2 November 2007 @ 8:35AM >> Indoctrinate U will be screened in Cleveland, Ohio at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque for one show only: Sunday, November 18th at 4:00pm.

The Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque is located at 11141 East Boulevard in University Circle. Free parking is available in the Institute lot. Tickets are $8 and may be purchased at the box office just before showtime, or earlier by calling (216) 421-7450 for advance ticket sales.

31 October 2007 @ 8:08AM >> This, in a nutshell, demonstrates everything that is wrong with academia today:

The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism. The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) is calling for the total dismantling of the program, which is a flagrant violation of students’ rights to freedom of conscience and freedom from compelled speech.

“The University of Delaware’s residence life education program is a grave intrusion into students’ private beliefs,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The university has decided that it is not enough to expose its students to the values it considers important; instead, it must coerce its students into accepting those values as their own. At a public university like Delaware, this is both unconscionable and unconstitutional.”

The university’s views are forced on students through a comprehensive manipulation of the residence hall environment, from mandatory training sessions to “sustainability” door decorations. Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

According to the program’s materials, the goal of the residence life education program is for students in the university’s residence halls to achieve certain “competencies” that the university has decreed its students must develop in order to achieve the overall educational goal of “citizenship.” These competencies include: “Students will recognize that systemic oppression exists in our society,” “Students will recognize the benefits of dismantling systems of oppression,” and “Students will be able to utilize their knowledge of sustainability to change their daily habits and consumer mentality.”

At various points in the program, students are also pressured or even required to take actions that outwardly indicate their agreement with the university’s ideology, regardless of their personal beliefs. Such actions include displaying specific door decorations, committing to reduce their ecological footprint by at least 20%, taking action by advocating for an “oppressed” social group, and taking action by advocating for a “sustainable world.”

In the Office of Residence Life’s internal materials, these programs are described using the harrowing language of ideological reeducation. In documents relating to the assessment of student learning, for example, the residence hall lesson plans are referred to as “treatments.”

The taxpayers of Delaware should demand that the folks running the state’s university get put into a treatment program of their own.

Update: The University of Delaware has agreed to dismantle this very troubling program. But these things have a way of resurfacing under new guises, so I hope the students and RAs at the University of Delaware will be vigilant about watching the school’s future actions, especially now that it appears RAs who spoke out against the program are being threatened with retribution.

30 October 2007 >> Today’s Quote of the Day:

[I]t’s kind of depressing if mobility and the human excretory process are the best arguments to be made for why the print medium won’t go way of the dodo, don’t you think?
—Paul La Monica, in response to comment from venture capitalist Roger McNamee.

29 October 2007 @ 9:31AM >> Scott Johnson of PowerLine attended Indoctrinate U’s opening night in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He writes:

The Minneapolis debut was only the film’s second public showing; it premiered in Washington a few weeks ago before a raucous crowd at the Kennedy Center. In Minneapolis the film continues with showings at the Oak Street Cinema (the old Campus Theater) through next Thursday. The theater was also packed with a responsive crowd last night, a large part of which stuck around after the screening to hear from Evan and film producer Thor Halvorssen. I haven’t seen such a big crowd in that theater since “Putney Swope” opened there in 1969.

Scott concludes:

This is a funny, humane, and powerful film. If there is any justice in the world, with Evan Maloney’s screen debut a star is born.

The film will continue its run in the Twin Cities with multiple screenings per day until Thursday night.

27 October 2007 @ 6:58AM >> Matthew Sheffield of NewsBusters recently interviewed me on a wide range of topics. His extensive interview, the first in what will soon be a series on the website, has now been posted.

It is quite apparent from reading the transcript that I must have spoken with Sheffield after a few cups of coffee.

26 October 2007 @ 10:19AM >> Tonight, in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Indoctrinate U begins a week-long run at the Oak Street Cinema on the east edge of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities campus.

Stanley Kurtz of National Review wonders if this is part of a media revolution:

Maybe you’ve heard about Indoctrinate U’s DC premiere. The crowd went wild. Now, if you live in or near the Twin Cities, you can go wild too. In association with the Minnesota Association of Scholars and the Tocqueville Center at the University of Minnesota, the Moving Picture Institute is going to be putting on a full week of screenings of Indoctrinate U. [...]

Now for the “global” implications. Think about it. Something very interesting is happening here. The producers of Indoctrinate U are promising to arrange local screenings in areas where enough people express interest at their website. And now they’re holding a local screening. The idea of a local screening tour for politically incorrect films could become the cinematic equivalent of the internet—a way around the mainstream Hollywood blockade. And with luck, strong local interest might even break the Hollywood blockade and prompt a distributor to actually offer Indoctrinate U in commercial theaters. So we may be looking at a genuine “media event,” in the best sense of that term.

25 October 2007 @ 9:07AM >> Last night, David Horowitz came to speak at Emory University as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, an event created to highlight the human rights abuses committed in the name of Islam around the world. Horowitz started off by showing a picture of a woman being shot in the head for “sexual improprieties.” In some Muslim cultures, sexual impropriety includes being a victim of rape, something for which countless women have been killed in an attempt to restore the “honor” of the rape victim’s family.

