15 April 2008 >> 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.

Thanks to everyone who made it to last night’s New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U.

It was truly a special night, and it makes me all the more certain that the only thing standing in the way of massive success for Indoctrinate U is making sure that enough people get a chance to hear about the film.

If you haven’t been able to see Indoctrinate U in your area, you can now download the film and order DVDs from the Indoctrinate U store.

14 April 2008 @ 9:11AM >> Reminder: The New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U is this evening at 6:30PM. For more information, visit the Indoctrinate U website.

Also, I’m scheduled to discuss the film and the premiere on Fox & Friends tomorrow morning at 7:40AM (Eastern time).

9 April 2008 @ 8:16AM >> I’m happy to announce that the DVD of Indoctrinate U is now available for purchase.

If you’d like to buy a copy of the DVD, head on over to the Indoctrinate U Store and you can have one in your hands in just a few days.

Unlike the downloadable Virtual DVD (which is also available at the store), the physical DVD comes with bonus DVD extras.

Reminder: This upcoming Monday (April 14th) is the New York City premiere of Indoctrinate U. Because this is a sponsored event, tickets are free. Seats are available, but you must RSVP in order to reserve your spot.

28 March 2008 >> Indoctrinate U will be shown on Monday, April 14th at the Director’s Guild of America Theater on West 57th Street in midtown Manhattan.

The screening, which starts at 6:30PM, is free and open to the public. However, you must RSVP if you would like to attend. Space is limited and expected to go quickly.

This event is sponsored by the Moving Picture Institute and the Manhattan Institute’s MindingTheCampus.com.

25 March 2008 >> The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education is undergoing an assault in an all-out wikifight.

Recently, FIRE’s Wikipedia page and that of the organization’s president, Greg Lukianoff, have been repeatedly modified to insert bogus claims trying to paint the organization as some sort of right-wing front group.

It’s ironic that FIRE finds itself the subject of a partisan smear campaign. FIRE as a group is quite principled in its non-partisan nature, and its staffers are more intellectually diverse than many colleges seem to be. Over the years, they’ve provided consistent and unwavering support for liberals and conservatives alike—and to folks of just about any other school of thought represented on college campuses.

All of the proof for this is quite easy to find, as FIRE’s record is well-documented and readily available online.

Earlier today, Lukianoff singled out Simon DeDeo, one of the Wikipedia editors, for his “many errors.” To his enormous credit, when presented with the facts, Mr. DeDeo retracted his “remarks on [FIRE], some of which were in error and others of which were I think overly harsh and rhetorical.”

Unfortunately for FIRE, the rest of the group’s wikicritics may not be as intellectually honest as Mr. DeDeo.

Most likely, the wikifight goes on...

21 March 2008 >> In my last exchange with John K. Wilson, he tried making the case that Indoctrinate U suffers from “biases, distortions, and omissions” and that I am only a fair-weather friend of free speech.

My response pointed out the various ways in which Wilson makes off-base assumptions about my views. It seems that unless Wilson hears me explicitly state an opinion, he simply assumes I hold whatever position he disagrees with most and proceeds to argue against me from there.

And in his latest piece, a response-to-my-response-to-his-critique, Wilson does it again.

As reluctant as I am to encourage him to issue another interrogatory of my views, Wilson does ask three direct questions that merit answers. He introduces his questions in this discussion:

Maloney wonders “why Mr. Wilson believes I only favor free speech for folks I agree with is beyond me.” The reason is given in my article. At times, conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases. So I asked Maloney, does he believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student? Does he believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired? Does he endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes? I didn’t get a clear answer. I have no problem with Maloney expressing his conservative viewpoint and criticizing professors he disagrees with; but I do want to know if he really support free speech for those he disagrees with.

As for military recruiters, I have my disagreements with the protesters and I have no doubt that some of them should be arrested if they step over the line. However, Maloney still hasn’t defended the right of students to protest, and he hasn’t acknowledged the fact that the rights of student protesters have been restricted at many campuses.

I appreciate Wilson’s questions, but first I need to address another one of those pesky assumptions by turning the tables and asking him a question. He claims, “conservatives in the movie (including Maloney) seem to advocate censorship in a few cases.”

So, my question: When and in what way did I “seem to” advocate censorship?

