Apr

17

INDOCTRINATE U A Documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney

Not my favorite screening duty, documentaries. I regularly view and judge several hundred in the course of film festival judging, and many, while important and often necessary, are grim. But my jurying of a new doc, screened for the first time at the Directors Guild of America theater, and generously hosted by the Manhattan Institute, was not only clever and welcome, but also quite often laugh-out-loud funny. If a documentary on the wholly-owned left-wing dominance of higher education can conceivably be funny.

Evan Coyne Maloney, the filmmaker, is the progeny of two hippies of the 60s love-and-flower generation. They must have done something right. He is affable, persistent, smart, discerning, sarcastic with a cherubic smile, and always, scrupulously polite. Maloney and his cameraman visit college campuses around the country, from the royals of Harvard, Yale and Princeton, to the more rural or less noteworthy college campuses in flyover precincts.

Maloney’s goal: How neutral are teaching faculties at our nation’s expensive and highly regarded (at least until this film and Ben Stein’s forthcoming exposé of a similar nature, “EXPELLED,” become de rigueur viewing) colleges?

Whatever he attempts to ask, whether on the absence of men’s studies or resource centers (grim-faced females in Che Guevara-plastered offices stare stolidly at him, not ‘getting his point), the attacking of Republican students for posting provocative yet inoffensive fliers (lawsuits that invariably and ignominiously spell loss of thousands for the colleges foolish enough to pursue such groundless suits), the location of the diversity office to ensure diversity of opinion (huh??), or the ratio of left-liberal professors to conservative (the smallest ratio of Marxist-leaning ‘liberals’ to conservatives is 7 to 1; the highest is 134 left-wing teachers to 12, conservative), to how alternative papers on campus are received (entire press-runs are routinely stolen, in hundred-weight batches, as soon as they hit the stands), he is stonewalled, thwarted and…threatened with arrest.

His cheerful and diffident requests are met with flinty official agita. The response? Invariably the same: When the camera duo shows up, there is instantaneous recourse to campus or muni police. Not a single administrator attempts to answer his polite requests. The relevant parties quail and cringe from the camera, repeatedly demand he turn the camera off, and seek the nearest escape.

The packed house I viewed the film with laughed as the film proceeded, anticipating the response of yet another administrator who denies he or she is in charge. Maloney sits in anterooms all day, while colleagues of the designated official deny the job, schedule or existence of the person he has come to interview. We laughed throughout, though the topic is sober, and actually kind of frightening.

Brave students in each campus confide that they end up mum in classes, lest they forfeit grades or become the butt of verbal attacks. Contrarily, conservative students with complaints are rarely helped, abuse against them is ignored, their problems somehow lost or forgotten. Verbal abuse and vicious calumny against one hip Sikh student, for instance, amount to death threats—never acted on. Students responsible are never disciplined.

Toe the line or be ostracized, attacked, ridiculed. Pro-choice, only. Pro-gay marriage, only. Pro-affirmative action, only. Professors who are ‘liberal’ (in the new sense of illiberal and lockstep mindset), quash adverse opinion and keep a watchful eye out for those not like them. Teachers who are conservative say nothing, so as not to out themselves. “If I admitted I was a conservative,” one Stamford Professor of Biology says with a rueful laugh, “I lose my job.”

The way her students ‘know’ she is a non-majoritarian non-radical (shhh) right of center professional?

“It's not what I'd say in class. Because all I do is teach biology, as I was hired to do. It’s that I never start every class with a harangue on how Bush and co. are bad. Or how Iraq is a mistake. Or how white America is evil.” For the radical teachers, no matter what the course content, every class includes a discussion on RGE: race, gender and ethnicity. Even decorating. Even math.

A shocking episode shows Republican Steve Hinkle, a student subject to unremitting attack for posting a flyer announcing a presentation by [black] conservative C. Mason Weaver, author of It's OK to Leave the Plantation, in a Cal Polytech student center. That groundless lawsuit sets the taxpayers back $40,000—and Hinkle won on every (ludicrously unpremised) count.

