted Hannah as a favor. Naomi acknowledges the parallel but holds firm, telling Francine she must resign. Echoing Francine's earlier words, Naomi declares she is now "speaking power to truth" and tells Francine this is the last conversation they will have.

In the final scene, Hannah waits on the Stone House steps. She reveals she applied to transfer to Stanford the previous fall but was too angry to tell her mother. She attended Eduardo Sombra's funeral and still cannot make sense of his deception. When Naomi asks why she originally stayed at Webster, Hannah offers a quiet confession: She didn't think her mother was ready for her to leave. They sit together as a boy plays accordion on the Stump. Hannah teases Naomi about Robbins and leans against her shoulder, observing that whatever else can be said about Webster, it is a beautiful place to have grown up. Naomi absorbs the fact that her daughter is leaving, "so very ordinary, but…everything, too" (356).