Perhaps Wilson would have me preface each case in the film with a disclaimer: “Warning: Even though the following scene contains no call for censorship, please be aware that the following scene contains no call for censorship.”

Anyway, getting back to his questions...

Question 1: “Does [Maloney] believe that Foothill College should have banned flyers criticizing the conservative student?”

No, I don’t, and I never said I did.

My purpose in going to Foothill was to try to determine if a professor was responsible for producing the flyers in question. If a professor of Ahmad al-Qoloushi wrote flyers disparaging him, it would be a major revelation that would add to the public’s understanding of the story. And because those flyers were literally stamped with the approval of the school, someone in the administration had to know whether a professor submitted those flyers for approval.

Unfortunately, I ran into a comically evasive administrator who stonewalled, stammered and summoned the police. So I never got a straight answer.

In the film, I wanted the audience to see the contrasts among the different handling of controversial flyers at different schools. At a number of schools, rather tame flyers have been censored, sometimes leading to Kafkaesque disciplinary proceedings that drag on for months. Yet in this case, flyers attacking a student by name got the school’s official stamp of approval. Merely pointing out this contrast should not be confused with advocating censorship.

Question 2: “Does [Maloney] believe that the professor in Michigan who denounced a student’s op-ed on affirmative action should have been punished or fired?”

(In the case Wilson references, a professor harshly criticized a student in class over her letter in the school paper. In the letter, the student discussed her multi-racial family and how it informed her opinion against racial preferences.)

In general, I think that a professor who uses class time to give political lectures when the issues involved have nothing to do with the class is acting in an unprofessional manner. Doubly so when the professor is haranguing a student over political views that she never expressed in class and that had nothing to do with the topic being taught.

Do I think the professor should be fired or otherwise punished? Not for this. But I’d hope that someone somewhere in the university would remind this professor what it means to act like a professional.

And if students ever decided to demand a refund for the portion class time wasted on off-topic political rants by professors who repeatedly and egregiously abuse their academic freedom, a school would be on thin moral ground to deny that refund.

Academic freedom bears a cost that is paid for by tuition and tax dollars, and it carries with it the expectation that professors will use that freedom to fulfill their educational responsibilities to students.

Having said all that, I think that professors should be given absolute freedom to discuss whatever controversial topics they wish in the classroom, when it relates to the educational purpose of the class. And outside of class, of course, professors are free to say whatever they’d like.

Question 3: “Does [Maloney] endorse David Horowitz and ACTA’s efforts to stop professors from discussing politics in classes?”

Wilson refers to a person and an organization, each with a long history of activism in academic circles, so I’m not entirely sure what efforts in particular he’s asking me to discuss.

I think my answer above covers my view of political advertising in class well enough.

But in case it’s still not clear where I stand, rather than consign myself to an infinite loop of questions aimed at determining whether I really am a genuine supporter of free speech in Wilson’s eyes, let me offer a rough outline of my thinking:

• People should have the right to speak their minds
• Academic freedom does not exempt professors from criticism
• Feeling offended by speech does not give one the right to suppress it
• People should not be forced to finance the speech of others
• If a person declines to finance the someone else’s speech, that is not censorship
• The right to speak encompasses groups, so that assembly and protest are possible
• A protest that disrupts an event or otherwise interferes with the speech or movement of others is not covered by the concept of free speech

Hopefully this list will help make Wilson’s future assumptions about my views a little more accurate.

But, in the end, it may not matter much. I don’t think I’m going to persuade him. The author of a book called The Myth of Political Correctness: The Conservative Attack on Higher Education might have a vested interest in not being persuaded by the data and cases covered in Indoctrinate U.

Wilson closes his piece with a plug for one of his other books and a call to “unite in the struggle for freedom of expression.”

As Wilson knows from my previous response, I publicly defended Ward Churchill’s speech rights despite comments that I personally found abhorrent. I’m already on the free-speech-in-the-abstract team. But since Wilson still seems not to believe me, I’ll just end with something I wrote last September:

Erwin Chemerinsky, “a well-known liberal expert on constitutional law” according to the Los Angeles Times, was hired and then quickly fired by the Irvine campus of the University of California. The culprit, says Chancellor Michael V. Drake, was “conservatives out to get” Chemerinsky. Later on, an “emotional” Drake, “his voice at times quivering,” reversed his position and “said there had been no outside pressure and that he had decided to reject Chemerinsky” himself because the professor’s views were “polarizing.”