The lesson, a familiar one to those who follow the issue, is that the people who run the universities are not willing or able, perhaps, to defend in public what they teach in private. They can’t take the heat when the camera is turned in their direction. Affronted and furious, they want the meticulously diffident Maloney carted away. Charges of ‘racist,’ ‘fascist’ and ‘nazi’ are regularly hurled at those who politely differ from the mainstream teacher-led doctrinaire brainwash.

Indoctrinate U undercuts the usual reaction to complaints about campus repression: These are no recycled anti-PC tall tales. No way. Maloney shows that censorship, lack of choice, forced views and indoctrination run both coasts, public to private higher-ed launchpads, rarefied elite ivies to the West Coast’s Foothill College.


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12 Comments so far

  1. michael bonderer on April 17, 2008 10:03 pm

    Additionally, for those interested I refer all to David Horowitz's work, notably, "The Heterodoxy Handbook: How to Survive the PC Campus By David Horowitz, Peter Collier" and "The Professors: The Most Dangerous Academics in America". And this from Wikipedia's opening paragraph on Horowitz: "David Joel Horowitz (born January 10, 1939) is an American conservative writer, and activist. The son of two life-long members of the Communist Party and once a prominent supporter of Marxism as well as a member of the New Left in the 1960s, Horowitz later rejected Leftism and is now a prominent advocate for right-wing causes. He is a founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), and has served as president of that organization for many years. He is the editor of the conservative website FrontPage Magazine, and his writings can also be read on prominent news sites and publications, including the conservative magazine NewsMax.[1] He founded the activist group Students for Academic Freedom and is affiliated with Campus Watch…." Importantly, David is a strong proponent of School Vouchers.

  2. steve leslie on April 18, 2008 7:08 am

    This comment about Horowitz is significant. It is as if he escaped a cult and is now perceived in the print and video media as a Benedict Arnold a persona non grata. If such thought breaks with the raison detre, then one is outcast and left for the trailing wolves that follow. Bernard Goldberg has written extensively as to the bias in media and the hypocrisy that they embrace. He was effectively tossed out of CBS for his reporting. I find it interesting that the once venerable NY Times is now on the financial ropes. There are few journalists left who have freedom to express their thoughts. It is a shadow of its former self when it was The Source for news.

    On campuses across the nation, there is this pervasive La Cosa Nostra undermining the institution which is in juxtaposition as to what one would assume should be a bastion of free thought and expression. It has seemingly always been understood that such suppression exists in the most obvious of liberal homes notably Harvard, Columbia, Brown, Michigan, Cal but now is spreading to the less obvious such as Colorado. That is to say if a professor, instructor or student decides to part from the generally agreed upon principles i.e that only liberal thought and left wing politics is embraced and encouraged they shall be castiged, discouraged from seeking tenure, browbeat, have their grades lowered and other sorts of stormtrooper tactics up to and including public and private humiliation that eventually they will be forced to toe the line or leave.

    The hubris is actually terrifying. This collective thought or arrogance if you will manifested itself recently in the alleged sexual assault by Duke lacrosse students against a woman of color. A public letter was issued by members of the faculty supporting the arrests and conviction of the students and expulsion of the teammates involved in the debacle. All of this before a proper investigation even took place. Eventually, all charges were dropped but by then the damage had been done and the lives had been ruined. One wonders why the faculty felt it incumbent to reach outside the classroom and involve themselves in such an incendiary event.

    On the outside looking in I find it amazing almost humorous that a parent will spend 200k plus to send their child to a college that would engender such bias esp. when it runs contratrend to their own values. Furthermore it is equally as confusing when one considers that such student would in all likelihood receive an equal or better education at another institution.