It used to be that leftists would be outraged by such a thing. After all, they claim to sympathize with the oppressed. But these days, when women are killed for being the victims of rape, or when gays are executed for being who they are, leftists first must look into who is doing the killing. If it’s a Muslim doing the killing, then for some reason, it is excusable.

That’s because there is a hierarchy of political correctness, where one group’s rights can be superceded by another group’s rights depending on which group is viewed as more oppressed by Westerners. This leads to some rather strange double-standards: if a Christian opposes gay marriage on religious grounds, he’d be branded a bigot and would be blacklisted from campus. But if a Muslim leads a country that routinely executes gays, he would be welcomed with open arms.

This is the environment into which David Horowitz stepped when he tried to demonstrate the very real crimes against humanity that are committed in the name of Islam. So, naturally, the leftists at Emory University had to make sure that Horowitz’s speech got shut down: in today’s politically correct world, the “rights” of radical Muslims to murder women who run afoul of Sharia law apparently trumps the right of David Horowitz to criticize those murders. So, naturally, Horowitz needed to be silenced.

The Emory University College Republicans, which sponsored Horowitz’s speech, issued a press release describing what happened:

On Wednesday evening, the Emory University Chapter of the College Republicans hosted acclaimed author and activist David Horowitz for a lecture on radical Islam as part of Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. From the beginning of Horowitz’s speech, rowdy protesters continually interrupted him and less than half an hour into the event, the crowd became so disruptive that police were called in and Horowitz had to be escorted off stage.

Over 300 people - a cross-section of students, professors, and Atlanta community members - packed into White Hall where the event was held. The audience included a wide range of Leftists from Amnesty International, Veterans for Peace, and Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as Muslim groups such as the Muslim Student Association. In addition, members of “National Project to Defend Dissent & Critical Thinking in Academia,” an organization dedicated to opposing Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events throughout the country, participated in the protests dressed in orange attire as a reference to Guantanamo Bay. There was also a sizable group of men and women dressed in traditional Muslim garb as well as students wearing Kafiyehs, a symbol of Arab solidarity.

“I’ve spoken at Emory University several times and I’ve never seen it this bad,” said Horowitz responding to the crowd as they shouted and jeered. “This is exactly what the fascists did in Germany in the 1930s.” Protesters began their efforts as soon as Horowitz was introduced with boos and chants of “Heil Hitler.” Despite the people who stood with their backs to Horowitz and the shouting of obscenities and other remarks from audience members, Horowitz attempted to deliver his speech that covered academic freedom and radical Islam. The loud chants, sign-waving, and disruptive gestures continued to escalate from audience members until the atmosphere was so chaotic that even the police present were unable to subdue the crowd. Horowitz was led off stage and left the campus under tight security, and the event came to an abrupt end.

Some of the disruption was caught on tape.

This is yet another example of how college campuses no longer have any tolerance for diversity of thought. Free speech is only welcome on campus if you say the right things.

Somebody ought to make a film about this sort of thing...

24 October 2007 @ 7:48AM >> Say it ain’t so, Rudy.

The Red Sox? The Red Sox?!? Anything but that!

20 October 2007 @ 12:21PM >> Leave it to the media to figure out a way to turn dramatically declining death rates in Iraq into a negative story:

At what’s believed to be the world’s largest cemetery, where Shiite Muslims aspire to be buried and millions already have been, business isn’t good.

A drop in violence around Iraq has cut burials in the huge Wadi al Salam cemetery here by at least one-third in the past six months, and that’s cut the pay of thousands of workers who make their living digging graves, washing corpses or selling burial shrouds.

Few people have a better sense of the death rate in Iraq.

“I always think of the increasing and decreasing of the dead,” said Sameer Shaaban, 23, one of more than 100 workers who specialize in ceremonially washing the corpses. “People want more and more money, and I am one of them, but most of the workers in this field don’t talk frankly, because they wish for more coffins, to earn more and more.”

[...]

“Certainly, when the number of dead increases I feel happy, like all workers in the graveyard,” said Basim Hameed , 30, a body washer. “This happiness comes from the increase in the amount of money we have.”

Death is something everyone must face, he noted. “My job demands death, and this is our fate, all of us.”

What’s next? A story on a recession in the Iraqi explosives market?

19 October 2007 @ 8:49AM >> The latest deleted scene from Indoctrinate U is now available over at the film’s website.

18 October 2007 @ 9:22AM >> Walter Williams dedicates his latest column to a look at Indoctrinate U.

Also, here’s another review of Indoctrinate U that I recently found online:

It’s a film that grows on you the deeper into the narrative you get, alternately making you belly-laugh and shake your head at the insanity that activists get away with against their ideological opponents - and sometimes their insufficiently zealous sympathizers - while campus administrators bury their heads in the sand.

[...]

Without revealing too much, I can say that the tiffs would be hilarious material for screenwriters if they were fictional, and I hope day we can laugh them off. But there is a tinge of sadness as you realize, after a hearty laugh as a target recounts his or her dark night of the soul, what crushing periods they went through for something as simple as being married to a Republican.

[...]

If I sound perturbed in my writing, it’s only after the fact, dwelling on what students these days face. But the film lends itself more to laughter and mockery than hurt feelings, carried along by a poppy dance soundtrack. Clearly these interview subjects have developed a sense of removal since their trials, and they have a sense of humor about it.

