7 November 2011 >>
Recently, I brought a camera and a few multiple-choice questions to Zuccotti Park, where I conducted a quiz game with some of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. As a reward for getting the answers right, contestants were able to choose among several options for prizes. Unfortunately, one gentleman in the audience apparently did not appreciate the prize selections made by his fellow protesters, so he disrupted the game, bear-hugged me, grabbed the question cards out of my hand and attempted to run off with them before I stopped him.
You can watch the video embedded below, or visit YouTube:
Click through to the video page to see footnotes for the questions in the quiz.
Video >>
10 October 2011 @ 4:57PM >>InsideAcademia.tv’s Andy Nash recently interviewed me via Skype, and the interview is now available online:
We discuss the history of campus political correctness, what inspired me to make the film Indoctrinate U, and the effects of the continued politicization of academia.
5 December 2009 @ 3:15PM >>
My documentary film Indoctrinate U—which analyzes the attacks on free speech and free thought on politically correct college campuses—will be shown on the Documentary Channel two more times in the coming weeks.
The Documentary Channel is available on satellite and many cable systems nationwide. Check your provider for channel information.
If your provider doesn’t carry the Documentary Channel, several PBS stations simulcast the Documentary Channel during certain time slots, so you may want to check those listings as well.
10 September 2009 @ 7:19PM >>
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has placed Bucknell University on their Red Alert list, which names the schools that are the “worst offenders against liberty”:
Institutions on the Red Alert list are unrepentant offenders against basic rights that are guaranteed either by the U.S. Constitution or the schools themselves, and they have policies and/or practices that demonstrate a serious and ongoing threat to current and future students. They are the “worst of the worst” when it comes to protecting liberty on campus.
FIRE explains the latest in a years-long campaign by Bucknell’s administrators to shut down the speech of students whose opinions they don’t share:
The controversy at Bucknell began in March, when [Bucknell University Conservatives Club] members attempted to distribute fakedollar bills in protest of the federal stimulus, featuring an image of President Obama. BUCC members were told by a campus administrator that they were “busted,” and that their activities were a violation of Bucknell’s Sales and Solicitation policy. Even after pointing out that the “stimulus dollars” distribution was an obvious act of political protest and that the students were not engaged in solicitation, Bucknell still considered the act to fall under this policy, seeing it as the equivalent of “handing out Bibles” (which also would not be solicitation under the policy). Such a misinterpretation of this policy effectively subjects any distribution of materials between students to the prior review and approval of the administration, significantly undermining Bucknell’s commitment to free expression.
The next month, Bucknell shut down BUCC’s previously approved “affirmative action bake sale,” designed to protest affirmative action by charging different prices based on ethnicity. The sales are a well-known method of attracting attention to the issue, and are not intended to raise revenue. Associate Dean of Students Gerald Commerford cited a discrepancy between the prices being charged and the prices BUCC listed on its event application form (BUCC was charging lower-than-expected prices), telling BUCC “we have the opportunity to shut you down.”
When BUCC applied to hold a second bake sale, Commerford rejected the application outright, this time saying that the bake sale violated Bucknell’s policies against discrimination. Despite the fact that BUCC was engaging in a well-known form of political protest—which FIRE has defended numerous times at public and private universities—Commerford flatly rejected the possibility of the bake sale even if BUCC made all pricing options optional, saying “No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, because it’s a discriminatory [pricing] policy.” Making matters worse, Commerford suggested that only under certain circumstances would any discussion of affirmative action be welcome, telling them, “It’s not a political issue, ok; it needs to be debated in its proper forum, ok, and not on the public property of the campus.”
FIRE wrote to Bucknell President Brian C. Mitchell, pointing out the numerous violations Bucknell had committed of its own policies in suppressing BUCC’s activities, and of its legal and moral obligation to protect its students’ free speech rights. After receiving a response from Bucknell General Counsel Wayne Bromfield upholding the rationale for Bucknell’s deplorable treatment of BUCC and refusing to accept fault, FIRE wrote to President Mitchell once more. After receiving another response from Bromfield in which he refused to address FIRE’s concerns further, Bucknell was added to FIRE’s Red Alert list. President Mitchell has yet to offer any public comment on Bucknell’s free speech crisis, which has been chronicled in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications.
Bucknell’s contemptuous treatment of BUCC should send a message to all current and prospective Bucknell students that their free speech rights are at the whim of an administration all too willing to bend its own policies and strong-arm its students to stifle speech it does not want heard on campus. By placing Bucknell on its Red Alert list, FIRE hopes to amplify that message, and to finally compel Bucknell to end its embarrassing fight against free speech.
4 September 2009 @ 8:56AM >>
You may have heard about the uproar over President Obama’s desire to address the nation’s schoolchildren. Although the White House has not yet released the text of the speech, many people wondered whether the speech would be pushing Obama’s policy goals.
The idea that the speech would be political in nature is not something that people fantasized; it was related to the fact that the Department of Education’s lesson plan asked students to “help the president” and write about “what the president wants us to do.”
The Obama administration has since removed such language from the lesson plan, and has issued a rather lame excuse. The Associated Press reports:
Critics are particularly upset about lesson plans the administration created to accompany the speech. The lesson plans, available online, originally recommended having students “write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president.”