    I asked a professor of Economics from Duquesne U. once how he feels about the exorbitant fees that private colleges charge for their education. He told me that when he is asked this from a parent, he tells them send their child to a public college within their state such as Penn State or Ohio State and invest the difference. Place the remainder in a trust account and when they are ready buy a franchise for their son or daughter.

    Steve L.

  3. Bob Johnson on April 18, 2008 8:14 am

    Marion’s lucid review serves as a reminder to explain the extreme left bias in higher education to my son, who is off to university this August, as I did to my second-year daughter, prior to her departure. I provided my daughter anecdotal experiences, and a few web search results. Maloney’s work, along with information within posts found here, will provide additional creative resources to educate my children on this disappointing and hypocritical bias.

  4. Gregory Rehmke on April 18, 2008 9:04 am

    For those interested in doing something about the shortage of free-market teaching at colleges, consider supporting the Institute for Humane Studies (www.theIHS.org). They assist young people interested in college teaching and research.

    For those with college age children or relatives, encourage them to attend a Foundation for Economic Education Seminar (www.fee.org). There will be six in Irvington, NY this summer.

  5. Mark Candon on April 18, 2008 9:39 am

    Mark Steyn, perhaps the best writer of the English language alive today, recently spoke at Middlebury College. Not that anyone around central Vermont would know it. There was zero press before, during, or after his marvelous speech in a small science auditorium.
    Meanwhile, in today’s local rag, there’s a breathless blurb about “social justice advocate” Lani Guinier coming to Middlebury to deliver a lecture in the big chapel.
    The lefty clowns control not just the campus but the print media in most places. The only way past them is through the internet media.

  6. Nigel Davies on April 18, 2008 9:53 am

    I recently gave an interview in which I was asked to name 4 people, living or dead, I’d invite to a fantasy dinner party. The two females invited, Margaret Thatcher and Tammy Bruce were evidenlty not PC enough choices and inspired some comments about my politics (eg ‘Who’d want to eat with Margaret Thatcher, bla bla bla).

    Lucky they didn’t know more about Baron Fersen. Or that I toyed with the idea of inviting Ken Livingstone (the left wing mayor of London) as the main course.

    The irony is that I don’t think of myself as being particularly right wing. I just don’t like being told what to think.

  7. michael bonderer on April 18, 2008 10:46 am

    And this, an open letter to Barak Obama from Jack Kemp, as reprinted in yesterday's WSJ:(I note that both Kemp and Obama attended the same college, Glendale based Occidental College)

    Obama and Economic Opportunity
    By JACK KEMP
    April 17, 2008; Page A19

    Dear Barack,

    Greetings, it's me again, giving more advice and taking you up on your thoughtful suggestion to open up a national discussion and dialogue on race and racial reconciliation in America.

    First of all, some historical perspective, not for you senator, but for my other readers.

    I believe all great achievements in our nation's progress toward social, legal and economic justice have been led by a combination of agitation and idealism. From the Founders in 1776, to the Civil War waged to save the union and abolish slavery, to the Civil Rights Movement which began to fully integrate African Americans into the electoral and economic mainstream, we have wrestled with, debated and discussed the next steps that are needed toward "a more perfect Union."

    Each great era of progress was led by men and women of conviction who challenged us to live up to the highest ideals of our nation, who declared in a very radical way that we are all God's children. This ideal was not even close to reality until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, both of which were aimed at abolishing the last vestiges of the evil practices known collectively as "Jim Crow."

    This month I thought about April 15 not just in terms of taxes (they're too high and complex), but because of a great African-American agitator, Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in baseball on that date and helped lead all professional sports to higher levels of excellence and performance.

    Barack, as we fast-forward to today, I contend we've successfully integrated the U.S military, the arts and entertainment, and sports at all levels. The one area of American life that is still very separate and very, very unequal is our economy. Many people of color have risen spectacularly against the odds – Oprah Winfrey, Bob Johnson, Magic Johnson, Whoopi Goldberg and many other professional athletes, entertainers and businessmen and women of whom we can be proud. Still, we need to look at all those left behind, all those you have spoken of who today lack economic opportunity to climb the ladder of wealth, ownership and asset creation so central to achieving the American Dream.