Given the unreliability of Chancellor Drake’s public testimony, it’s hard to know whether there really was a conservative cabal trying to take out Chemerinsky, or whether he was just the victim of a spineless administrator seeking to avoid controversy. Either way, the only decent thing for the university to do is to re-hire Chemerinsky, assuming he’d be forgiving enough to take the job instead of taking the school to court.

[...]

If there was a concerted effort among conservatives to block Chemerinsky, they probably felt justified in doing so, thinking that they’d just be preventing the dominant campus thinking from dominating another campus. But it’s hard to argue for tolerance of your views when you’re damaging the career of a man whose only transgression is disagreeing with you.

Whatever the sequence of events that led to Chemerinsky’s firing, conservatives who believe that their views deserve better respect on campus must stand with him on principle.

And who knows? Maybe the next time a conservative professor runs into career trouble for his or her views, some decent-hearted decision-maker will think back to this story and remember how not to act.

Respect can be brought back to campus if only enough people have the courage to practice it.

20 March 2008 @ 7:49AM >> We’ve added two new videos over at the Indoctrinate U website.

The first is a deleted scene, Thoughtcrime at LeMoyne College: the Case of Scott McConnell, an astounding case that we weren’t able to include in the film because we didn’t get all the footage we wanted to tell the story.

The second video shows what happens when a sitting U.S. Supreme Court Justice comes to give a speech on campus. In Welcome Wagon NYC, students at NYU Law School object quite strongly to the presence of Antonin Scalia, giving him a reception worse than the President of Iran received at that other large Manhattan institution, Columbia University.

These videos join two other previously released videos containing unused footage from the film.

14 March 2008 @ 8:53AM >> In addition to the burnable Virtual DVD and the MPEG-4 version, Indoctrinate U is also now available as a Windows Media Player file. Visit the Indoctrinate U Store for more information.

Also, we will (finally!) have actual, physical DVDs available within a few weeks. I’ll post an update once the DVDs are ready for sale.

Lastly, we’ve added more screening dates, and another big announcement is due soon.

13 March 2008 @ 7:06AM >> A bone-headed idea surfaces in Maryland:

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would grant free college tuition for some juvenile offenders. Supporters say it’s a way to encourage troubled youth to get their lives back on track. John Dixon, Deputy Secretary for the MD Department of Juvenile Services says, “The kids the department serves face a lot of obstacles and challenges when they return to the community. This bill will allow kids who are interested in attending public institution to go there tuition free.”

Delegate Norm Conway is sponsoring the bill. As an educator for 39 years, he says it’s important to help troubled teens make a positive transition. “They’re out of their own families in many instances. You’re hoping for the best possible transition and incentives that say hey if you’re willing to do your part there are some opportunities out there for you.”

Under the proposal, committed juveniles under the age of 21 would be eligible for free tuition at any public institution in the state.

7 March 2008 @ 8:13AM >> Separate but equal, in the name of multiculturalism:

Six times a week, Harvard kicks all the guys out of the Quadrangle Recreational Athletic Center at the request of the Harvard Islamic Society. This is to accommodate those female Muslim students whose faith won’t let them work out in front of men.

In the old days, Harvard would have laughed if some Catholic or evangelical mother urged “girls-only” campus workouts in the name of modesty. Today, Harvard happily implements Sharia swim times in the name of Mohammed.

At Harvard, that’s called progress.

When I asked Harvard spokesman Bob Mitchell about this new Sharia-friendly policy, he denied that they were banning anyone. “No, no,” he told me, “we’re permitting women to work out in an environment that accommodates their religion.”

By banning all men from the facility, right?

“It’s not ‘banning,’” he insisted. “We’re allowing, we’re accommodating people.”

Mark Steyn comments:

In Minneapolis last year, the airport licensing authority, faced with a mainly Muslim crew of cab drivers refusing to carry the blind, persons with six-packs of Bud, slatternly women, etc, proposed instituting two types of taxis with differently colored lights, one of which would indicate the driver was prepared to carry members of identity groups that offend Islam. Forty years ago, advocating separate drinking fountains made you a racist. Today, advocating separate taxi cabs or separate swimming sessions makes you a multiculturalist.