The White House revised the plans Wednesday to say students could “write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals.”
“That was inartfully worded, and we corrected it,” [White House deputy policy director Heather] Higginbottom said.
Of course, the only way the “inartfully worded” excuse works is if the new wording is a clearer way of saying what the original statement intended to convey.
In what universe is “what they can do to help the president” even remotely related to “how they can achieve their short-term and long-term education goals”?
One is not a more “artful wording” of the other. The administration’s new phrasing represents a completely different statement altogether.
If the president had intended to deliver a speech asking for students’ help achieving his political goals, I suspect this controversy will dissuade him from doing that.
The Documentary Channel will be showing Indoctrinate U several more times over the coming weeks. Here’s the schedule (all times shown are Eastern U.S.):
Tuesday, September 1st at 5:00 PM
Tuesday, September 15th at 2:30 PM
Monday, September 28th at 11:30 PM
Wednesday, September 30th at 3:30 AM
Friday, October 2nd at 8:00 PM and again at 11:00 PM
The Documentary Channel is available on satellite and many cable systems nationwide. Check your provider for channel information.
If your provider doesn’t carry the Documentary Channel, several PBS stations simulcast the Documentary Channel during certain time slots, so you may want to check those listings as well.
13 August 2009 @ 8:48AM >>
During the last few centuries, a number of Muslims have followed the belief that Islam bans images of their prophet Mohammed. This was one of the excuses for the worldwide orgy of riots and killings that followed the publication of the infamous Mohammed cartoons.
[W]hen the 12 caricatures were first published by a Danish newspaper a few years ago and reprinted by other European publications, Muslims all over the world angrily protested, calling the images—which included one in which Muhammad wore a turban in the shape of a bomb—blasphemous. In the Middle East and Africa some rioted, burning and vandalizing embassies; others demanded a boycott of Danish goods; a few nations recalled their ambassadors from Denmark. In the end at least 200 people were killed.
As the Times report notes, the publishing arm of Yale University recently released a book on the topic, “The Cartoons That Shook the World.”
Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Dore of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dali.
Yale University takes political correctness to its absurd conclusion, one in which a book claiming to discuss “the cartoons that shook the world” will not actually include the cartoons that shook the world. This is from an alleged learning institution dedicated free thought and intellectual inquiry.
But it’s even more chilling than that: Yale University is now in the business of actively enforcing Sharia law on behalf of radical jihadists.
Since its inception in 2001, the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) has been repeatedly singled out for political censorship by school administrators. The latest media coverage focuses on two more instances of the university silencing the political speech of the BUCC’s student members.
(Full disclosure: Several years ago, as an invited guest of the BUCC, a Bucknell administrator threatened to have me arrested during a screening of Brainwashing 101, a precursor to my documentary Indoctrinate U. The school objected to my videotaping the event, even though I was granted permission by the event’s organizers, who routinely taped their own events. The school was aware that my screening might be disrupted by protesters; apparently, Bucknell didn’t want me getting that on tape.)
In one incident, the BUCC held an “affirmative action bake sale,” which was intended to both illustrate and criticize racial preferences. University administrator Gerald Commerford shut down the bake sale, saying it was discriminatory.
But if an affirmative action bake sale is discriminatory, it’s only because affirmative action itself is discriminatory. And given that the university implements affirmative action, it’s really quite Orwellian to claim that an affirmative action bake sale is any more discriminatory than what the school itself is doing.
The BUCC also protested President Obama’s stimulus plan by handing out “Obama bucks,” mock Monopoly money with the president’s face on it. Administrator Judith L. Mickanis struck a law-enforcement tone with the students, telling them, “you’re busted,” and grabbing one female student by the arm while demanding that the group stop their protest. The administrator claimed that the students were not allowed to hand out materials without prior approval, a standard that never seems to have been applied to any other student group.
The university attempted to justify this, saying that by giving out Obama bucks, the students were committing a transgression akin to “handing out Bibles.” (Perhaps it is obvious to Bucknell administrators—but not to me—why handing out Bibles poses such a grave threat that it would need to be stopped by the university.)
As the school’s excuses continued to evolve, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE)—the free speech advocacy group that has been defending the students—concluded that Bucknell’s general counsel Wayne A. Bromfield is now resorting to flat-out lies to cover up the school’s speech suppression. Unfortunately for Bucknell, their tactics have been documented on video and audio, so FIRE’s claims are verifiable.
President Mitchell will keep his position for one more year, so he isn’t exactly being shoved out the door. Still, it is interesting timing that Mitchell announced his resignation the day after the story began to get traction in the national media. Bucknell’s public relations office has to know that announcing the resignation the day after all this bad press would cause at least some people to conclude that the two events were related. So was the timing intentional, intended to mollify Bucknell’s critics by making them think that swift action had been taken?
Considering the last few days have probably brought him plenty of Maalox moments, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mitchell felt a wave of relief as the send button was clicked on his resignation letter. Now he’ll be free to continue ignoring the controversy and running out the clock on his time at Bucknell.
With a lame duck president who broke his pledge to run a university that respects free speech, Bucknell’s administrators will likely feel free to continue their harassment of students who dare disobey the dogma of political correctness.
But today’s students are armed with video cameras and the Internet, so alumni can keep a close watch on Bucknell’s actions from afar. The school may not care what students think, but if there’s one thing you can count on, Bucknell wants us alumni to keep opening up our wallets.
