Indoctrinate U

I just finished watching the movie Indoctrinate U, a scathing commentary on the American academia’s tendency to marginalize any views which do not agree with the ‘holy’ vision of the left. Evan Coyne Maloney, the director of this independent film, exposes intellectual dishonesties in the attitudes of universities that most students do not even see – for the simple fact that no other views are tolerated to compare them to. As examples, Maloney uses affirmative action policies, the hypocrisy of identity politics gone too far, speech codes, banning of the American flag and ROTC programs from campuses, and various student groups’ illegal existence under Title IX and the Equal Protection Clause – all of which paid for by our tax dollars.

Included are the testimonials of many politically neutral, right, or libertarian academics and students who were ostracised for not agreeing with the left’s majority on campus. Dr.s Ward Cotterly, Carol Swan, John McWhorter, Lewis Gordon, Jay Bergman, Stanley Rothman, and conservative writer Mason Weaver, among others, express their personal unfair treatment by their colleagues, while people like Ward Churchill and Dr. Noel Ignatiev are praised by the majority of academics. For interesting examples cited by the film, google “CalPoly & Steve Hinkle” or “Jackson 5 at University of Tenn.”

The most useful example I thought the movie made was that of bake sales made to mirror affirmative action programs. At these bake sales, non-leftist students who opposed affirmative action sold cupcakes to other students. For black students, a cupcake costed $.70, hispanic students $.80, white students $1.00, and asian students $1.10. This was seen as racist by the campus administration and shut down immediately, even though it is what admissions committees do nationwide. Telling example, in – if you’ll excuse the pun – black and white terms, that shows the flaws in that type of thinking. I will let you tease out the reasons why…

I myself have felt the appall of professors who do not agree with things I have said. Granted, I am not the most eloquent person in the world. But I have rarely been allowed to explain my initial statement that contrasted with the professor’s view of things, simply because he/she would start on a rant about the road that type of thinking leads down… Ironic, in the least, that the place in which we are sent to learn the most, we are constrained to the visions of others in our thoughts and speech. Enter Indoctrinate U…

Walter E Williams has some thoughts on the movie, and here is a trailer:

You can watch the whole thing on youtube. Here is the first video (of ten). Click through for the other portions:

That isn’t to say the film was perfect. Some discrepancies in the statistics presented by Maloney can be explained away with logical deduction, and no one likes having a mic shoved in their faces unexpectedly in their office (even well-spoken administrators). Even with the problems I saw in the movie’s methodology, there are some very good points in there that are difficult to reconcile with ‘education’ and not indoctrination…