17 October 2007 @ 8:01AM >> If fliers posted around campus are considered hate speech when it is believed that a conservative student group is responsible, why is it not considered hate speech when it comes out that liberal students are source of the fliers?

At George Washington University, it’s only hate speech if they don’t like your politics.

16 October 2007 @ 1:43PM >> Indoctrinate U is coming to the Twin Cities for a week-long run at Minnesota Film Arts’ Oak Street Cinema!

I’ll be there on opening night, Friday, October 26th. The run continues until the following Thursday, November 1st.

Here are the details:

Date		Screening Times
Friday, October 26			7:15 PM
Saturday, October 27		5:15 PM	7:15 PM
Sunday, October 28		5:15 PM	7:15 PM
Monday, October 29			7:15 PM	9:15 PM
Tuesday, October 30		5:15 PM	7:15 PM	9:15 PM
Wednesday, October 31		5:15 PM	7:15 PM	9:15 PM
Thursday, November 1			7:15 PM	9:15 PM

Tickets for the matinee screening (5:15 PM) are $4 for students and $6 for adults.

All other times, tickets are $5 for students and $8 for adults.

The screenings are sponsored by the Minnesota Association of Scholars and the Tocqueville Center at the University of Minnesota.

16 October 2007 @ 9:31AM >> In yesterday’s New York Times, Professor Stanley Fish took an extensive look at Indoctrinate U. While it is clear that the professor and I feel quite differently about the extent of the problems in academia, the final two paragraphs of the piece contained more intellectual honesty than the last bit of coverage the Times gave Indoctrinate U. Professor Fish admits:

But then there’s the part we should take seriously: professors who use the classroom as a stage for their political views. Maloney speculates that perhaps one out of seven perform in this way. I would put the number much lower, perhaps one out of twenty-five. But one out of 10,000 would be one too many.

Academics often bridle at the picture of their activities presented by Maloney and other conservative critics, and accuse them of grossly caricaturing and exaggerating what goes on in the classroom. Maybe so, but so long as there are those who confuse advocacy with teaching, and so long as faculty colleagues and university administrators look the other way, the academy invites the criticism it receives in this documentary. In 1915, the American Association of University Professors warned that if we didn’t clean up our own shop, external constituencies, with motives more political than educational, would step in and do it for us. Now they’re doing it in the movies and it’s our own fault.

Perhaps my biggest disagreement with Professor Fish is over the issue of speech codes. Professor Fish contends:

This is a fake issue. Every speech code that has been tested in the courts has been struck down, often on the very grounds — you can’t criminalize offensiveness — invoked by Maloney. Even though there are such codes on the books of some universities, enforcing them will never hold up. Students don’t have to worry about speech codes. The universities that have them do, a point made by “Indoctrinate U” when Maloney tells the story of how Cal Poly was taken to the cleaners (no, not his cleaners) when it tried to discipline a student for putting up a poster with the word “plantation” in it.

In the Cal Poly case cited by Professor Fish, a student spent 18 months of his life under the threat of expulsion while he battled the university all the way up to federal court. His crime? Posting a flier announcing an upcoming event: a speech by Mason Weaver, a black conservative author who wrote a book on economic empowerment called It’s OK to Leave the Plantation. Apparently, Mr. Weaver’s point of view was not welcome in the Multicultural Center on campus, so Steve Hinkle, the student who attempted to post Weaver’s flier in there, had the police called on him and was brought up on disciplinary charges by the school.

Ultimately, Hinkle was vindicated, and Professor Fish focuses only on the positive outcome in order to deem the whole issue of speech codes to be “fake.” But having to spend 18 months fighting for rights that are already constitutionally guaranteed sends a strong signal to other students that expressing the wrong point of view will end up costing you dearly. It corrodes the whole concept of free speech by dissuading people from speaking. After all, if simply hanging a flier could result in 18 months of battles, many students are going to conclude that certain speech just isn’t worth it. People whose views differ from the campus orthodoxy are going to keep quiet. Speech is undoubtedly chilled.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) gets hundreds upon hundreds of cases each year involving students and professors who have had their rights of conscience trampled. Many of these cases center on the “fake issue” of speech codes. A recent study conducted by FIRE found that over 90% of the hundreds of schools they surveyed had some form of speech regulation on the books.

FIRE’s William Creeley comments on Professor Fish’s dismissal of the issue of speech codes:

First, while Fish correctly observes that “[e]very speech code that has been tested in the courts has been struck down,” he vastly understates the severity of the problem by dismissively concluding that therefore “[s]tudents don’t have to worry about speech codes.” That’s hogwash. While the fact that restrictive speech codes have been consistently struck down in court offers clear proof of their unconstitutionality, it certainly doesn’t mean that “[s]tudents don’t have to worry” about them. Contrary to Fish’s assertions, a student at a college with restrictive speech codes on the books is in danger of being punished for engaging in speech clearly protected by the First Amendment. According to FIRE’s first annual speech code report, Spotlight on Speech Codes 2006: The State of Free Speech on Our Nation’s Campuses, more than 68% of the 330 colleges and universities surveyed maintained policies that clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech. Regardless of Fish’s contention otherwise, that’s something to worry about, as FIRE’s extensive list of speech code cases proves. Besides, Fish gets it exactly backwards: the fact that speech codes are still so pervasive on our nation’s campuses despite consistently losing in court is cause for outrage, not apathy.

