Persistence of Vision

Indoctrinate U director and star was interviewed on CNN's Glenn Beck Show last night. Here's the transcript:

Now we go to Columbia University. Despite the president`s tough words, inviting a dictator-terrorist to speak at your campus, probably not the best idea. Yeah, we want a debate. We cherish dialogue and free speech. But like all of our freedoms, there is a line. Would Fidel Castro be welcome on your campus? Don`t answer that. The answer`s probably yes. Kim Jong-Il, Osama bin Laden, you`d probably invite all of them, but you should really reconsider.

You have the right to give enemies of our country a platform to speak, but you have a responsibility not to give them a platform for propaganda. Unfortunately, the "Real Story" is our colleges have lost touch with not only that concept, but it seems like with the simple concept of common sense.

In a few weeks, Hofstra Law School, which is here in New York, right, hosting a legal ethics conference. I don`t think they`re going to appreciate the irony of that title. It`s one of the names of the speakers that are coming to speak at this thing really caught my eye, Lynne Stewart.

If you were here in New York and, you know, you remember 9/11, that name might ring a bell. She was the civil rights attorney who was disbarred and sentenced to over two years in prison for smuggling messages from her scumbag terrorist client out of jail and then delivering them to an Egyptian terror group. She`s been disbarred, disgraced, convicted felon, former attorney speaking at a university ethics conference. How exactly does that work? And people wonder why, you know, I`m freaked out about having my kids go off to college. Oh, no reason.

Evan Maloney, director of "Indoctrinate U," a documentary that will be released on Friday. Evan, I`ve got to tell you, I read about your documentary here a couple of weeks ago. I can`t wait to see it. Let`s just talk about this. What the hell happened to our colleges?

EVAN COYNE MALONEY, "INDOCTRINATE U.": Well, this has been something that`s been going on for about 30 years now. This is not a new development. And, you know, one of the things that struck me as very odd about Ahmadinejad coming up to Columbia is that Lee Bollinger kept talking about how this enhanced free speech.

But, you know, that`s a pretty specious argument. It`s not as though Ahmadinejad has no platform for speech, for one. And, for two, Columbia is a place that just last year ran a member of the Minutemen off the stage, actually physically assaulted him on stage and, just last week, renounced another invitation. They had invited him back this year, and just last week they yanked the invitation. And yet they`re claiming that they worship free speech up at Columbia. I don`t know. I`m not buying it.

BECK: Yes, it`s bull crap. You know it, and I know it. America knows it. Lynne Stewart, here she is, she`s a woman who was helping the blind sheik. She`s passing notes to known terrorists. And she`s speaking at this lawyers ethics conference.

Let me ask you this. Do you think there`s a chance that, when Compean and Ramos get out of jail, that Hofstra University would ask them to join them for a conference?

MALONEY: It certainly seems like it. You know, I mean, maybe the only reason they have Lynne Stewart is that they`re trying to illustrate ethics by showing you what not to do. Maybe this is an ironic title for their conference. I don`t know.

BECK: It seems like we`re living in an upside-down world. Tell me, it`s not true that there are now kind of underground reading lists that go along with some classes?

MALONEY: Yeah, this is something I found in researching "Indoctrinate U." A number of students told me that they would never get assigned Adam Smith, they would never get assigned Friedrich Hayek, they would never get assigned Milton Friedman, but they would read Karl Marx in four different classes.

So a lot of these students got together and started researching the types of views that they don`t hear in college. And so a lot of these students have formed groups -- there are actually some groups online -- where they recommend reading lists to one another because they know they`re not getting a balanced education from their institution.

BECK: I have to tell you, when I went to school, I was 30 years old, and I remember my professors saying, "You`re reading such and such, aren`t you?" And I said, "Yes, sir." And he said, "Don`t read that. Don`t read that." And he told me not to read it. He said, "You`ve got to read this." So I went and I read that, and I came back the next week, and I asked him another question. He said, "Are you still reading that book?" And I said, "Yeah, I read the one you told me to, but I`m also reading the one you don`t want me to." He said, "Why would you do that?" And I said, "Because I wanted to know why you disagree with him."

I mean, they don`t really understand how thought works and how you`re supposed to research and not shape people`s thoughts but show them different ways to find information. Thank you very much, Evan. We`ll look for your movie, "Indoctrinate U."