2, 4, 6, 8, Who Do We Indoctrinate?
U. U. U. Linda Seebach, writing in the Rocky Mountain News, reviews Indoctrinate U a documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney. Seebach is interested in the subject of overwhelming leftist bias in academia since she actually has a background in the field (she's a former mathematics professor). This is a very favorable review of a film that may never be widely seen unless Maloney can get a distribution deal.
A friend of mine did a round of campus visits with his son earlier this year before the son decided where to enroll in the fall. When they came back after one particularly unsatisfactory visit my friend explained why that college was definitely crossed off his son's list.
As I wrote to someone I know who is a professor emeritus there, "He found the insularity and the pervasive groupthink stifling. All the 'chalking' was left wing; he went to a history class and the professor claimed that capitalism was responsible for the Holocaust (and refused to let a student who disagreed finish speaking)."
There was more, but you probably know this story by now - many colleges and university campuses are pervasively left wing, to the extent that any student not on the left is likely to be marginalized or worse.
If you'd like to see the story dramatized, there's an excellent new documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney called Indoctrinate U. You might not be able to see it any time soon - they're still looking for a distributor - but the Web site www.indoctrinate-u.com has a trailer, reviews and background (scroll down for individual pages).
"Instead of the vibrant debate, intellectual diversity, and academic freedom we like to associate with universities, Maloney found violent protests at UC Santa Cruz and San Francisco State, persecution of student members of a conservative club at Cal Poly and the University of Tennessee, divisive racial and ethnic politics at the University of Michigan and Yale, doctrinaire teaching at Duke and Columbia, and much more," the site says.
(The trailer is very well done, incidentally). This is, of course, a subject I have posted about quite a lot. I'm frankly not surprised that Maloney is having a hard time finding a distributer. This isn't left-wing, politically correct subject matter, therefore it doesn't meet the agenda criteria for distribution that the Dixie Chicks and their faux martyrdom warrants. Too bad. I really hope someone steps up here.
Insanity, Left Wing, Media, PC Run Amok, The Ivory Tower | Gaius Sunday, 3 June , 2007
By syn, Sunday, 3 June , 2007 @ 4:41 pm
It really is too bad how provencial and narrow-minded is Hollywood but Evan can take solice in the knowledge that the numbero uno A-list Latino actor worldwide(means his name recognition alone sells tickets) makes a recount of Castro’s Cuba “The Lost City” and gets a couple of prints and an interview on some Fox news program while a loser politician makes an inconvenient truth about global warming receives not only full block-buster distribution of print and press for several months but also distribution in K-12 and universities.
It’s tough breaking through the gatekeepers in both academe and entertainment, good thing us ‘monkeys’ are crashing it with the net.
By Gaius, Sunday, 3 June , 2007 @ 4:52 pm
Syn, I hadn’t even heard of this film, but it looks very interesting.
By syn, Sunday, 3 June , 2007 @ 8:21 pm
In this day and age it’s expected that the film is unknown, one of my favorite Americans is a doorman in my building who is a reservist, had escaped from Castro’s Cuba in 1979 and even he hadn’t heard of the film until I mentioned it one day about six months after release; actually neither had his relatives in Miami heard of the film. My doorman mentioned he watched it four times that night, it is that good a story.
It’s a film which speaks of that once classical liberal ideal called pluralism and remarkably offers some foresight showing what’s happening today in Venezuela; of course this means no block-buster distribution.
Do see it, I’m interested in your thoughts on the movie’s message.