24 August 2007 @ 8:48AM >> While the media focuses on the influence of political donations coming out of industries like oil and pharmaceuticals, there’s a new powerhouse in town that, for some reason, isn’t getting nearly as much attention:

Professors and others in the education field have given more to federal candidates running in 2008 than those who work in the oil, pharmaceutical, and computer industries — a sign of how academia has become a much bigger player in the political cash sweepstakes.

Of the more than $7 million that academics donated in the first half of this year, more than $4.1 million went to presidential campaigns, particularly Barack Obama’s, according to a study released this month by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The Illinois senator brought in almost $1.5 million, while Hillary Clinton received nearly $940,000.

Republican Mitt Romney was in third place, with about $448,000, but overall, three-quarters of contributions went to Democrats.

[...]

The clout of academic money in presidential and congressional races has grown dramatically in recent years, according to the center’s analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

Education ranked 34th among industries in terms of employee contributions in 1996 with a total of about $8.8 million, but nearly doubled to $16.5 million in the 2000 election and more than doubled again to $37 million in 2004, when it ranked eighth among all industries.

For the 2008 campaign so far, education ranks 14th. Among the industries whose employees have given more are law, medicine, Wall Street, and real estate.

Analysts say the donations in this presidential election cycle are largely due to widespread opposition to the Bush administration and the Iraq war.

“It has really been surprising to us the extent to which the education industry has started kicking into presidential politics,” said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. “It’s not a group you would normally think would have a lot of money to kick around $1,000 contributions. The motivation seems to be that they want a Democrat in the White House, and they want to keep a Democratic Congress.”

23 August 2007 @ 11:53AM >> U.S. News and World Report notices that some Democrats are toning down their pessimism about Iraq:

With congressional Democrats still groping for a unified Iraq withdrawal strategy, the eyewitness reports from individual Democratic lawmakers who’ve recently visited Iraq appear to have changed the dynamic in the debate over the war. The Kansas City Star’s “The Buzz,” for example, reports Democratic Rep. Brian Baird “saw enough progress on the ground that he will no longer vote for binding withdrawal timelines.” Rep. Jerry McNerney “suggested that his trip to Iraq made him more flexible in his search for a bipartisan accord on the war.” Also changing his tune is Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida, who says the troop increase ‘has really made a difference and really has gotten al-Qaida on their heels.’” As the Washington Post says this morning, “Democratic leaders in Congress had planned to use August recess to raise the heat on Republicans to break with...Bush on the Iraq war.” Instead, “Democrats have been forced to recalibrate their own message in the face of recent positive signs on the security front, increasingly focusing their criticisms on what those military gains have not achieved: reconciliation among Iraq’s diverse political factions.”

22 August 2007 @ 9:12AM >> ExpertVoter.org implements a simple, but powerful idea: provide voters direct access to the YouTube statements of presidential candidates running for office.

The main page is arranged in a grid, with issues across the top and candidates down the side. Candidates are also grouped and color-coded by party.

To hear a candidate’s stance on a given issue, just click the thumbnail image in the appropriate box. To hear all the candidates speak about a particular issue, you can sequentially click down the column for that issue.

And unlike what you might find in the reportage of the establishment media, lesser-known candidates are included as well.

YouTube also has a page that is a good starting point to the candidates, but I find ExpertVoter’s layout provides a better overview with far fewer clicks. The site is a good example of how the Internet can do a better job at informing the electorate than the old media.

21 August 2007 @ 9:46AM >> Mark your calendars for the evening of Friday, September 28th, when Indoctrinate U will make its public debut at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Tickets are now on sale for the event, which is organized by the American Film Renaissance.

Tickets are also available for the after-party to take place across the street at 600 Restaurant in the infamous Watergate Hotel.

Dates for screenings in other cities will be announced once the details have been set.

Update: The screening has sold out! Sorry to everyone unable to buy tickets.

19 August 2007 @ 2:09PM >> Today’s New York Times profiles Thor Halvorssen, one of the producers of Indoctrinate U.

The piece quotes Super Size Me director Morgan Spurlock as saying Indoctrinate U “could be a lightning rod.” Spurlock adds, “Movies that get attention and spark a dialogue, get people talking on news shows, can be profitable at the box office.”

Hopefully the Hollywood gatekeepers will give us a chance to prove him right!

15 August 2007 @ 2:14PM >> One benefit of opposing the United States is that the worldwide media will often report your allegations without even the simplest of fact-checking. Agence France Presse, or AFP, published this photo along with a caption saying:

An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.

Blogger Rocco DiPippo over at The Autonomist caught the transgression, saying “The only way those bullets hit her house was if someone threw them at her house.”

I guess in the many layers of editors at AFP, nobody has actually seen what a shell casing looks like after the bullet has been fired. They could use a little more diversity over there.

14 August 2007 @ 8:04PM >> “Red faces at NASA” :

In the United States, the calendar year 1998 ranked as the hottest of them all - until someone checked the math.

After a Toronto skeptic tipped NASA this month to one flaw in its climate calculations, the U.S. agency ordered a full data review.

Days later, it put out a revised list of all-time hottest years. The Dust Bowl year of 1934 now ranks as hottest ever in the U.S. - not 1998.

More significantly, the agency reduced the mean U.S. “temperature anomalies” for the years 2000 to 2006 by 0.15 degrees Celsius.

(Hat tip: Austin Hopper.)