After all, the school knows that a conservative’s money is just as green as anyone else’s.
Student rights are under assault at Bucknell University, where a conservative student group’s protests against affirmative action policies and President Obama’s stimulus plan have repeatedly been shut down or forbidden by administrators using flimsy or patently false excuses. After the Bucknell University Conservatives Club (BUCC) had three events censored in two months, the students turned to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) for help.
“Bucknell promises free speech, but it delivers selective censorship,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff. “Bucknell administrators have gone out of their way to abuse and even invent policies in attempts to silence these students, all the while professing to respect free speech.”
Bucknell’s recent forays into censorship began on March 17, 2009, when BUCC members stood at Bucknell’s student center and passed out fake dollar bills with President Obama’s face on the front and the sentence “Obama’s stimulus plan makes your money as worthless as monopoly money” on the back. One hour into this symbolic protest, Bucknell administrator Judith L. Mickanis approached the students and told them that they were “busted,” that they were “soliciting” without prior approval, and that their activity was equivalent to handing out Bibles.
The students protested, but despite the fact that Bucknell’s solicitation policy explicitly covers only sales and fundraising materials, Mickanis insisted via e-mail that prior permission was needed to pass out any materials—”anything from Bibles to other matter.”
“Distributing protest literature is an American free-speech tradition that dates to before the founding of the United States,” said Adam Kissel, Director of FIRE’s Individual Rights Defense Program. “And why is Bucknell so afraid of students handing out ‘Bibles [or] other matter’ that might provide challenging perspectives? Colleges are supposed to be marketplaces of ideas, but Bucknell is betraying this ideal.”
Bucknell’s misguided crusade against free expression continued on April 7, when administrators shut down BUCC’s “affirmative action bake sale” protest. Affirmative action bake sales are a widely used form of satirical protest against affirmative action policies that treat people of different races differently. Organizers typically display suggested pricing in which African-American and Hispanic students are asked to pay lower prices than Asian and white students for the same items. The protests are thus intended to satirize and spark debate about affirmative action policies, not to raise revenue.
A video recording shows that an hour into BUCC’s protest, Associate Dean of Students Gerald W. Commerford arrived and informed the students that he had the “opportunity” to shut down the sale because the prices they were charging were different (lower) than what they had listed on their event application. The students offered to change the prices on the spot, but Commerford refused and insisted that they close the event immediately and file another application for a later date.
Accordingly, BUCC members filed an application to hold the same event two weeks later, but were then told that they would have to obtain the permission of the Dean of Students to hold a “controversial” event. No such permission is required by Bucknell policy. When the students nevertheless attempted to get this special permission, Commerford rejected the request. In a recorded conversation, Commerford said that such a bake sale would violate Bucknell’s nondiscrimination policy, even with satirical recommended (not actual) pricing, and that the only event he would approve on the topic would be a debate in a different forum altogether. This novel restriction also does not exist among Bucknell’s official policies.
What’s odd about Bucknell’s non-discrimination claim is that, by definition, affirmative action discriminates based on race. Bucknell clearly believes it is acceptable to discriminate sometimes, because they do it when deciding who to admit to the school.
So by Bucknell’s Orwellian logic, discrimination is not allowed unless they’re the ones doing it. Discrimination with real-world consequences (where you go to college, for example, or whether you get that job), that’s acceptable to Bucknell, but the tongue-in-cheek “discrimination” of an affirmative action bake sale (which is meant to mock real-world discrimination, not increase it)... well, we simply can’t have that!
The school’s latest assault on free speech prompted me to write an e-mail to Bucknell’s president. I copied the alumni office, the office of the general counsel, the affirmative action office, and Dean Gerald Commerford, who shut down the bake sale:
As a Bucknell alumnus deeply concerned about free speech issues at my alma mater, I was disturbed by this report issued earlier today by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education:
When you began your term, President Mitchell, you made some supportive statements on free speech and indicated that your administration would be more respectful of different views than previous Bucknell administrations.
Your seeming commitment to free speech put me and a number of other alumni at ease. That’s why I was disappointed to hear that the school may be backsliding on your promises.
Of course, so far, I have only heard the facts as laid out by FIRE. Do you have any comments on the FIRE report that would shed a little more light on this? I know I’m not the only alumnus who will want some answers.
We’ll be closely watching how the university responds to this. I’m hopeful that the university will reaffirm your previously-stated commitments to free speech and free thought.
Best regards,
Evan Coyne Maloney
Class of 1994
Although I haven’t heard back from Bucknell directly, several hours after my e-mail, one of the recipients—Bucknell’s general counsel Wayne A. Bromfield—issued a statement [PDF] changing the university’s original story. (FIRE has already poked holes in Bucknell’s latest story.)
Unfortunately, it is clear from Bromfield’s statement that Bucknell still has no plans to reverse their effective ban on free speech.
Full Disclosure: Before releasing Indoctrinate U, I visited Bucknell to screen my earlier film, Brainwashing 101. The group that invited me was same BUCC from the story above. With the group’s permission, I was taping the screening of Brainwashing 101 after I was tipped off that the event would be disrupted (fortunately, it wasn’t).
