Manhattan Institute scholar and former UC Berkeley professor John McWhorter appears in Indoctrinate U--and has great things to say about the film. Writing in the New York Sun, McWhorter describes how attending the New York premiere earlier this week prompted him to think about the "Indoctrinate U-type episodes" in his own career:
The film got me thinking about how I was treated when I was teaching at Berkeley and wrote a book against racial preferences. ... there was, in fact, one 'Indoctrinate U'-type episode. A black education professor invited a black-ish star sociology professor to come to campus and "debate" me, and the event turned out to be an occasion for audience members loudly booing me and hurling extended tirades.To me, it was all in a day's work: you don't do what I do expecting not to be hated. What has never left me, however, is a chat I had with the education professor a few days later. He actually thought the event — a know-nothing burning in effigy in which my opponent had clearly not even read my book — had been a useful debate. To him, that public spanking was a productive and appropriate response to my opinions — at a university no less. I will never forget his sober expression, his sad, earnest eyes: he actually was sincere.
This is the ideology "Indoctrinate U" is about, and it is mistaken to treat these people as bullies, willfully precluding debate by hurling epithets like "racist" and "sexist." This analysis implies an insecurity of these people which they do not feel. They thrill as much to the idea of open dialogue as anyone — but they think that a radical leftist perspective is truth, not opinion. To them, dialogue about a conservative perspective's correctness is no more legitimate than dialogue about heliocentrism.
McWhorter acknowledges that "we cannot expect Indoctrinate U to make the standard-bearers of campus leftism look inward," but he still believes the film can help inspire important and meaningful change on campus.
"The students are ready. The day after September 11 I devoted my two classes to discussing the event. I placed myself firmly in the political middle and directed the discussion accordingly," he concludes. :After both classes, several students came up and thanked me for fostering a discussion where more views were welcome than ones from the hard left. I thought I was just doing my job — but to the types "Indoctrinate U" documents, I was selling out."