Sunday, October 07, 2007

Lack of Educational Freedom in US

New Film Exposes Apparent Lack of Academic Freedom in US
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 08, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Critics who question the need for race-based affirmative action programs, among other politically controversial issues, are prominently featured in a new documentary that looks at academia's treatment of dissenting views.

Although most of America's institutions of higher learning were designed to foster debate and mold students into critical thinkers, a two-and-a-half-year investigation shows that a repressive political climate has taken hold in recent years - a climate where dissent is silenced and free speech is jeopardized, according to Evan Coyne Maloney, who made the documentary "Indoctrinate U."

The film was screened last week at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and audience members, many of them students, expressed empathy for the people in the film who were often on the receiving end of politically correct harassment.

"The very people who invoke the name of tolerance are shown to be quite intolerant themselves," Josiah Ryan, a graduate of Hillsdale College, told Cybercast News Service. "Free speech is about a rich exchange of ideas. It's not about having everyone in agreement. The very notion of tolerance has been turned upside down."

While the documentary focuses on individuals who successfully pushed back against harassment and censorship, it is important to note that there are many students and professors who have had their academic careers damaged and even ruined, Maloney told the audience after the screening.

The film also touches on the dramatic ideological imbalance that currently exists among college professors and administrators.

Studies show conservative-minded academics to be vastly outnumbered in comparison to their liberal counterparts. But Maloney cautions against assuming that people on the right would not succumb to some of the same practices highlighted in the film, if the situation were reversed...(read the rest)

I first got wind of this film, Indocrinate U, six months ago. Filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney has been working hard to get an audience to view and critique this important film.

Go here for the website and trailer of the film by Maloney and On the Fence Films.

CNS has the breaking story on the history on their efforts here.