Further, students at schools which maintain speech codes must carefully tailor their speech to satisfy oftentimes inscrutable rules—e.g., students at The Ohio State University must be sure that their words aren’t unintentionally “threatening infliction of emotional harm,” whatever that means—or else risk discipline. The chilling effect that inevitably results causes students to self-censor and renders free speech on campus all the more elusive. This too is something to worry about.

Contrary to Fish’s casual faith in the courts, resorting to litigation in hopes of vindicating one’s right to free speech is almost never an attractive option for students. The sheer amount of time spent securing representation, preparing a case, filing charges and, if necessary, pursuing appeals is extremely daunting to students. Just ask the San Francisco State University College Republicans, who are suing SFSU after being put on trial for “harassment” for stepping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags at an anti-terrorism rally. In addition to spending countless hours preparing their defense against SFSU’s charges, the students have had to coordinate a federal lawsuit against the college they currently attend. That’s not an easy or enjoyable task by any standard, and FIRE knows firsthand that despite the strength of their case, too many students decide that a lawsuit is just not worth the time, stress, trouble and alienation.

Still, the good professor does acknowledge a problem in academia. We just disagree about the scope of it and the interpretation of the data that document it.

There are other points made by Professor Fish that I could quibble with, but I don’t want to spend too much time arguing with someone who says I have “lean boyish looks that could earn [me] a role in Oceans 14 alongside Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.”

Can someone please forward that suggestion to a few agents in L.A.? I’d do it myself, but the self-promotion might be a bit much...even by Hollywood standards.

14 October 2007 @ 9:18AM >> In Indoctrinate U, two students at different schools described being ordered by university officials to see psychologists after it was discovered that their opinions ran counter to the dominant political thinking on campus.

Now there’s yet another case:

Hamline University has suspended a student after he sent an e-mail suggesting that the Virginia Tech massacre might have been stopped if students had been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus. Student Troy Scheffler is now required to undergo a mandatory “mental health evaluation” before being allowed to return to school. Scheffler, who was suspended without due process just two days after sending the e-mail, has turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.

“Hamline’s punishment of Troy Scheffler is severe, unfair, and apparently unwarranted,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “Peacefully advocating for students’ ability to carry a concealed weapon as a response to the Virginia Tech shootings may be controversial, but it simply does not justify ordering a mandatory psychological evaluation.”

On April 17, 2007, Hamline’s Vice President of Student Affairs, David Stern, sent an e-mail to the campus community offering extra counseling for Hamline students in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings. Later that day, Scheffler responded directly to Stern, arguing that Virginia Tech’s ban on concealed weapons was part of the problem and advocating that Hamline eliminate its similar policies. Scheffler also wrote that the university’s diversity programs may have angered some in the student body, himself included.

On April 19, 2007, Hamline University President Linda Hanson e-mailed the campus community again to address the tragedy at Virginia Tech. Scheffler responded directly to Hanson and again criticized the university’s concealed weapons ban, academic standards, financial policies, and the university’s efforts to promote diversity.

Hanson replied to Scheffler on Friday, April 20, offering him a chance to meet with university personnel to discuss his views the following week. Yet on Monday, April 23, before Scheffler was even able to respond to Hanson’s invitation, he received a hand-delivered letter from Dean of Students Alan Sickbert notifying him that his e-mails to Stern and Hanson were “deemed to be threatening and thus an alleged violation of the Hamline University Judicial Code.”

Sickbert’s letter also informed Scheffler that he was being placed on immediate “interim suspension” that could not be lifted unless he agreed to a “mental health evaluation” by a licensed mental health professional.

This is chilling stuff — right out of the Soviet playbook. Don’t agree with us? You must be mentally ill.

Remember, the only cases we hear about are ones in which students have fought to defend their rights, and only after those cases have attracted media attention (which doesn’t always happen).

I’d be interested to know: how big is the iceberg under this tip?

11 October 2007 @ 3:32PM >> Michael Totten brought his video camera along on a foot patrol in Ramadi, the capital of the once-violent Anbar province in Iraq. He returns with 18 minutes showing what happens when it’s time for the barbed wire to come down.

9 October 2007 @ 7:03AM >> The Wall Street Journal ran a piece yesterday by Peter Berkowitz. In it, he mentions the premiere of Indoctrinate U at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. and refers to the film as “riveting.”

8 October 2007 >> BBC News reports of a company getting sued for copyright infringement because their employees are listening to the radio and—gasp!—the radio “could be heard by colleagues and customers.”

8 October 2007 @ 8:58AM >> For years, journalists at the France 2 television network have been refusing to release raw footage in a very important case. Mohammed al-Dura was apparently shot to death by Israeli soldiers in an incident used by Palestinians as a propaganda tool during the wave of terror attacks called the Second Intifada. But France 2 employed a Palestinian cameraman whose reliability was called into question after additional investigation revealed inconsistencies in the way the story was portrayed. Did he tape a staged murder intended to be used in a propaganda campaign? Or was al-Dura really killed by Israeli soldiers?