9 August 2007 @ 8:49AM >> Yesterday, I got an e-mail from an earnest-sounding Columbia student who objected to my recently-released Indoctrinate U outtake, “Columbia Quiz.”

Here’s what the student wrote:

Hi,

I’m sure this point has been made before, but don’t you think it’s ironic that you’re claiming to promote freedom of speech - specifically an individual’s freedom to express controversial ideas - and yet your interview on the Columbia campus hinged on the assumption that the Columbia professor should not have expressed such a controversial idea (i.e. his opinion of Israeli Jews)?

If you really supported freedom of speech, you might let people say what they want and have a little faith in students’ abilities not to be brainwashed. Don’t worry - we’re not as dumb as you seem to think.

Claire Blatz
Columbia College ‘08

Here’s what I wrote back:

Claire,

Freedom of speech runs in both directions. I agree that Professor Dabashi is free to denigrate Israeli Jews. But I am also free to criticize him for it. You seem to be suggesting that I oppose free speech merely because I’m pointing out what he has said. How Orwellian of you. It looks like your Columbia education is paying off!

When I filmed this scene, my plan was to use it in Indoctrinate U to illustrate a double-standard in academia. Professor Dabashi can say the most vile things about Jews and still maintain his job as Chairman of the Middle East Languages and Cultures department, but other professors have been punished for saying things that are much more tame. I planned on juxtaposing the case of Professor Dabashi with the case of another professor who was removed from her job as department head for the high crime of being a registered Republican.

We see this pattern time and time again: you can say the most extreme, hateful things, as long as you pick the right targets. Meanwhile, simply opposing racial preferences in public or holding a rally to condemn Hamas and Hizbollah can get you brought up on hate speech charges. Being registered in the “wrong” political party can cost you your job. Up at your school, a mob rushed the stage to accost a speaker who had the temerity to argue that our nation should enforce its borders. Free speech is not alive and well on campus.

In fact, free speech is often selectively afforded to people based on what they say. If you haven’t noticed this yet, perhaps it’s because you happen to hold the approved set of views. Good for you. You haven’t run afoul of the censors...yet.

I support free speech and academic freedom for everyone, not just left-of-center professors, but for all professors and all students, regardless of their ideas. I even surprised a lot of friends when I said publicly that Ward Churchill’s explosive comments comparing September 11th victims with Nazi operatives did not constitute an offense for which he should be punished or fired.

Students and professors have repeatedly had their academic careers ruined simply for expressing mainstream views that are far less controversial than what Professor Dabashi said. My purpose in covering his case was not to say that he should be shut down, but to question why people like Hamid Dabashi and Ward Churchill are embraced within academia, while others have their academic careers destroyed for much milder speech. To me, that’s a legitimate question, and it’s the central question of my film.

Thanks for writing,
Evan

8 August 2007 @ 10:47PM >> Damian Thompson, a columnist with London’s Telegraph, recently wrote about Indoctrinate U, calling the film “a documentary that all of you should see.”

Mr. Thompson covered this film project in a piece published by the Telegraph two years ago, back when the working title was “Ministry of Truth.”

8 August 2007 @ 9:17AM >> What happens when political correctness conflicts with workplace sexual harrassment law?

Firefighters in San Diego were ordered to attend a Gay Pride parade:

In 28 years of responding to fires and saving lives, Fire Capt. John Ghiotto of the San Diego Fire Department never thought his job would require him to attend a Gay Pride parade.

[...]

Ghiotto and three other firefighters filed a sexual harassment complaint against the city’s fire department last week after being forced to attend the parade in uniform despite objections they made to superiors.

[...]

The firefighters claim parade attendees made obscene gestures, uttered inappropriate remarks and displayed lewd behavior that made them uncomfortable. They also demanded a work environment without discrimination and harassment.

The four men allege they were ordered by a battalion chief to attend last month’s parade and feared consequences for failure to do so, since refusing to follow a direct order constitutes disciplinary action.

If the men refused to follow the direct order, they could have been suspended on the spot and stripped of any chance for a promotion, according to their manual, Ghiotto said. It was Ghiotto’s first direct order.

Ghiotto, engineer Jason Hewitt and firefighters Chad Allison and Alex Kane filed the complaint, which includes detailed descriptions of their allegations. Their fire station is along the parade route.

“You could not even look at the crowd without getting some type of sexual gesture,” Ghiotto said in the complaint. “The experience left me feeling humiliated, embarrassed and offended by this event.”

San Diego fire chief Tracy Jarman, an open lesbian, said she apologized to the men, according to a statement. Jarman said any kind of sexual harassment is “unacceptable, and is never tolerated” in the department.

“I am deeply concerned and troubled by the allegations that have been made. I take them seriously,” Jarman said in a statement.

I suspect the sexual harassment argument is being used because it’ll either make the case easier to win or more lucrative. But what’s more troubling than any possible sexual harassment in this case is the complete disregard for the firefighters’ freedom of conscience.

Mandatory participation in an event with political overtones effectively forces someone to publicly endorse beliefs that they may not hold. If the firefighters were forced to go to an Easter Parade, or to a Christmas pageant, groups like the ACLU would rightly recognize that. In a free society, people must not be required to endorse any particular set of beliefs.

Hopefully, the ACLU will see the merits of this case and defend the firefighters in a way that doesn’t have to rely on sexual harassment law.

3 August 2007 @ 9:22AM >> Over at NewsMax.com, Matthew Shuster calls Indoctrinate U “a powerful, thought-provoking call to arms.”