But because the school didn’t want any bad publicity if my screening was disrupted, instead of trying to prevent the threatened disruption, the head of security was sent to threaten me with arrest—in front of the entire audience, no less—if I continued filming the screening of my own film. (I continued filming anyway, and Bucknell’s threat turned out to be empty.)
1 June 2009 @ 7:41AM >>
In the mid-1970s, Sonia Sotomayor—President Obama’s nominee for a seat on the Supreme Court—was a student at Princeton. Back then, when Sotomayor led a group called Acción Puertoricaño, she was an “outspoken activist” well-versed in the language of leftism and identity group grievance politics.
In a letter to the Daily Princetonian published 10 May 1974, she describes a complaint from “the Puerto Rican and Chicano students of Princeton”:
The facts of the complaint are these: 1) There is not one Puerto Rican or Chicano administrator or faculty member in the university; 2) There are two million Puerto Ricans in the United States and two and a half million more on the island itself. Yet there were only 66 Puerto Rican applicants this year, and only 31 Puerto Rican students on campus. While there are 12 million Chicanos in the United States, there were only 111 Chicano applicants and 27 students on campus this year; 3) Not one permanent course in this university now deals in any notable detail with the Puerto Rican or Chicano cultures.
Although she herself was a Puerto Rican student receiving a free ride on a full scholarship, Sotomayor concluded that a “lack of commitment on the part of the university to the Puerto Rican or Chicano heritage seems self-evident” and that it “reflect[s] the total absence of regard, concern and respect for an entire people and their culture.”
Hyperbole comes naturally to the college-aged, so I’m willing to believe that the Sotomayor of the Woodstock era is not the woman who sits on the court today because, as she might say, I would hope that an older Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a young Puerto Rican girl who hasn’t lived that life.
Legal blogger Tom Goldstein conducted a survey of her record on the court of appeals, where he says “Sotomayor has decided 96 race-related cases.” Sotomayor has been on the United States Court of Appeals since 1998, where she serves on panels of (typically) 3 judges that hear each case. Goldstein’s survey found:
Of the 96 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and agreed with the claim of discrimination 10 times; the remaining 8 involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 cases favoring claims of discrimination, 9 were unanimous.
If that’s true and is reflective of her record being better than her rhetoric, then that’s a bit of a relief. And although there is at least one highly-controversial racial discrimination decision in the record Goldstein cites, the fact is, Republicans don’t have the political juice to oppose her anyway. So, barring Obama withdrawing her for some reason or a new fact emerging that moves enough Democrats to vote against her, Sotomayor will be confirmed.
Nevertheless, her seeming inevitability doesn’t mean that Sotomayor should get a pass for her rhetoric or her fierce support of affirmative action and racial preferences in hiring. Her philosophy on racial preferences and “social justice” should be questioned thoroughly during her Senate confirmation hearings.
Since Sotomayor endorses the idea that a judge’s ethnic background affects judicial decision-making, shouldn’t we know how her heritage has influenced her thinking in cases she’s judged? Could she point to specific cases where “being a Latina woman” lead her to a “better” decision than a “white male” would have made?
I don’t expect the Democratic majority to ask these questions, so Republicans should. That is the minimal duty of an opposition party. We’ll see if they have the stomach to do it.
19 April 2009 @ 2:11PM >>
In the Wall Street Journal, David Horowitz makes a telling observation about the state of free speech on campus. Horowitz discusses a recent speech he delivered at the University of Texas, and describes being questioned afterwards by a Professor Dana Cloud:
She presented herself as a devoted teacher and mother who was obviously harmless. Then she accused me of being a McCarthyite menace. Disregarding the facts I had laid out in my talk — that I have publicly defended the right of University of Colorado’s radical professor Ward Churchill to hold reprehensible views and not be fired for them, and that I supported the leftist dean of the law school at UC Irvine when his appointment was withdrawn for political reasons — she accused me of whipping up a “witch-hunting hysteria” that made her and her faculty comrades feel threatened.
When Ms. Cloud finished, I pointed out that organizing mobs to scream epithets at invited speakers fit the category of “McCarthyite” a lot more snugly than my support for a pluralism of views in university classrooms. I gestured toward the armed officers in the room — the university had assigned six or seven to keep the peace — and introduced my own bodyguard, who regularly accompanies other conservative speakers when they visit universities. In the past, I felt uncomfortable about taking protection to a college campus until a series of physical attacks at universities persuaded me that such precautions were necessary. (When I spoke at the University of Texas two years ago, Ms. Cloud and her disciples had to be removed by the police in order for the talk to proceed.)
I don’t know of a single leftist speaker among the thousands who visit campuses every term who has been obstructed or attacked by conservative students, who are too decent and too tolerant to do that. The entire evening in Texas reminded me of the late Orianna Fallaci’s observation that what we are facing in the post-9/11 world is not a “clash of civilizations,” but a clash of civilization versus barbarism.
27 March 2009 @ 8:55AM >>
Jay Bergman, a professor who appears in Indoctrinate U, had a piece recently in the Hartford Courant discussing an incident at his school:
In October 2008, students in a class in the department of communication at Central [Connecticut State University] were asked to select a topic covered by the mainstream media and discuss it in class. Students were free to express their opinions on the topic they selected. At least that is what they thought they were allowed to do.