The answer may lie in France 2’s raw footage from that day, which the network has been fighting to keep secret all these years:

It has been seven years since France 2 Television broadcast the excruciating footage of Mohammed [al-Dura] and his father, Jamal, crouching in terror behind a barrel in Gaza’s Netzarim Junction while, according to the report, under relentless fire from [Israeli Defense Forces] soldiers. The 59-second clip, which ends with the boy apparently shot dead, was presented around the world as an unambiguous case of Israeli savagery.

The tape fanned the flames of what became known as the second intifada. The boy Mohammed was the iconic martyr, his name and face gracing streets, parks and postage stamps across the Arab world. His memory was invoked by Osama bin Laden in a jihadist screed against America, and in the ghastly video of the beheading of American Jewish journalist, Daniel Pearl.

Shortly following the al-Dura incident, however, a series of inquiries cast grave doubt on the accuracy of the original France 2 report. The official IDF investigation concluded that, based on the position of IDF forces vis-a-vis the Duras, it was highly improbable, if not impossible, that an Israeli bullet hit the boy. Research by The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic and Commentary magazine concurred. Then a German documentary revealed inconsistencies and probable manipulations in the account of France 2’s lone journalist on the scene that day, Palestinian cameraman Talal Abu Rahmeh.

And yet France 2 refused to release Abu Rahmeh’s full 27 minutes of raw footage. It did, however, agree to let three prominent French journalists view the footage. All three concluded that it comprised blatantly staged scenes of Palestinians being shot by Israeli forces, and that France 2’s Jerusalem Bureau Chief Charles Enderlin had lied to conceal that fact.

Regardless of what’s on that tape, it is distressing that a television station will not release it. Call me naive, but I thought the purpose of the media was to show what happened, not to hide it.

7 October 2007 @ 11:32AM >> The old saying goes, when life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Well, sometimes, life hands you a bushel of lemons, a block of ice, a bag of sugar, a nice big pitcher, and a whole bunch of cups.

This happened to me recently, when I became the target of a lawsuit that goes to the heart of what it means to have the right to share your opinions with your fellow citizens.

For the past four years, in putting together the film Indoctrinate U, I investigated administrative abuses against free speech and free thought rights on college campuses. To me, the topic is of vital importance to our nation’s health.

If a generation of students graduates into a society riven by a worsening political divide, what would the effect on that society be if those students were never afforded the opportunity to engage in real, down-and-dirty debate in the one venue where people can pursue a life of the mind? Eventually, you end up with a society that fears free speech, because its citizens have gotten used to being protected from the uncomfortable aspects of hearing things that they vehemently oppose. By coddling students and attempting to shield them from reality by stifling certain speech, academia is directly contributing to a diminishing respect for free speech in the larger society.

On campus, administrators and student mobs do the dirty work of shutting down speech that falls outside what academics consider to be the realm of acceptability. Around the world, we see instances where governments, police and military forces put people to death for having the wrong thinking. These sorts of transgressions happen relatively infrequently in Western society, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a clear and present threat to free speech.

In hyper-litigious Western nations, courts are often the weapon used to shut people up. But instead of this weapon being wielded by the state, courts are used by corporations, non-profits, accused terrorists financers and even newly-invented religions to tamp down criticism of various kinds.

Out of necessity, while putting together Indoctrinate U, I immersed myself in trying to understand the legal ramifications of speech. I knew that the film would anger a lot of folks at institutions that have lawyers on retainer. I knew we could be targeted legally whether justified or not.

But it turns out, it wasn’t Indoctrinate U that got me dragged into court. It was a dispute with a dry cleaner, of all things.

Today’s New York Post, which heard about the case after the plaintiffs filed to have the case moved to New York Supreme Court, contains a short piece on the story.

I was originally sued for $20,000 for the words, “Todd Layne Cleaners sucks and is overpriced.” Admittedly, my words were juvenile and, to some, offensive. But as a statement of opinion—an opinion formed after a long string of negative experiences with this cleaner—it is quite clearly constitutionally protected speech.

But Todd Ofsink, the owner of the cleaners, sued me for expressing my well-grounded displeasure with his business. Fortunately for Ofsink, his brother Darren is an partner in the law firm of Guzov Ofsink. So he is getting an endless supply of legal work from his brother’s firm, presumably for free. Ofsink knows that I would have to pay to defend my right to criticize his business, so he figured I’d be an easy target. His attorney brother told me that if I signed a non-disparagement agreement—in effect, giving up the right to criticize his business—he would drop the lawsuit.

They were hoping that I would do what most people would do: sign the agreement, end the case, put it out of my misery, and not waste tens of thousands of dollars defending a right that’s guaranteed to me as a U.S. citizen.

I decided to try to fight the case myself, without an attorney representing me in court. I didn’t want to spend tens of thousands of dollars to defend a right that I already had, but I also thought it would be an interesting test. After all, I knew I wasn’t the only person who’s been sued for expressing displeasure with a business.

What would other people do in such a case? Would they fight it themselves? Or would they buckle under and sign away their rights to a bully? And if they decided to fight, is the legal system today even accessible to the individual, or has the law in our society become so professionalized and abstracted from daily life that individuals have no way to defend themselves?