And Glenn Reynolds adds, “Meanwhile, some readers wonder if Harvard will close its gyms to openly gay men at certain hours, so that straight men who are made uncomfortable by gays can work out without being uncomfortable. It appears that they’re in sync with Islamic thought.”

4 March 2008 >> John K. Wilson, who founded an organization called The Institute for College Freedom (check out their site, if only for the nifty icons on the homepage), accuses me of “biases, distortions, and omissions” in his commentary on Indoctrinate U.

His critique was recently posted at Minding the Campus, which also allowed me a chance to respond. My response also appears below.

---

I appreciate the thorough and thoughtful analysis of my film Indoctrinate U by John K. Wilson. It is good to be having this discussion about the state of academia, and one of my hopes in making this film was that it would bring this debate to a much wider audience. Academic insiders are already aware of these issues, but the public at large is not.

Mr. Wilson has some strong critiques of my work, and I must say that given his perspective as someone who’s been involved in academic battles himself, I can understand some of his complaints. But where I have a fundamental disagreement is that he makes some rather broad assumptions about why I covered certain things and not others.

In effect, Wilson seems to be criticizing me for not making the film he would like see about academia. What’s worse, without understanding my rationale for choosing the footage I did, he accuses me of making a film with “numerous biases, distortions and omissions.” More >>

28 February 2008 @ 8:24AM >> When I was an undergrad at Bucknell, one of the things that frustrated me was that, for all the talk of the importance of tolerance and diversity, there didn’t seem to be very much tolerance for diverse viewpoints.

I was involved in publishing an opinion and commentary newspaper at Bucknell, and on multiple occasions, entire stacks of our free paper were lifted wholesale from their distribution points. We knew it was theft because, several times, people reported seeing piles of unread copies dumped in trash and recycling bins around campus. Back then, the school took no action to try to counteract these crimes against free thought.

Recently, the students who publish the school’s conservative paper, The Counterweight, noticed that their publication was also confiscated from points around campus. It seems Bucknell’s current administration is taking this sort of thing more seriously these days.

Here’s an e-mail sent to the Bucknell community from Brian C. Mitchell, the university’s president:

From: Brian C. Mitchell
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2008 15:35
To: Bucknell Faculty Staff and Students
Subject: [CAMPUS:5878] Removal of The Counterweight from Campus Newsstands
Importance: High

Dear Member of the Bucknell University Community:

Last week, most of the supply of the latest issue of The Counterweight was taken from the campus distribution racks. This act of apparent theft and harassment undermines the right of The Counterweight, and in fact of all student publications, to express their views. In addition, this publication is printed with resources provided via Bucknell Student Government and is the result of the hard work of Bucknell students.

Our Department of Public Safety is now investigating this incident, and I write to request your assistance in identifying those responsible. Should you have any related information, I ask that you complete this anonymous tip form at [URL removed] or contact Public Safety at 7-3333. You need not provide any personally identifiable information.

We appreciate any knowledge you can provide to assist in this investigation and your helping to uphold the rights of our student publications.

Sincerely,

Brian C. Mitchell
President

Good for President Mitchell to recognize the gravity of these thefts and for trying to do something about it.

Considering that the administration under the school’s previous president was at times quite antagonistic towards The Counterweight, I’m glad to see that Bucknell seems to be moving in the right direction.

21 February 2008 @ 8:01AM >> Canada’s National Post recently carried a piece by Barbara Kay on Indoctrinate U:

Building on testimonials by students, faculty, alumni and critical commentators, including attempts to interview campus administrators (not a single one co-operated; several were filmed calling the police to eject Maloney from campus), the young filmmaker mounts a compelling indictment of—in George Orwell’s words — the “smelly little orthodoxies” suffocating intellectual diversity on campus.

Indoctrinate U exposes the full gamut of the PC scourge: irritations that grate, like speech codes forbidding words that may lead to “a loss of self-esteem” (Colby College) or a ban on gender-specific partner terms such as “boyfriend” (University of West Virginia); and cuts that sting: on campus after campus, conservative student journalists are reviled, their dailies trashed en masse. “The only good Republican is a dead Republican!” screams one offended student when offered a conservative broadsheet.