One student, John Wahlberg, who believes in the right to bear arms under the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, chose the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech. In his presentation, he expressed the opinion - for which John R. Lott Jr. and other opponents of gun control measures have provided ample empirical corroboration - that had students and faculty at Virginia Tech been allowed to carry concealed weapons on the campus, the shooter might have been shot before he could kill anyone. In fact, had the shooter been cognizant that his intended targets might be armed and able to defend themselves, he might have been deterred from attempting to carry out his plan in the first place. At the very least, the number of victims might have been fewer.
How did the adjunct professor who taught the course respond to Wahlberg’s presentation? Because she believed students were scared and made uncomfortable by Wahlberg’s opinion - for merely expressing it he somehow became a threat to their physical safety and that of the other 12,000 Central students - she called the campus police, who that evening ordered Wahlberg to report to them for the purpose of explaining why he should not be considered a potential assassin.
Unfortunately, Central Connecticut State University isn’t the first school to take action against someone who uses their First Amendment right to advocate for Second Amendment rights.
26 March 2009 @ 9:03AM >>
Thanks to everyone who came to the Indoctrinate U screening at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday evening! It turned out to be quite a success, and undoubtedly, the festival organizers noticed the crowded theater and enthusiastic audience.
It was nice to meet a number of folks I knew only online, and thanks to the wonders of Facebook (yes, you can find me there), there was at least one member of the audience who I haven’t seen since 6th grade at P.S. 158.
Thanks also to everyone who bought me Black-and-Tans at the Telephone Bar afterwards, although it required me to ingest a couple extra doses of coffee the next day at work.
I was pretty surprised to get selected for this film festival. We haven’t had much luck on the festival circuit; the film industry isn’t much different from academia as far as groupthink goes. But because we had such a great showing, I’m sure that people in the business took note. So thanks again for the support!
P.S. Sorry for the late start on the film—I wasn’t aware that a half-hour short film was going to be shown before Indoctrinate U.
22 March 2009 @ 7:49PM >>
Just a reminder that Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th starting at 6PM. The screening will be held at the historic Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue in Manhattan.
The festival’s reviewers called Indoctrinate U, “a wry, hard hitting documentary about the effect of the campus culture wars on individual rights, diversity of opinion, and the life of the mind in American higher education. Very professionally made. Great subject matter, we found it very interesting.”
Find out why the film is getting such high praise:
“IT’S EXTRAORDINARY! ... I CAN’T RECOMMEND IT HIGHLY ENOUGH.”
—Lou Dobbs, CNN
“RIVETING”
—Peter Berkowitz, Wall Street Journal
“ALARMING AND FUNNY”
—Kyle Smith, New York Post
“A FUN AND POWERFUL PIECE OF WORK”
—-Stanley Kurtz, National Review
Tickets for the film festival screening are available now through TicketWeb.
11 March 2009 >>
I was pleased to have been invited on CNN to discuss Indoctrinate U with Lou Dobbs, but I was blown away at how complimentary he was. Dobbs called the film “terrific” and said, “I can’t recommend it highly enough.” He closed by recommending that viewers “get this documentary. It’s extraordinary.”
In related news, Indoctrinate U will be shown at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM. The film will be shown at the Village East Cinema, on 12th Street and Second Avenue. Tickets are available online.
25 February 2009 @ 8:56AM >>
I’ll be at CPAC tomorrow on a panel at the Conservatism 2.0 Conference. We’ll be discussing bias in the media and higher education.
Saturday, February 21st @ 3:00PM
Monday, February 23rd @ 5:00PM
Tuesday, March 17th @ 9:00PM
Wednesday, March 18th @ midnight
Wednesday, March 25th @ 5:00PM
Monday, March 30th @ 2:00AM
(all times Eastern)
The Documentary Channel is available on the Dish Network as well as on some cable carriers. In addition, some public television stations simulcast the Documentary Channel during certain parts of the day.
For example, I found out after the last Documentary Channel run of Indoctrinate U that the PBS affiliate WNYE (cable channel 25 here in New York City) aired the film. WNYE carries the Documentary Channel on Monday nights and Saturday afternoons. One of the other large simulcasters is KBDI in Denver. Check your local listings against the times above for more information.
In accepting the film, the festival’s reviewers wrote:
Well-edited, good looking titles, technically pulled together well so there’s no major problems that distract you from looking at it. Content: About the problems of political correctness on college campuses today and how they often impinge on professors and students’ individual rights of expression. Great story and content with plenty of examples to draw from, mostly talking heads interviews with archival footage cut in, well-shot film that could easily play on PBS or something along those lines. A wry, hard hitting documentary about the effect of the campus culture wars on individual rights, diversity of opinion, and the life of the mind in American higher education. Very professionally made. Great subject matter, we found it very interesting.
Indoctrinate U will be shown at the festival on Tuesday, March 24th at 6:00PM at the Village East Cinema at 2nd Avenue and 12th Street.
8 January 2009 >>
Liberal political comedian Baratunde Thurston attended Washington D.C.’s prestigious Sidwell Friends School, where he often found himself as the only black student in the classroom.