This brings me back to the lemonade. Although this nuisance lawsuit has brought me much personal agitation, it also perfectly illustrates the troubles faced by many others. I could be a guinea pig going through this aggravating process to demonstrate whether or not the average citizen can navigate the legal process to defend the rights enumerated in constitutional law.

Morgan Spurlock subjected himself to a month of McDonald’s for Super Size Me. If I was going to be subjected months and months of a convoluted legal process, maybe some good could come out of it by incorporating the story into a film.

One of the things that inspired me when making Indoctrinate U was all the students whose academic careers were in jeopardy—simply for having the wrong views—who fought back and won. Most people end up backing down when confronted with a system aligned against them. Those were the stories we never heard, because the people involved went away quietly and defeated. But by putting some of the people who stood up and prevailed on screen, I hoped to encourage others to fight for their right to think freely. Little did I know that those same students would inspire me to defend my own rights of free speech.

Perhaps my story could serve as a lesson for others. Unfortunately, I don’t know what that lesson is, because the story isn’t over. I’m still fighting it in court, and Todd Ofsink, his attorney brother Darren, and their courtroom litigant Damien Matthew Bosco, keep trying to ratchet up the pressure.

After filing the original lawsuit against me, Ofsink found out through my court filings that I was a documentary filmmaker. He also discovered that I’m not exactly politically in tune with most of my fellow New Yorkers.

Suddenly, Ofsink filed a new motion with additional accusations that were not included in the original complaint. He claims, for example, that I “simulated masturbation in front of female employees.” But Ofsink also made the mistake of claiming to have security cameras covering the store, which allows me to make this challenge: put the security tape online. What the world will see is an angry former customer making a dismissive hand gesture after Todd Ofsink makes his initial threat to sue me.

Once he leaned about my filmmaking career, Ofsink also jacked up the amount of money he’s trying to take from me: now it’s $300,000!

I hate to tell them, but in all these years of service, I have still not received my first check from the Vast Conspiracy. Being a documentary filmmaker is not lucrative unless you can get Hollywood to distribute your films. And as I can tell you, that’s not easy for someone of my pursuasion. So if jacking up the cost of his attempt to use the legal system to extract more money from me, he won’t be too happy to hear about the state of my finances.

But I’m not convinced that their motivation is money. It seems clear to me that their maneuverings are calculated to pressure me into signing the non-disparagement agreement that they have now offered me twice. They are just trying to use the legal system to shut down legitimate criticism of their business.

Sorry, gentlemen, it’s not going to happen. I will not sign away my rights. If you insist on fighting this ludicrous case, then I will keep fighting it until I win. Your lawyers will lose to a guy representing himself with no legal degree, but who has the law on his side. In this country, I am still allowed to criticize businesses that provide lousy and rude service. I am still allowed to tell my neighbors all about it. So, you can either drop the case and save yourselves further embarrassment, or you can continue trying to put the screws to me and in the process give me a great story to tell the world.

Where will this end up? Who knows! All I know is that I wish it weren’t happening. But because it is, then maybe some other folks might benefit from watching my experience—whatever my experience ends up being.

5 October 2007 @ 9:12AM >> If an extremist group such as the Ku Klux Klan sponsored rallies in Washington D.C. that drew hundreds of thousands of people, I suspect the media would report who was behind the protests.

But several years ago, when anti-war protesters started rallying under the banners of communist relics, the media kept silent. The fact that the media was ignoring the radical element of the groups organizing the anti-war rallies was the prime reason that I was motivated to shoot the first few videos for this site.

Now that the protest movement has fizzled, a little light is finally being shed on the shady groups that sponsor the rallies. Reuters reports:

Saturday’s protest, sponsored by the Troops Out Now Coalition, came two weeks after an antiwar event sponsored by the ANSWER Coalition, which drew roughly 10,000 people. ANSWER also sponsored a rally in March.

The groups’ agendas are similar, opposing what they call “imperialist” U.S. policy not only in Iraq but toward countries like Cuba and Iran — which has alienated some supporters.

[...]

Both groups’ leaders were associated with the Workers World Party, which advocates a shift toward a Soviet-style planned economy. But a 2004 dispute prompted some members to form the splinter Party for Socialism and Liberation.

I wouldn’t exactly call this extensive reporting—only two sentences alluding to the extremism of the organizers—but these few words are still the most I’ve seen the establishment press write about the ideological underpinnings of the protest movement. And this is years after the fact, and only after the groups proved ineffective. Why are we just hearing about this now? Why hasn’t this been more extensively reported? Or even reported at all?

My suspicion is that reporters feared mentioning this sooner because it would have marginalized the protest movement. The protest leaders would be seen for the extremists that they are.

Perhaps I should be thankful for the media not doing its job. If this information had been reported several years ago when the story was still relevant, I might not have ended up with a career as a filmmaker.

2 October 2007 @ 3:14PM >> Michael Totten, currently in Iraq, has a new post about his trip with a relief convoy in Anbar Province. As always, his pieces are worth a read, and are heavily illustrated with pictures.

1 October 2007 >> National Review’s Stanley Kurtz attended the Indoctrinate U premiere:

Last Friday I attended the world premiere of Evan Coyne Maloney’s film, Indoctrinate U, before a packed house of 500 at the Kennedy Center. There were many students, and a number of professors as well. I’d seen the film a couple of times at press screenings, but was totally unprepared for the raucous audience reception.

