Writing at NRO, Stanley Kurtz observes that Indoctrinate U is poised to reframe the debate about campus culture:
[People] of good will don't quite know what to make of the many highly publicized "anecdotes" about campus P.C. Are these merely isolated incidents, or symptoms of a pervasive problem? One of the virtues of Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney's powerful new documentary, is that it helps us answer the "isolated anecdote" argument--both intellectually, and at a gut level.Indoctrinate U explores the Kafkaesque nightmares that befall students and professors who run up against the P.C. behemoth: A woman with two brothers--one an adopted Guatemalan orphan--writes a letter to her school paper saying she wouldn't want to see one brother favored over the other because of skin color. A professor questions the fairness of a panel on which all seven speakers favor reparations for slavery. A representative of the College Republicans posts a flier at the campus multi-cultural center advertising a lecture by a conservative black speaker. A student writes a column complaining that the school's "issues committee" invites only left-leaning speakers to campus. A professor is accidentally revealed to be a Republican. A student from Kuwait writes an essay praising the role of the United States in world affairs. Everyone knows that such actions fly in the face of campus orthodoxy, yet few will be prepared for the enormity of the punishment these nonconformists face.
What you can't help but see--and feel--after watching Indoctrinate U is that these incredibly disproportionate public ordeals send out powerful messages to anyone on campus unwilling to toe the college's political line.
At one level, Maloney overcomes the "isolated anecdote" charge by graphically conveying the results of various studies of campus political bias. Over the past few years, these empirical studies have shifted the balance in our public debate over campus political correctness, and Maloney does a great job of bringing it all across visually. Yet the real power of this film lies in those "nightmare" cases. By showing the faces and bringing us the words of the individuals involved--and by describing the battles themselves in some detail--Maloney allows us to see that many P.C. "anecdotes" are anything but isolated.
Maloney has been quite clear that his mission with the film is not to suggest that one campus orthodoxy should be replaced by another, but, rather, to insist that any campus monoculture, no matter what its content, is immensely damaging to the atmosphere of free inquiry and debate that are the theoretical lifeblood of the academy. This is a subtle argument--one essentially grounded in the philosophy of freedom, rather than in partisan politics--and it is often lost in the polarized debates that characterize the campus culture wars. But it is a correct argument, and one that deserves as much publicity as it can get.
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