During Evan Coyne Maloney’s 90-minute documentary, Indoctrinate U, the historian Daniel Pipes shares his impression of the modern American university: “It’s like joining a church; you have to be a believer. You have to have the right set of views.” The nature of those views and how they’re enforced is ably documented, as example after example prompts both hilarity and alarm. During the opening titles, Professor David Clemens of Monterey Peninsula College reads out a directive regarding new course proposals: “Include a description of how course topics are treated to develop a knowledge and understanding of race, class and gender issues.” We learn that this directive isn’t confined to courses in, say, sociology or politics, but is expected of all subjects, including mathematics and ornamental horticulture. Failure to comply is not a trivial matter and, as Clemens later points out, “They’re quite ruthless about their desire for a kinder, gentler world.”

Maloney’s film begins with the campus free speech activism of the 1960s and 70s, in which his own parents took part, before highlighting how dramatically those principles have now been discarded, even upended, in many of the same universities. We see conservative speakers being shouted down, intimidated and howled off stage, unable even to start an exchange of ideas. We hear students’ accounts of incongruous political sermons being shoehorned onto lessons. (“I’ve been learning in geography class that gender is socially constructed.”) We also see a procession of academics voicing their dismay at the belligerent orthodoxy of campus politics. One psychology professor, Laura Freberg, recounts being told, “We never would have hired you if we knew you were a Republican.”

Freberg’s story is among the film’s more disturbing revelations, in that it shows how the most innocuous of details can identify someone as incompatible with orthodoxy and a target for punishment. Freberg explains how despite her excellent performance she was labelled a “problem” by her colleagues and subjected to a campaign of harassment until finally, and successfully, she sought legal remedy. Freberg’s students later admitted they’d known she was a “closet Republican” precisely because she didn’t use the classroom to air her political views.

Despite Maloney’s own right-of-centre leanings, Indoctrinate U is surprisingly non-party political and, as FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff explains, many mainstream Democrats could well be shocked by how a supposed marketplace of ideas has become so intolerant and congealed. Indeed, one wonders how many liberal parents would regard Bucknell’s Professor Geoff Schneider, who confidently asserts, “A lot of our students are unconsciously racist”, and who defines as harassment “anything that offends.” Or Professor Noel Ignatiev of the Massachusetts School of Art, who echoes the sentiments of Dr Shakti Butler and Peggy McIntosh, and says, “My concern is doing away with whiteness. Whiteness is a form of racial oppression… Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.” (Schneider and Ignatiev are, of course, both white.) At Tufts and Brown universities we see how a fixation with identity politics and leftwing grievance theatre has resulted in racially segregated student orientations. Elsewhere, students are offered racially segregated housing, even segregated graduation ceremonies, and all in the name of multicultural “diversity”.

Maloney also highlights the spread of “speech codes” on hundreds of campuses, the particulars of which include, at Brown, the “banning of verbal behaviour” that “produces feelings of impotence, anger or disenfranchisement.” The University of Connecticut prohibits “inappropriately directed laughter”, while other campuses, including Colby College, have outlawed any speech deemed to result in a loss of self-esteem. Also documented are the absurd and sinister travails of several students, among them Steve Hinkle, whose flyer – advertising a speech by a black conservative author and quoting the title of his book – led to police involvement, lengthy entanglement in campus judicial proceedings and suggestions that he should seek psychological “counselling”.

Other extraordinary moments include San Francisco State University’s vehemently “pacifist” anti-military protests; the banning of patriotic expressions and symbols, including the American flag and the pledge of allegiance; and a satirical “affirmative action bake sale”, with cupcakes sold at different prices according to a person’s colour. (Needless to say, this culinary satire isn’t received terribly well and threats of arrest ensue.) 

A recurrent and revealing theme is just how readily these PC principles can be abandoned if the target is deemed politically deviant. Sukhmani Singh Khalsa, a conservative Sikh student critical of liberal bias, was unwittingly sent an email from the University of Tennessee’s Issues Committee, a student group responsible for inviting speakers to campus. Justin Rubenstein, an Issues Committee member, referred to Khalsa in less than edifying terms: “If you see one of those ragheads, shoot him right in the fucking face.” The University of Tennessee saw fit not to discipline Rubenstein or remove him from the committee. Yet when students at that same university arrived at an off-campus Halloween party dressed as the Jackson Five and complete with “black” makeup, this attention to detail resulted in the entire fraternity being suspended. 

Maloney’s attempts to raise these concerns with university administrators are, alas, unsuccessful, and of course symbolic. Invariably polite and decidedly unthreatening, our hero nonetheless finds himself rebuffed, then escorted off campus by burly security guards. Maloney’s alma mater, Bucknell, proves no more accommodating. (Watching these encounters almost becomes a game – guessing exactly how little time will pass before spotting the Stare of Death™ and hearing the administrator say, “Call the campus police.”) Some viewers may wonder if many faculty members are bewitched by the homogeneity of their insulated fiefdoms and are thus unaccustomed to their assumptions being challenged. Others may suspect that some of these educators are less naïve and all too happy to do in private what they cannot defend in public. Either way, a question arises for supporters of identity politics and pretentious sensitivity: What happens when the most oppressive “hegemony” in town is, in fact, your own? 