The press screenings were quiet, with the main response being horror at the nightmarish incidents of political correctness chronicled by Maloney. This time, however, the audience roared with laughter through the first two-thirds of the film-to the point where lines were drowned out by the audience roar. The laughter abated toward the end, from sheer exhaustion. The latter part of the film brought a major applause line-when the topic turned to bans on military recruitment and the Supreme Court Solomon Amendment case. One line about half-way through the film-about what really motivates professors who indoctrinate their students-brought the house down.

Yes, this movie tells a series of heart-breaking tales. But the political correctness on display is ludicrous and laughable-and I can assure you that laugh is exactly what this audience did. So add that point to “Reeducation Camp.” To sign up for a local screening of the film, to follow its film-festival tour, or to order a DVD when it becomes available (soon), head over to the Indoctrinate U website.

27 September 2007 @ 7:13AM >> When CBS dumped Dan Rather and replaced him with Katie Couric, the network changed the gender, the generation, and as Kenneth will tell you, even the frequency of its top newsreader.

The one thing that remains constant at CBS is the ideology of the anchor:

Speaking at the National Press Club Tuesday evening, CBS “Evening News” anchor Katie Couric pulled back the curtain on her personal views of both the war in Iraq and former “Evening News” anchor Dan Rather.

[...]

The former “Today” show anchor traced her discomfort with the administration’s march to war back to the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ’shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.”

I don’t think disagreeing with the administration makes one unpatriotic, although I do have to wonder about someone who becomes uncomfortable when she sees people displaying American flags or referring to fellow Americans as “we.”

27 September 2007 >> I am happy to report that the public premiere of Indoctrinate U has sold out. Thanks to everyone who supported this project by sending well-wishes, by telling friends, and by writing about it.

And thanks especially to everyone who bought tickets—I’ll see you Friday night at the Kennedy Center!

26 September 2007 @ 9:00AM >> This Washington Monthly column reminded me of something...

Recently, The New York Times announced that they were ending TimesSelect, the wall that the paper built around their opinion columnists to prevent non-subscribers from reading them online.

When TimesSelect was announced, some folks reacted as if Ambien had just been taken off the market. Without the interchangeable columns of Bob Herbert, how were people supposed to ease their way into dreamland?

To solve such a weighty problem, I wrote a piece of software called Automatic Bob, the bot that generates Bob Herbert columns in much the same way that the author himself does.

I did not have time to build sentience into Automatic Bob, but I’m sure if he had feelings, he’d sense the bittersweet nature of this moment. On the one hand, Automatic Bob’s mentor—the real Bob—is back. But on the other hand, will Human Bob’s return lead to a decommissioning of AutoBob?

Not to worry!

You see, even though Human Bob has returned to the public web, he is still human and therefore only capable of generating a small number of columns each month. AutoBob has no such limitation.

So, even though the TimesSelect wall is down and there is nothing standing between you and the latest Bob Herbert column except a free registration, Automatic Bob will remain ready to serve you for all those times when your insomnia requires something stronger than the mere trickle of columns that a Human Bob can produce.

25 September 2007 @ 9:28AM >> After days of denials, The New York Times has finally admitted that a controversial MoveOn.org ad referring to General Petreus as “General Betray Us” was not handled according to the paper’s usual advertising guidelines. Public Editor Clark Hoyt writes:

For nearly two weeks, The New York Times has been defending a political advertisement that critics say was an unfair shot at the American commander in Iraq.

But I think the ad violated The Times’s own written standards, and the paper now says that the advertiser got a price break it was not entitled to.

On Monday, Sept. 10, the day that Gen. David H. Petraeus came before Congress to warn against a rapid withdrawal of troops, The Times carried a full-page ad attacking his truthfulness.

Under the provocative headline “General Petraeus or General Betray Us?” the ad, purchased by the liberal activist group MoveOn.org, charged that the highly decorated Petraeus was “constantly at war with the facts” in giving upbeat assessments of progress and refusing to acknowledge that Iraq is “mired in an unwinnable religious civil war.”

“Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us,” MoveOn.org declared.

The ad infuriated conservatives, dismayed many Democrats and ignited charges that the liberal Times aided its friends at MoveOn.org with a steep discount in the price paid to publish its message, which might amount to an illegal contribution to a political action committee. In more than 4,000 e-mail messages, people around the country raged at The Times with words like “despicable,” “disgrace” and “treason.”

[...]

Did MoveOn.org get favored treatment from The Times? And was the ad outside the bounds of acceptable political discourse?

The answer to the first question is that MoveOn.org paid what is known in the newspaper industry as a standby rate of $64,575 that it should not have received under Times policies. The group should have paid $142,083. The Times had maintained for a week that the standby rate was appropriate, but a company spokeswoman told me late Thursday afternoon that an advertising sales representative made a mistake.

The answer to the second question is that the ad appears to fly in the face of an internal advertising acceptability manual that says, “We do not accept opinion advertisements that are attacks of a personal nature.” Steph Jespersen, the executive who approved the ad, said that, while it was “rough,” he regarded it as a comment on a public official’s management of his office and therefore acceptable speech for The Times to print.