Diversity of opinion is squashed, sometimes with savagely hypocritical zeal. At Indian River Community College in Florida, the Christian Fellowship was refused the right to show The Passion of the Christ because it was “R rated,” but a play called F—king for Jesus was permitted, featuring a girl masturbating before a picture of Jesus.

The most sympathetic victims are conservative faculty, because academia is their life, not a way station. At California Polytechnic, “outed” professor Laura Freberg was reproached by her colleagues, “We never would have hired you if we’d known you were Republican.” In spite of her impeccable academic credentials and stellar teaching ratings, Freberg was removed as department chair, and a swastika burned on her lawn.

Just when you think he has plumbed its depths, Maloney finds more sickening examples of Western self-loathing. Kuwaiti student Ahmad al-Qloushi dared to write a pro-American essay at Foothill College. He was threatened with the loss of his visa by a professor; and administrators subsequently authorized the distribution of a third-party flyer calling him “as bad as Hitler” and likening him to a suicide bomber.

These examples seem sensational, but the film’s tone is calm and objective. Maloney did not appear to have cherrypicked his witnesses. He toured campuses big and small, famous and humble, across the nation. It was the same “velvet-totalitarian” story everywhere.

Two more Indoctrinate U screenings were announced today, but if you’re unable to see the film in person, you can now download it from the Indoctrinate U online store.

10 February 2008 >> Update: The review program has now ended. The offer below is no longer valid. If you’re interested in seeing the film, you can now download a copy from the Indoctrinate U online store.

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Within a matter of days, we will be ready to launch the Indoctrinate U online store, where we will be offering the film for download as MPEG-4 files and ISO DVD files. MPEG-4 files are playable on Windows, Mac and Linux, and ISO files can also be used to create your own DVD copies of the film playable on virtually all home DVD equipment. All you need is a computer with a DVD burner, software capable of burning ISO files, and a blank DVD.

But before we open the store to the public, we will be offering free downloads of review copies to a limited number of bloggers who plan on publishing reviews of the film. If you’re interested in reviewing Indoctrinate U, please send your name (or online pseudonym), the name of your site, the site’s URL, and the e-mail address where you’d prefer to be contacted to this e-mail address:

reviews (at) indoctrinate-u (dot) com

When our online store launches, this offer will expire, so if you’re interested, e-mail us soon!

Oh yeah, non-blogger media folks are welcome, too.

7 February 2008 @ 9:22AM >> The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group featured in Indoctrinate U for their role in defending the free speech and free thought rights of students and professors alike, has launched a video project highlighting their work. Andrew Marcus and I worked on their first two videos, the first of which FIRE released yesterday:

This video [...] serves as an introduction to FIRE, its principles and issues, and its commitment to liberty on campus. It then turns to FIRE’s case at San Francisco State University, where students endured a months-long investigation for stomping on Hamas and Hezbollah flags during an anti-terrorism protest.

The San Francisco State case is one I covered previously.

5 February 2008 @ 12:32PM >> A new announcement on the Indoctrinate U website:

Bucknell University, the alma mater of Indoctrinate U director Evan Coyne Maloney, now has a screening scheduled for April 3rd.

Last time Evan visited Bucknell, it was for a screening of Brainwashing 101, a precursor to Indoctrinate U. The campus group that invited Evan to screen the film also gave him permission to videotape the screening and the Q&A afterwards. But the administrators at Bucknell had a different idea, and sent the head of Security to tell Evan—in front of the audience gathered to watch the film—that he had to stop filming or he’d be arrested.

Who knows what’ll happen this time, but whatever it is, it won’t be dull!

31 January 2008 @ 9:10AM >> The Indoctrinate U screening at Duke went quite well, and the group that organized the event has posted a reaction on their blog:

Last night’s screening of Indoctrinate U was fantastic! The film was insightful, provocative and often hilarious. The Duke Chronicle reported the event in today’s issue, though with a few significant mistakes and a somewhat unfortunate title. DSEDuke sponsored the film, with contributions from the Program on Values and Ethics in the Marketplace and the Political Science department. A discussion afterwards was co-sponsored and promoted by the Duke Conservative Union, College Republicans, Duke Democrats, and the Center for Race Relations.

If any reviews of the Louisiana State screening become available online, I’ll post that link as well.