Now that Barack and Michelle Obama are sending their kids to Sidwell, Thurston decided to share his experience in an open letter of advice to the incoming First Family:
Sidwell will assuredly meet the challenges of educating and providing security for the first daughters. Back in my day, Sidwell parents included three senators, the publishers of both The New York Times and Washington Post and, oh yeah, Bill and Hillary Clinton, whose pubescent progeny was two years behind me. The Roosevelts, Nixons, and Gores also sent their kids to Sidwell.
But what may prove more challenging is the burden Malia and Sasha will face, not as first daughters, but as plain ol’ black girls. They already represent the United States of America, but in a school like Sidwell, even though it may have a greater representation of minorities than in my time, they also will be expected to represent the United States of Black America, as I was.
They’ll be The Black Friend. They’ll suffer through many a white person wanting to touch their hair. (I strongly recommend Sasha and Malia avoid cornrows.) And they will likely be viewed as both exceptions to and spokespeople for their race. This means they should be prepared when fellow students and even teachers turn to them for “expertise” when the curriculum touches on anything black.
Black Sidwell students are often likely to end up being the only black kid in a classroom. When this happens, we are automatically deputized as a sort of Assistant Professor X. During a discussion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Hurricane Katrina, or even Black Lung, all eyes swivel toward us as everyone expects us to break out our copy of The Negropedia: A Comprehensive Guide to All Black Knowledge for the Edification of White Folks. Let your daughters know this moment is coming. Drill them on black facts. Make them memorize Roots. This way, they can prepare their lesson plans in advance.
[...]
I joined Sidwell in seventh grade. My first day at school, a black student who’d attended since kindergarten pulled me aside and asked if I knew what an Oreo was. “Yeah,” I answered. “It’s a cream-filled chocolate wafer manufactured by the Nabisco Corporation since 1952, and it’s mad tasty.” He corrected me: “No, an Oreo is somebody who’s black on the outside and white on the inside.” He then pointed across the room. “See Darryl? He’s an Oreo.”
What I saw was a slightly nerdy black kid hanging out with some white friends. What I failed to see was the problem. Being nerdy was practically a prerequisite for admission, and with the small number of black kids at Sidwell, it’d be a pretty lonely life for a kid with no white friends. Besides, isn’t the point of being black at an elite prep school to collect as many white friends as possible for later use?
[...]
Be prepared to hear “I’m not racist. I voted for you!” as an excuse for such closed-mindedness, ignorance, or worse. Mark my words, this will be our era’s equivalent of “I’m not racist. I have a black friend.”
The assumption that any given individual is a natural spokesman for an entire race is a manifestation of an underlying belief that people of that race are essentially interchangeable.
It’s also the belief that leads to racial preference systems like Affirmative Action, which makes the assumption that white=privileged and black=oppressed, an equation that’s equally insulting to both races because it fails to recognize the fact that individuals are different—even individuals of the same race! (Shocking, I know.)
A lot of people would love to be as oppressed as the Obama family.
Keith John Sampson, a student at Indiana University - Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI), was found guilty of racial harassment for reading a book about a riot that took place in 1924 between Notre Dame students and the Ku Klux Klan.
Called Notre Dame vs. The Klan, the book’s author describes it as a discussion of a historical event and a celebration of the defeat of the white supremacist terrorist group in that event.
In an odd twist, the very book that led to Sampson’s racial harassment “conviction” was carried in the school’s own library!
But that didn’t stop the IUPUI’s Affirmative Action Office from finding Sampson giulty of racial harassment.
You can watch Andrew Marcus’s coverage of this case here:
If this is the kind of story that infuriates you, check out Indoctrinate U if you haven’t already.
Muslim prayer rooms should be opened in every Roman Catholic school, church leaders have said.
The Catholic bishops of England and Wales also want facilities in schools for Islamic pre-prayer washing rituals.
The demands go way beyond legal requirements on catering for religious minorities.
But the bishops - who acknowledge 30 per cent of pupils at their schools hold a non-Christian faith - want to answer critics who say religious schools sow division.
[...]
Islam teaches that Muslims are unfit for prayer if they have not performed Wudhu after breaking wind or using the toilet.
Wudhu involves washing the face, hands, arms and feet three times each, gargling the mouth three times and washing the neck and inside the nose and ears. Some Muslims also wash their private parts.
Catholic schools would need to install bidets, foot spas and hoses to facilitate such extensive cleansing rituals, Muslims say.
Daphne McLeod, a former Catholic head teacher from south London, said it would be ‘terribly expensive’ for the country’s 2,300 Catholic primary and secondary schools to provide ritual cleansing facilities.
She said: ‘If Muslim parents choose a Catholic school then they accept that it is going to be a Catholic school and there will not be facilities for ritual cleansing and prayer rooms.
‘They do their ritual cleansing before they go to a mosque, but they are not going to a mosque.’
Instead of raising money to fight an illness that only affects oppressors, a reader from New Orleans suggests a novel way to bring the races closer together:
There has long been a glaring disparity between blacks and whites in longevity. I think this calls for nothing less than a moratorium on all life-saving medical services for white people. It would also be helpful to remove seatbelts and airbags from their automobiles and police protection from their neighborhoods. Eventually this would lead to equality in longevity, thus contributing to peace and harmony between the races.
1 December 2008 @ 9:06AM >>
Multiculturalism as practiced on college campuses isn’t about tolerance and inclusion, it’s about ranking people based on the groups they fit into and treating them accordingly.
