Recently, Conservative filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney is working on a film that will hopefully be widely distributed in feature length sometime this year regarding academia's attempts at silencing Conservative opinion on College Campuses in the United States. The film currently has a working title of
Brainwashing 101.
I have had the pleasure of seeing a
46-Minute preview at
AcademicBias.com, which pretty much showcases the sneaky ways in which colleges across the nation have attempted to stifle free speech on college campuses.
Many people on the leftward side of the politicaly aisle have used the adage that perhaps it turns out that the people who are smart enough to become professors are liberal. This inference is working under the assumption that conservatives, generally, are not smart enough to become college professors. But, they fail to realize that the real issue conservatives have with Academia is not that the professors are liberal, but that their viewpoints are forced upon the students, often not adding other viewpoints into the course requirements. Perhaps an even more disturbing development in college campuses across the country is the creation of "speech codes" that have caused the intimidation of students with frivolous cases of harassment or intimidation of leftist students and faculty, even when what the conservative students have said had no malicious intent, just another point of view. These speech codes have become a vehicle to silence students with opposing viewpoints, using undefined offenses such as "offensive" or "hate" speech.
When a College Republicans Club at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington advertised a speaking event with Daniel J. Flynn, with his book title "Why the Left Hates America", all hell broke loose. When students complained of the flyer, claiming it was hateful, they were subsequently torn down, some of which was done by administrators. One administrator, David Lindsay, the university's Director of Student Activities, said that "I took one down because our publicity policy says that we don't allow hate speech to be posted around campus." After the group was repremanded and told to fix their flyer to point out that the offending phrase was a book title, students still complained, causing the College Republicans to have a disciplinary letter in their file. Thankfully, unlike Mr. Lindsay, University President Robert Spitzer saw reason and realized that such silencing of expression was a travesty, especially after being notified about this incident by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). Effectively, he removed the disciplinary letter from the College Republicans' file.
Sadly, other cases do not end so quickly or as civilized. In fact,
Brainwashing 101 features one student at Cal Poly got in trouble for putting a flyer up for an event with black conservative Mason Weaver, which featured the title "Its OK to Leave the Plantation". Claiming the word "Plantation" was offensive, several students complained and even brought in the police to the college. After a year and a half of legal battles between the college and the student, the college had to reimburse the student with $40,000. The very fact that such a case even made it to court is a travesty. It is obvious in both the cases, it was not a concern about hate, but the fact that it espoused a different political view. I strongly recommend this film, not just to the Conservative choir of whom they will be preached what they've already come to believe, but also to potential college students of all political persuasions and liberals cynical of Conservative concern over a left-wing monopoly in Academia.