    As Jesse Jackson said at a Wall Street Project conference I attended, "Capitalism without capital is nothing but an ism." Truer words were never spoken. Look at the great fortunes generated by the Carnegies and Mellons, the Rockefellers, Guggenheims and others. These were established in an economic climate of sound money with very low taxes on income, estates and capital gains.

    Before you start thinking, "There goes Kemp again, calling for a kind of laissez-faire approach to capitalism," let me note that incentives in the tax code to encourage investment have been championed at one time or another by both political parties – from Coolidge to Kennedy and from Reagan to Rangel. (Charlie Rangel to a lesser degree, but my old friend co-sponsored enterprise zones, with Joe Lieberman and me, that actually zeroed out capital gains taxes and has called for a cut in corporate income tax rates.)

    In my opinion, people of all colors and income levels don't hate the rich. They want to get rich. They're more interested in generating wealth than they are in redistributing wealth. They want to own property, educate their children and build a nest egg that can be passed on to their heirs. Unfortunately, some aren't able to access the same ladder of opportunity that is so readily available to the majority.

    As I'm fond of saying, you can't get rich on wages, you have to earn, save, invest, reinvest and pass on to your children the products of your labors.

    Senator, I believe our tax code punishes this process of upward mobility, especially for people of color, and in some cases it actually prevents people from escaping poverty. In this respect, I believe your economic views are short-sighted. You've pledged to raise income tax rates to 39.5% and lift the cap on payroll taxes, which would end up raising the top rate on income to 52% or more. You also want to raise dividend taxes to 39.5% and capital gains to 28%, plus you want to return to a confiscatory 55% "death tax." Unwittingly, your plans would prohibit most black Americans, indeed most Americans, from ever getting rich or even richer. Your economic ideas, sincere as they are, would weaken the economy, weaken the dollar, and weaken our chances of reducing poverty and unemployment.

    It's my strongly held belief that we should be working to democratize our free-enterprise, private property-based system. We can do this by expanding empowerment zones and offering zero capital gains taxes for those who invest there; by reforming the tax code to open access to capital; and by providing more school choice in urban America.

    As for the housing sector, we should listen to my former colleague Bruce Bartlett, who has called for the repeal of this year's $117 billion tax rebate, and to redirect the money into a package of measures that would help those homeowners who actually need assistance to save their homes.

    By giving people access to capital and allowing them to take ownership of assets, entrepreneurship will be encouraged and the cycle of poverty can begin to be broken. All persons should have the opportunity to go as high as their merit and determination can carry them. My favorite quote is from Abraham Lincoln, who said, "I don't believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good. So while we do not propose any war upon capital, we do wish to allow the humblest man an equal chance to get rich with everybody else."

    Lincoln's definition of entrepreneurial capitalism is the best I have ever heard. I believe that a bipartisan consensus could be reached in America on a 21st-century war on poverty that takes the best of the "center left" and the best of the "center right" on the reforms necessary to make the American Dream accessible to all our people. We may have a long way to go, but I remain an optimist about improving the human condition, expanding our democratic ideals, and forming a true partnership with private enterprise.

    I love what Bobby Kennedy said in Bedford-Stuyvesant in 1968: "To ignore the potential contribution of private enterprise is to fight the war on poverty with a single platoon, while great armies are left to stand aside."

    Barack, let's get together with, say: John Bryant of Operation Hope in Los Angeles; Ambassador Andrew Young of Good Works International; Bob Woodson of Neighborhood Enterprise Foundation in Washington, D.C.; Ted Forstmann of Forstmann Little & Company in New York; Russell Redenbaugh, a U.S. civil rights commissioner in Philadelphia; and economist Art Laffer. We can discuss how best to tackle the issue you raised in your March 18 speech, when you identified the lack of economic opportunity for people of color as one of our nation's greatest challenges.