25 January 2008 @ 9:17AM >> Good news! Next Tuesday’s screening of Indoctrinate U at Duke University is now open to the public.

Also, we’ve just announced a screening at Indiana University School of Law on February 25th.

Other upcoming screenings: Louisiana State University (Shreveport) on January 29th; San Diego State University on February 13th; and Ottawa, Ontario (Canada) on February 18th. Many more to come.

And finally, plans should be announced shortly for screenings at my alma mater—Bucknell University—and Washington & Lee.

Last time I visited Bucknell for a screening of my work, the school’s head of security threatened me with arrest—in front of the audience gathered to watch my film.

Hopefully things will go a little more smoothly this time.

16 January 2008 @ 9:12AM >> We’ve just posted details for two more campus screenings of Indoctrinate U: one at Louisiana State University (Shreveport) and another at San Diego State University. For more information, visit the Indoctrinate U screenings page.

30 December 2007 @ 3:35PM >> Assuming the last few details get worked out in time, sometime in January, Indoctrinate U will be offered as a web download. At some point after that, DVD sales will begin as well.

Prices have not yet been set for either the download or the DVD. More details will follow when they become available.

In the meantime, happy New Year!

18 December 2007 @ 9:55AM >> A student who was dissatisfied with one of his professors has been found guilty of hazing, among other things, simply for e-mailing fellow classmates about his intention to withdraw from the class. The “verdict” was a summary decision by a lone administrator and was issued without a hearing. When the student recognized that his due process rights were violated, he appealed the decision. His appeal was denied, by the very same administrator who found him guilty in the first place.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports:

As we report in our press release today, St. Louis Community College at Meramec (STLCC) has placed a student on disciplinary probation and found him guilty of hazing and several other offenses simply for e-mailing other students about his plans to withdraw from his Organic Chemistry I course. He invited others to do likewise and later invited his classmates to join him in taking Organic Chemistry II at another college.

The student, Jun Xiao, holds a Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and has postdoctoral training from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia University. He enrolled at STLCC to satisfy the prerequisites for medical school. Dissatisfied with one of his professors, he started looking for other options. When he found some, he invited his classmates to join him. On October 23, 2007, two days later, Xiao received e-mails and phone calls requiring him to meet immediately with Acting Vice President of Student Affairs Daniel R. Herbst. One letter, from Herbst’s assistant, cryptically stated, “Your academic career rests on your meeting with him.” Another, from Herbst himself, stated, “Please note, that until you have a meeting with me, that you are prohibited from sending any emails to students in any of your courses. Violation of this directive, can and will result in your immediate suspension from St. Louis Community College.”

On October 24, Herbst gave him a letter informing him that he had been placed on “Disciplinary Probation” for the 2007-2008 academic year and that he was prohibited from contacting other STLCC students by e-mail. The letter also stated that Herbst—without any hearing—had already found Xiao guilty of hazing, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, and failure to comply with the directions of a college official. But when Xiao later asked for a written clarification of the complaints and charges against him, Herbst refused to provide any such information. Xiao’s first appeal of Herbst’s decision was denied by Herbst himself.

Xiao then appealed again, this time to STLCC’s Student Appellate Hearing Committee. That committee, which is required to hold a hearing “within 15 calendar days from the date of notification to the student,” has refused even to set a hearing date, instead informing him that the “15-day clock has not begun to tick because you have not yet received official notification,” and that he could “expect” to receive such notification in January 2008. In the meantime, Xiao remains on disciplinary probation and may not contact other students by e-mail.

[...]

As Samantha [Harris] said in our press release, “Punishing a student for e-mailing his classmates about the possibility of enrolling in a different course is a shamefully transparent attempt to suppress criticism of the college.” She added, “STLCC must either rescind the punishment it arbitrarily meted out to Xiao or, at the very least, provide him with reasonable notice and a fair hearing so that he may defend himself against what appear to be wildly inappropriate charges.”

11 December 2007 @ 5:49PM >> Perhaps due to the relative speeds of e-mail and snail mail, I wasn’t aware of this until reading James Taranto’s column today (scroll down), but apparently Indiana University has dropped their demand that On The Fence Films hand over what remains in our depleted coffers. In other words, it looks like they’ve backed off their threatened legal action.