Those lucky enough to see Maloney’s film may differ in their views of exactly how this political lockstep became so pervasive and entrenched. Fixated by a Holy Trinity of race, class and gender, leftist ideologues have certainly played a pivotal role; as have squeamish administrators anxious to avoid controversy. Few, though, could deny that a serious problem exists. On the subject of an increasingly politicised classroom and the reluctance to voice unfashionable views, one student points out perhaps the greatest sin of all: “Education becomes a spectator sport.” Charming, alarming and not quite polished, Indoctrinate U is likely to amuse and enrage in more or less equal measure. If you can, see it. Then get angry. 

Watch the trailer here.

Buy the film as MPEG4 or Virtual DVD via the online store. 

Related. And. Also. Plus.

Today brings further confirmation that the Guardian’s moral compass is performing as normal, if not, alas, properly. Jakob Illeborg tells us,

Over the weekend numerous schools in Denmark have been set on fire and one completely burned down. Every night for almost a week the sky in Danish city centres has been lit up by burning cars and bonfires started in the middle of the high streets.

Indeed. For some pious souls, arson and death threats are very cheap currency. But first a detail. Note that the link chosen for the passage above is headlined, Cartoons Blamed for Danish Riots. If headlines are to be believed, the cause of the current riots is the publication of a cartoon drawn by a 73-year-old who is now forced to live in hiding in fear of his life, and the lives of his family. The cause is not, one notes, the individuals who chose to take part in those riots and burnings, and nor is it the absurd theological vanities that, for some, validate such behaviour. This strange causal manoeuvre is one that Mr Illeborg, like many others, has embraced with shameless enthusiasm. In his previous Guardian column, Illeborg argued that,

Once again the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters, even if all we were trying to do was to stand up for freedom of speech and democratic rights.

In case you missed that, here it is again.

the Danes could, with some justification, be seen as fire starters.

We’ve been here before, of course, and more than once. Last year, Newsweek ran an article on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, accompanied by a sidebar with the extraordinary heading, A Bombthrower’s Life. As Christopher Hitchens remarked,

The subject of this absurd headline is a woman who has been threatened with horrific violence, by Muslims varying from moderate to extreme, ever since she was a little girl. She has more recently had to see a Dutch friend butchered in the street, been told that she is next, and now has to live with bodyguards in Washington, D.C. She has never used or advocated violence. Yet to whom does Newsweek refer as the “Bombthrower”? It’s always the same with these bogus equivalences: They start by pretending loftily to find no difference between aggressor and victim, and they end up by saying that it’s the victim of violence who is ‘really’ inciting it.

Quite. But back to Mr Illeborg.

The fire starters are frustrated young Muslim men who claim that their action is sparked by the re-publication of one of the prophet cartoons –

Yes, that does seem to be the perpetrators most commonly stated motive.

although it probably has little to do with religion,

Oh.

and much to do with an entire generation of young migrants who have not been integrated into Danish society.

Well, when you think about it – and, please, let’s – that may well amount to much the same thing. Certainly the two aren’t easily disentangled. A more integrated Danish society would not, one hopes, be faced with an inassimilable minority of a minority trying to violently impose its superstitious vanities on others. That would, I think, be a plausible marker of an integrated Western society. Indeed, it was also a point of the original Jyllands Posten article, published some two years ago. However, Mr Illeborg is in too much of a rush to linger on such details.

Anti-Danish sentiment seems once again to be gathering pace both locally and around the Muslim world. On Friday 1,000 of Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters were demonstrating in Copenhagen. In Gaza more than 5,000 protesters were on the streets and in Teheran the Danish ambassador was summoned to meet the government… The odd thing is that all this was very predictable from the moment the Danish press insisted on making a headstrong idealistic response to the murder threats towards a Danish cartoonist by immediately printing / reprinting the cartoon that depicts the prophet Muhammad with a bomb in his turban…

Well, yes. But the predictable nature of the lunacy doesn’t address the issue of the lunacy itself, or its grotesque disproportion and coercive, non-reciprocal intent. It doesn’t address the issue of whether those complaining, or demanding, or setting fire to something, have any sane and legitimate reason to do so. This is quite an important point, and one that Mr Illeborg seems determined to avoid. And it’s somewhat odd for him to describe the publishers of a cartoon as “headstrong” for doing something which is perfectly legal, while avoiding such pejoratives when referring to the people actually breaking the law and burning down schools. 

The Danish editors say they are making a stand for freedom of speech and many readers of CiF in their response to my article felt that the action was both brave and justified. But if, as the current press rumours in Denmark would have it, the accusations against the three suspects are less than waterproof, the quick and firm response may come to look clumsy and silly at best. Most of us agree that the Danish newspapers have the right to print / reprint the cartoons, but they don’t have an obligation to do so.

One wonders, then, what kind of right one has – say, to publish an unflattering cartoon – if that right cannot be exercised for fear of riots, arson and death threats – and then of being blamed by Guardian columnists for the actions of those who actually did the rioting, burning and threatening. And, again, another fundamental point whistles by, unregistered. Whether or not the individuals arrested last week are ultimately found guilty, they are merely the latest suspects in a series of violent acts spanning decades and continents, and which are intended to intimidate and cow the free-thinking world – including, lest we forget, quite a few liberal Muslims.