    Any interest, sir?

    Mr. Kemp is a former congressman, the 1996 Republican vice presidential candidate, and a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

    Free Markets, Free people.

  8. steve leslie on April 19, 2008 2:28 pm

    There is an interersting piece in this weekends IBD about the money that Harvard is receiving from middle east petrodollars to embrace muslim beliefs and catering to needs of their faith. One example is female only recreation facility.

    As ACDC reminds us “Money Talks” and you know the rest of the lines. Especially at Harvard.

    As far as the extremist views of Obama with respect to economic views, Robert Reich came out and issued his endorsement of Obama.
    Quite an insult actually to the junior senator from New York since Reich served in her husband’s cabinet.

    sl.

  9. Jake on April 19, 2008 9:32 pm

    Yes, it MUST surely be a conspiracy that so many educated people are liberals, and so many people who live in trailers are conservatives!

  10. Bob Johnson on April 20, 2008 8:13 am

    Jake,

    I’m sure you’re a young man with good intentions. As you mature, you will obtain a wisdom learned only from life experiences. To assist in your development, I offer two quotations from the estimable Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill.

    “The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is” - Winston Churchill

    “Show me a young Conservative and I’ll show you someone with no heart. Show me an old Liberal and I’ll show you someone with no brains” - Winston Churchill

    RJ

  11. steve leslie on April 20, 2008 12:37 pm

    Jake you make an interesting assertion with respect to "educated people" being liberal and conservatives living in trailers. My first question would be how does one identify "educated people" the second would be how would you test this. It is a fact however that African-Americans vote predominately Democrat and embrace liberal causes. NEA the largest labor union in the United States overwhelmingly supports the Democrat ticket. In fact such unions as Teamsters and AFl-CIO openly side with and are courted by Democrats. Journalists overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

    Ward Churchill the notorious professor of ethnic studies at Colorado was fired from the institution but only after his outspoken views were aired in public and the Governor of the state decided to actively campaign for his dismissal.

    Make no mistake that a sheepskin from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cal, carry great weight in the real world esp on Wall Street and Park Avenue law firms as well as inside the D.C. beltway. And that is noteworthy.

    It is also to good to mention that so does a diploma from John Carroll, Notre Dame, Loyola, Carnegie Mellon and Georgia Tech to name a few.

    With respect to Churchill I highly recommend his biography The Last Lion by William Manchester. A magnificent read on one of the truly great men of the 20th or any century. If Great Britian had a Mount Rushmore, Churchill would surely be chiseled on it.

    sl.

  12. steve leslie on April 21, 2008 8:59 am

    I am in favor of decriminalization of marijuana, as I am also in favor of economic stimulus packages that benefit fast food enterprises and snack foods however this seems a bit extreme:

    Your tuition dollars at work at Colorado. I picked up on this story from the Boulder County News. I can see it now “Why did you choose U. of Colorado?”

    “Mr. Hand! Are you kiddin me dude? It only has the most primo weed in the country!” -Jeff Spicoli also a graduate of Ridgemont High

    A crowd of about 10,000 people collectively began counting down on the University of Colorado’s Norlin Quadrangle just before 4:20 p.m. Sunday.

    Yet the massive puff of pot smoke that hovers over CU’s Boulder campus every April 20 — the date of an annual, internationally recognized celebration of marijuana — began rising over the sea of heads earlier than normal this year……

    …..CU freshman Emily Benson, 19, of Kansas City, said she thinks the decriminalization of marijuana will become a hot topic in the upcoming political season and said she felt part of something bigger than just a smoke-out on Sunday.

    “We’re at the starting point of a movement,” she said. “This is a big part of the reason I applied here — for the weed atmosphere.”

    sl.

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