Thanks to Indiana University for resolving the matter so quickly after it became public. We acted in good faith, and we appreciate that it was reciprocated.

Update: A statement has been posted on the Indoctrinate U website, which reads in part:

Being employed by a school with an endowment of over $1 billion might give him a different financial perspective, because Mr. MacIntyre refers to the amount of money the school was demanding ($1,500) with a dismissive “That’s it.”

For an independent production company like ours, that small amount of money is the difference between making the final payment to our sound engineers and producing promotional DVDs. Being bankrupted by a bogus demand didn’t seem inconsequential to us.

Nevertheless, we are of the philosophy that all’s well that ends well. And in the end, we’re happy with Indiana University’s final decision.

Given the experiences we had with other college administrators, the folks at Indiana have been among the better ones to deal with.

Indeed that’s true. Thanks to Mr. MacIntyre (and everyone else involved at Indiana University) for helping bring this matter to a speedy and amicable resolution.

10 December 2007 @ 8:41AM >> In the Washington Post, a Villanova professor discusses the intellectual decay within academia:

At a Harvard symposium in October, former Harvard president and Clinton Treasury secretary Larry Summers argued that among liberal arts and social science professors at elite graduate universities, Republicans are “the third group,” far behind Democrats and even Ralph Nader supporters. Summers mused that in Washington he was “the right half of the left,” while at Harvard he found himself “on the right half of the right.”

I know how he feels. I spent four years in the 1990s working at the centrist Brookings Institution and for the Clinton administration and felt right at home ideologically. Yet during much of my two decades in academia, I’ve been on the “far right” as one who thinks that welfare reform helped the poor, that the United States was right to fight and win the Cold War, and that environmental regulations should be balanced against property rights.

All these views — commonplace in American society and among the political class — are practically verboten in much of academia. At many of the colleges I’ve taught at or consulted for, a perusal of the speakers list and the required readings in the campus bookstore convinced me that a student could probably go through four years without ever encountering a right-of-center view portrayed in a positive light.

A sociologist I know recalls that his decision to become a registered Republican caused “a sensation” at his university. “It was as if I had become a child molester,” he said. He eventually quit academia to join a think tank because “you don’t want to be in a department where everyone hates your guts.”

[...]

Unfortunately, subtle biases in how conservative students and professors are treated in the classroom and in the job market have very unsubtle effects on the ideological makeup of the professoriate. The resulting lack of intellectual diversity harms academia by limiting the questions academics ask, the phenomena we study, and ultimately the conclusions we reach.

There are numerous examples of this ideological isolation from society. As political scientist Steven Teles showed in his book “Whose Welfare?,” the public had determined by the 1970s that welfare wasn’t working — yet many sociology professors even now deny that ’70s-style welfare programs were bad for their recipients. Similarly, despite New York City’s 15-year-long decline in crime, most criminologists still struggle to attribute the increased safety to demographic shifts or even random statistical variations (which apparently skipped other cities) rather than more effective policing.

[...]

All this is bad for society because academics’ ideological blinders make it more difficult to solve domestic problems and to understand foreign challenges. Moreover, a leftist ideological monoculture is bad for universities, rendering them intellectually dull places imbued with careerism rather than the energy of contending ideas, a point made by academic critics across the ideological spectrum from Russell Jacoby on the left to Josiah Bunting III on the right.

[...]

Ultimately, universities will have to clean their own houses. Professors need to re-embrace a culture of reasoned inquiry and debate. And since debate requires disagreement, higher education needs to encourage intellectual diversity in its hiring and promotion decisions with something like the fervor it shows for ethnic and racial diversity. It’s the only way universities will earn back society’s respect and reclaim their role at the center of public life.

7 December 2007 >> As promised, the Indoctrinate U website came back online last week, and we’ve now posted a statement explaining why the site was taken down in the first place.

James Taranto’s “Best of the Web Today” covers the story.

Sorry for any inconvenience, and thanks a lot for all the supportive e-mails. It’s good to be back!

30 November 2007 >> Vincent Carroll in the Rocky Mountain News:

“The U.S.A. spends more on higher education, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than any other industrialized country, according to the Education Department.” —USA Today

Bet you didn’t know that. On the other hand, you very likely did know - because it’s mentioned repeatedly - that this country spends more on health care, as a percentage of gross domestic product, than every other advanced country.

