It was interesting to see the final cut of a movie that I've been watching digests and rough cuts of for years.

Evan Coyne Maloney of On the Fence Films, Brain Terminal blog, and Moving Picture Institute is one of the most talented young conservative filmmakers around; he cut his teeth covering lefty protests of Bush, the Iraq War, and any number of other causes. The "guerilla filmmaker" side of his work is especially effective, since he's able to ask reasonably questions with perfect deadpan, and allow those he's questioning to betray their . . . less-than-rigorous thought processes . . . without so much as cracking a smile.

Indoctrinate U, however, is a much more sophisticated work. Like Ben Stein's Expelled, it has to do with freedom of thought and speech in the academy. Unlike Stein's work, however, it doesn't promote—or even allude to—any kind of religious point of view. Nor does it vilify Darwin (much as Darwin's eugenics probably deserve vilifying).

The problem on college campuses has to do with several phenomena:

1) The overwhelming majority of college professors are leftists, or liberal Democrats;

2) These professors tend to inject their beliefs into classroom discussions, no matter how unrelated they may be to the subject they are putatively teaching;

3) Students are afraid to disagree with these teachers, because many professors are so convinced that "no reasonably person would disagree with me on a political notion" that students are in fear for their grades if they speak up, or write essays from an "unpopular" point of view (that is, a centrist or center-right one).

4) Students are getting cheated of hearing dissenting views on nearly any subject that might have a political component or application.

My favorite moment may in fact be when Maloney's father, a 1960s campus leftist and free-speech proponent, comes on camera to grimace a little and say, "I taught him to think for himself, so I shouldn't get too upset when he does it." Honest man.

I honestly hope every academician sees Indoctrinate U, so he or she can do some soul-searching about whether they are on the side of a uni-dimensional teaching style and draconian speech codes, or whether they welcome dissenting points of view in their students (or even, shocking as it might sound, in their fellow faculty members).

Finally, no blog post on Indoctrinate U would be complete without mentioning the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a bi-partisan (left-leaning, actually) organization that thinks students ought to be able to express themselves in reasonable ways. F.I.R.E. is out to upset the totalitarian applecart, and more power to them.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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