Students at an Ottawa university are pulling out of a Canada-wide fundraiser that provides close to $1 million a year for cystic fibrosis research and treatment, arguing that the disease “has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men” - something experts say is untrue.
The Carleton University Students Association voted Monday night overwhelmingly in favour of choosing a new charity to support during its orientation week in September, in lieu of Shinerama, which raises money for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.
The foundation funds research into cystic fibrosis, a fatal, genetic disease that affects both sexes with a similar frequency and is most common among Caucasians. The foundation also helps fund services for people with the disease. It affects mainly the lungs and digestive system, causing a build-up of thick mucus that leads to infection and inflammation.
The student council motion stated that orientation week “strives to be inclusive” and “all orientees and volunteers should feel like their fundraising efforts will serve their diverse communities.”
[...]
Brittany Smyth, president of the Carleton University’s student council, said she is trying to get in touch with the cystic fibrosis foundation because she doesn’t want the group to think Carleton students are switching charities for the wrong reason. She said the clause about cystic fibrosis being a white man’s disease was not the determining factor in Monday night’s vote, but for now the council is sticking to the decision and looking for a different cause to support next fall.
24 October 2008 >>
I’m excited to announce that the Documentary Channel will be showing my film Indoctrinate U several times next week as part of its “Controversy in America” series. Airtimes are:
Monday, October 27th: 09:00 PM - 10:30 PM
Tuesday, October 28th: Midnight - 01:30 AM (After midnight Monday)
Saturday, November 1st: 05:00 PM - 06:30 PM
Sunday, November 2nd: 02:00 AM - 03:30 AM
Tuesday, November 4th: 03:00 AM - 04:30 AM
(All times Eastern U.S.)
The Documentary Channel is available on satellite and many cable systems nationwide. Check your provider for channel information.
These times are subject to change. Visit the Documentary Channel’s website for an up-to-date schedule.
Tuition has risen at twice the rate of per capita income and this year it will cost just under $50,000 to attend the average private college. If the cost of milk had risen as fast as the cost of college since 1980, a gallon would be $15.—Congressman Peter Welch (D-Vermont)
When other industries are seen as gouging the consumer, Congress likes to hold showy hearings and investigations. How long until the honchos of higher ed are hauled before some subcomittee or another?
MPI—which in addition to organizing the campus screenings also provided funding for the film—recently posted a look back at the many exciting developments since the film’s trailer was first released last spring. Here are some highlights:
On March 19, 2007, Maloney appeared on the Fox News Channel’s Hannity’s America, where he showed clips from Indoctrinate U and launched a grassroots effort to promote the film. A dedicated website, Indoctrinate-U.com, went live the day of Maloney’s Fox appearance; it featured the trailer, advance reviews, and information about upcoming events. Its most innovative feature, however, was a system for allowing visitors to sign up for screenings in their area, along with a map to track sign-ups by geographical location (our sign-up system has since drawn the praise of The Economist, National Review Online, and others who recognize its power to circumvent the closed world of Hollywood).
Throughout the spring and summer of 2007, Maloney did dozens of interviews on syndicated talk radio. He also made numerous television appearances on shows spanning the political spectrum, appearing as a guest on CNN’s Glenn Beck Show, CNN Headline News, and the Fox News Channel’s Your World with Neil Cavuto. Meanwhile, newspapers and magazines across the country regularly featured Indoctrinate U. The Washington Times ran a detailed story on the film, highlighting MPI’s role in ensuring that it got made and promoted. Noting that “it takes a movie to bring across the amazing, campus-wide power of even a single expertly conducted case of P.C. intimidation,” National Review Online said that the film has “real power.” A glowing review in the Weekly Standard attracted a link from the Drudge Report, one of the Internet’s most highly trafficked news sites. The New York Post ran an extended interview with Maloney—and the New York Times published a review that generated vigorous debate about free speech on campus.
[...]
On Friday, September 28, Indoctrinate U screened at Washington, D.C.’s prestigious John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The marquee event at the American Film Renaissance Film Festival, the screening, which MPI co-hosted with the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, was a spectacular success. A sold-out crowd of 500 awarded director Evan Coyne Maloney a standing ovation. Cable outlet Home Box Office (HBO) attended the premiere to interview filmmakers and members of the audience for a documentary on the assault on the First Amendment.
[...]
These reactions tally with those of seasoned Hollywood veterans. At an October 13 event at the home of Patricia Heaton (Everybody Loves Raymond) and David Hunt (24), the film was celebrated and distributed to 200 industry insiders. Glowing reviews followed from Heaton, Kelsey Grammer (Frasier), Gary Sinise (Forrest Gump, CSI: NY), Jon Voight (Midnight Cowboy, Mission Impossible), and David Zucker (Scary Movie, Airplane, The Naked Gun).
Indoctrinate U’s impact has been felt in academe as well as Hollywood. Prominent professors such as Stanley Fish have grudgingly acknowledged Indoctrinate U’s timeliness and power. “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,” Fish wrote in an October posting at his highly trafficked New York Times blog. “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.”
[...]