By the end of last week the ad appeared to have backfired on both MoveOn.org and fellow opponents of the war in Iraq — and on The Times. It gave the Bush administration and its allies an opportunity to change the subject from questions about an unpopular war to defense of a respected general with nine rows of ribbons on his chest, including a Bronze Star with a V for valor. And it gave fresh ammunition to a cottage industry that loves to bash The Times as a bastion of the “liberal media.”

For its part, MoveOn has decided to pay the Times an additional $77,083 for the ad, to make up the difference between what they paid and what they should have paid. This move shields the Times against accusations that it made an in-kind contribution to MoveOn, something that could be legally perilous for the paper.

But it strikes me that MoveOn giving more money to the Times after the paper gets caught doesn’t change the equation much. One high-profile wing of the Surrender Now movement gives some cash to another high-profile wing of the Surrender Now movement. Big deal.

23 September 2007 @ 8:59AM >> Some folks at Reuters need to go back to school to learn what a metaphor is.

In a press conference, President Bush used a metaphor to explain why civilian leaders in the style of Nelson Mandela have not yet emerged from Iraqi society:

Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.

Here’s how Reuters characterized that statement:

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader’s death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

[...]

“I heard somebody say, Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas,” Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday.

James Taranto of The Wall Street Journal website OpinionJournal.com theorizes on how such an obvious mischaracterization of President Bush’s statement could make it past the layers of editors that supposedly ensure quality control at Reuters:

Stupidity. The reporter was so bone-headedly literal-minded that he simply did not understand the rhetorical device Bush was employing.

Laziness. The reporter wasn’t actually at the press conference and didn’t bother to check the context of the quote.

Dishonesty. The reporter knew full well that Bush was speaking metaphorically and deliberately twisted his meaning in order to fit the stereotype that Bush “has a reputation for verbal faux pas.”

None of these possibilities are terribly flattering for Reuters. One might even venture to say that this piece is itself “an embarrassing gaffe”.

As a full-time employee of Reuters (I’m not on the editorial side; I write software), all I know is that this is the kind of underhanded reporting that makes me embarrassed to tell people where I work.

Update: By making the statement above, I may have violated corporate policy. And in retrospect, whatever opinion I may have of this editorial coverage, I am most decidedly not embarrassed to work at Reuters. The people with whom I work directly are top-notch, and I’m proud of the innovative work we’re doing. I just think that newsrooms can benefit from more intellectual diversity; it would help prevent errors like this from seeping into news coverage, and it would make news consumers less likely to perceive bias.

I decided to strike rather than delete the statement above because owning up to the transgression feels more honest than trying to send it down the memory hole.

19 September 2007 >> Recently, I was invited by the Pope Center to write a piece for their Clarion Call describing some of the resistance I faced from college administrators while putting together Indoctrinate U.

In the article, I talk a bit about my run-in with the head of security at my alma mater, Bucknell University. It was one of some half-dozen times police and security officers were called on me while making the film.

The public premiere of Indoctrinate U is next Friday evening (September 28th) at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. For the time being, tickets are still available. And if you want to come to the after party at the infamous Watergate Hotel, you can get a package that includes tickets for the premiere and after-party admission.

18 September 2007 @ 7:08AM >> The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) just introduced a novel way to publicize the restrictions on free speech and free thought that many schools impose on students.

You may already be familiar with the concept of speech codes, but you may not know about FIRE’s system for classifying the severity of those speech codes. Schools receive a “red light” rating if they have regulations that “substantially restrict” speech. Yellow light schools have regulations on the books that could be abused by administrators to restrict speech. And schools that do not restrict speech at all get “green light” ratings.

It’s a sad commentary on the state of affairs in academia that fewer than 10% of all schools surveyed by FIRE have green light ratings. This means that over 90% of those schools have some administrative mechanism for restricting speech.

Legally, as government-run entities, public universities must adhere to the First Amendment. Despite this, some of them have speech codes that haven’t yet been challenged in court, and therefore haven’t been struck down. Private universities may legally restrict speech, but very rarely do they publicly acknowledge that they are doing so. Schools regularly entice prospective students with glossy-brochure promises of a vigorous intellectual environment that welcomes impassioned debate. But after coming to campus, these students—the customers of the university—soon discover that there are certain directions their minds are not allowed to go.

In any other industry, such behavior would constitute false advertising and business fraud. But for some reason, customers of educational institutions never seem to question it.

Thankfully, FIRE is doing for consumers of education what Consumer Reports did for consumers of just about everything else.

In the interests of helping prospective students understand the potential for a Kafkaesque entanglement with university administrators, FIRE has created the Speech Code Widget.

Here’s the one for my alma mater, Bucknell University.

Bucknell gets a red light. Boooo!

You can add Speech Code Widgets to your site using some very simple HTML code. Here’s the code I used to add the Bucknell widget shown above:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://thefire.org/codes/widget.php?id=2484"></script>

You can go to FIRE’s Spotlight website to lookup any schools you’re affiliated with. There, you’ll find the HTML code for each school’s widget. If you find any red or yellow lights among the schools that are important to you, maybe you can help shame them into respecting free thought.

It’s worth a shot...