Why is spending so much on health care considered a national scandal by many commentators but the outsized spending on higher education is not?

Could part of the answer be that the health-care system is studied, analyzed and dissected by a scholarly community that simply isn’t willing to apply the same critical perspective toward the institutions that sign its checks?

To the contrary: The self-interested consensus among academics is that this country needs to spend far more on higher education.

9 November 2007 @ 2:24PM >> The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education announces another victory:

[A] federal judge has ordered San Francisco State University (SFSU) and the California State University System (CSU) to stop enforcing several unconstitutional speech codes. The codes were challenged in a lawsuit filed by attorneys from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) in cooperation with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

“This decision is a vital step in the fight against unconstitutional campus speech codes,” FIRE President Greg Lukianoff said. “The court’s decision frees hundreds of thousands of students throughout the CSU System from unlawful restrictions on their expression.”

The lawsuit—brought by the SFSU College Republicans and two of the group’s members—came after the SFSU College Republicans were put on trial by a campus tribunal for stepping on makeshift Hamas and Hezbollah flags as part of an anti-terrorism rally they held in October 2006. Despite having the power to dismiss the charges at any time, SFSU dragged the plaintiffs through a five-month investigation and hearing before ultimately clearing the group of baseless “harassment” charges. The plaintiffs’ lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, asks the court to hold SFSU accountable for unlawfully mistreating the plaintiffs on the basis of their constitutionally protected expression and to strike down several unconstitutional speech codes at SFSU and in the CSU System.

Burning the American flag is protected First Amendment speech, on the grounds that actions intended to convey a political message should be treated no differently than actual speech. The Supreme Court made that decision in the 1980s. So it’s good to know that, decades later, stepping on the flags of two terrorist organizations is also protected speech.

But it’s troubling that administrators at a taxpayer-funded university—an entity legally prohibited from punishing students for protected political expression—are so ignorant of the basic parameters of their students’ rights that the school needed to be brought to court in the first place.

You shouldn’t need to hire a lawyer in order to exercise rights enumerated in the Constitution.

6 November 2007 @ 1:56PM >> Glenn Reynolds has an essay at TCSDaily that highlights the growing numeric disparity between male and female students in academia. He cites a USA Today article stating, “135 women receive bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.”

Reynolds writes:

[I]t seems to me that there are three possible ways of looking at the growing higher-education gender imbalance.

One would be to treat it the way we treat other “underrepresentation” issues in higher education: By wondering what universities are doing wrong. There seems little doubt that universities have become less male-friendly in recent decades, to the point of being downright unfriendly in many cases. The kind of statements that are routinely made about males and masculinity in classrooms and hallways would get professors fired if they were made about blacks, gays, or many other groups. Sexual-harassment policies start with the presumption that men are guilty, and inherently depraved. And colleges now come at the tail-end of an educational system that is (compared to previous decades) anti-male from kindergarten on, meaning many males probably just want to get out as soon as they can.

The remedy, in this view: Affirmative action for male candidates, re-education for faculty, campus “men’s centers” to match the womens’ centers that were created when women were an underrepresented group on campus (and which still remain today almost everywhere), and efforts to make curricula, dormitories, and recruiting more male-friendly. (Right now, though we see lots of courses on literature by and about women, courses on literature by and about men are regarded as too narrow.”) There seems little doubt that if any other group were suffering similar declines in college attendance, this is precisely the approach we’d be seeing, and some schools have already been trying this to some degree.

The second approach would be to shrug the problem off. Men aren’t going to college as much? Big deal. Maybe it’s because women are smarter, or better suited to such things.

Harvard President Larry Summers got his head handed to him when he raised similar factors as an explanation for why women are underrepresented in the hard sciences. But genetic explanations of gender differences are always socially acceptable so long as they posit male inferiority, so I suspect we’ll see somewhat more people offering this sort of explanation — though it may prove awkward when people point out the contradictions.

In one scene from Indoctrinate U, I noted this gender imbalance and wondered: given the fact that men were now in the minority, would they be rewarded with the spoils that identity politics practitioners typically bestow upon underrepresented groups?

To find out, I went searching for the Men’s Resource Centers and Men’s Studies Departments at various schools around the country. Needless to say, I didn’t find them, but I had a few laughs along the way.

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.

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.