On January 29, Indoctrinate U kicked off its campus tour with a hugely successful screening at Duke University. Coordinated by campus groups from across the political spectrum, the highlight of the night was a sparkling discussion session with Maloney and Halvorssen that exemplified the ideal of free exchange that is so vital to the intellectual life of universities. “We promoted the event,” the organizers reported, “with an attempt to attract a diverse audience, ethnically, ideologically, and intellectually. We encouraged attendees to prepare to ask tough, penetrating questions during the Q&A. Evan and Thor were fantastic!”
Since then, Indoctrinate U has screened at twenty-seven college and university campuses around the nation.
[...]
Wherever Indoctrinate U plays, students rave about it. “The Indoctrinate U screening was a great success!” enthused a student at the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University. “I was pleasantly surprised at how funny people thought it was—people were laughing throughout the entire film.” An East Tennessee State student agreed. “It was great to have the film at our school, and those in attendance will definitely be looking at their experiences on campus differently in the future,” he said. “It was refreshing to realize that there are people out there who realize that exposing the double standard in campus ‘diversity’ doesn’t make you a racist, a white supremacist, a neo-Nazi,” wrote a Cornell student. “I can’t tell you how many times I have been called a racist on this campus for talking about the same sorts of biased campus policies that appear in your film. Your film was a rare opportunity for validation.”
Meanwhile, public and private screenings continue. On April 14, MPI and the Manhattan Institute teamed up to co-host the New York premiere of Indoctrinate U. Held at the 500-seat Directors Guild of America Theater, the premiere thrilled the hundreds who turned out to see it. “The only thing that can be more gratifying to a filmmaker than having a packed house is having the house packed with a lively audience that responds enthusiastically,” Maloney said afterward. “It was truly a special night.” In the wake of the New York premiere, Maloney appeared on the Fox News channel to discuss the intrusion of politics into the higher education curriculum. In addition, John McWhorter, a former UC Berkeley professor who is now a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, published a hard-hitting op-ed in the New York Sun. “[A] sense of the politics of the nation as intellectually unassailable is so unquestioned in campus culture that it becomes easy to forget the rest of the country thinks differently,” McWhorter wrote. “Hopefully the film will bolster efforts to bring faculty representing a wider spectrum of views to college campuses.”
As this brief summary shows, Indoctrinate U is having a profound impact on debates about free speech, individual rights, and ideological one-sidedness on our college and university campuses. By revitalizing a conversation that had stagnated beneath reams of print —and particularly by moving that conversation into the arena of film—Indoctrinate U is motivating a new generation to embrace and defend the fundamental principles of academic freedom, free expression, and unfettered intellectual inquiry that are vital to the future of our nation. Now available in DVD and as a digital download, Indoctrinate U will continue to raise awareness and trigger vital debate for the foreseeable future.
30 July 2008 @ 7:06AM >>
I haven’t yet seen the video myself, but a number of folks e-mailed me to tell me that yesterday, during a discussion of Oliver Stone’s upcoming film, Elisabeth Hasselbeck recommended that viewers instead watch Indoctrinate U. Apparently, she plugged the film not just once, but a couple of times.
Thanks a lot, Elisabeth! I hope everyone who was watching heeds your advice! And in lieu of that, I’ll settle for just several percent of the audience.
7 July 2008 >>
According to London’s Telegraph, British “[t]oddlers who turn their noses up at spicy food from overseas could be branded racists by a Government-sponsored agency.”
The National Children’s Bureau, which receives lb12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care.
[...]
The 366-page guide for staff in charge of pre-school children, called Young Children and Racial Justice, warns: “Racist incidents among children in early years settings tend to be around name-calling, casual thoughtless comments and peer group relationships.”
It advises nursery teachers to be on the alert for childish abuse such as: “blackie”, “Pakis”, “those people” or “they smell”.
The guide goes on to warn that children might also “react negatively to a culinary tradition other than their own by saying ‘yuk’”.
Staff are told: “No racist incident should be ignored. When there is a clear racist incident, it is necessary to be specific in condemning the action.”
14 June 2008 @ 1:52PM >>
A reader and viewer of Indoctrinate U recently wrote to me asking about a t-shirt I wore in the film: “I caught a glimpse of one of the t-shirts you were wearing, but didn’t really get the whole thing. It looked like it had a Republican elephant on it with a circle and a line through it. What was it really?”
I wrote back:
You correctly identified the t-shirt. It had the Republican Party logo with a circle-slash through it, and below that the text: “I Hate Republicans.”
For a while during the shooting, I wore a series of shirts deliberately intended to help me blend in to the environment, similar to the way that some species camouflage themselves.
The shirts (two more of which are shown in the attached photos: a CCCP shirt with the Soviet hammer and sickle, and a Joseph Stalin t-shirt) were originally part of an experiment that was intended to be a scene in the film. I wore different politically-themed t-shirts around campus and tried to capture various reactions. We did get a number of under-the-breath comments disparaging my “Viva la Reagan Revolucion!” t-shirt done in the iconic Che style and my “Proud Republican” t-shirt, but unfortunately, we had trouble finding the right mic setup to reliably capture such comments. So we pretty quickly scrapped the idea.
But after I realized that certain t-shirts granted me better access to the campus, I kept wearing those ones around.
Speaking of t-shirts, we’ve now got a few available over at the Indoctrinate U store, where we’ve just added a bunch of Indoctrinate U gear.
However, I should warn you in advance that these shirts probably won’t grant you better access on campus. Quite the opposite, possibly.
