Persistence of Vision

University of Colorado chancellor Bud Peterson learned about intellectual diversity--and the failure of higher education to foster it reliably or responsibly--the hard way. He was at the helm when the Ward Churchill scandal broke, and he set the tone for the eventual decision to fire Churchill for research misconduct. His words then were indicative of his profound grasp of how failures of integrity such as Churchill's affect students:

I want to reaffirm that the University's decision was not based on Professor Churchill's writings, politics or expressed personal views, but rather upon his scholarship and its quality. That scholarship was examined by three separate panels and more than 20 tenured faculty members who conducted a thorough review, and who found that it fell beneath the acceptable standards of our profession and the expectations of faculty here at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Academic freedom carries with it a high level of responsibility that we as an academic community cannot allow to be compromised. When these issues are raised, we have a responsibility -- in fact, the obligation -- to act accordingly. Perhaps the most important lesson for our community in the painful ordeal surrounding Professor Churchill's case is rooted in the values we must uphold and convey to our students. The young people who come to us are transformed by this institution, and they, in turn, transform it with their energy, idealism and hard work. They deserve to be taught by faculty who embody high academic and personal standards. In a time such as ours, in which the very concept of "truth" is often bracketed by relativism, battered with cynicism and reduced by manipulation and "spin," our students must know that when they enter our classrooms, they occupy sacred territory where truth is always pursued on a foundation of ethics, honor and integrity.

The ongoing debate about higher ed reform tends to be quite polarized, and there are many issues upon which the different sides of the debate are seemingly never going to agree. But Peterson's plans for a conservative chair were different. They had a peculiar unifying effect as commenters from all sides expressed strong reservations about a faculty position that seemed more concerned with candidates' political viewpoints than with their expertise, and that also contained more than a hint of tokenism. Chancellor Peterson's efforts are understandable, many conceded, but that does not make them especially viable.

MPI followed the debate surrounding the proposed conservative chair with interest, as it expressed and embodied many of the problems, issues, and questions charted by MPI fellow Evan Coyne Maloney in Indoctrinate U. Maloney's sharp, hard-hitting expose of intolerance and double standards on campus has received rave reviews, and has been the subject of several articles in the New York Times and other major papers. It's also taken campuses by storm ever since its inaugural campus screening at Duke in January. So when we learned about Chancellor Peterson's interest in diversifying the intellectual atmosphere at Boulder, we took the liberty of sending him a copy of the film and encouraging him to schedule a campus screening when school is back in session. Indoctrinate U has already prompted constructive, searching dialogue on upwards of thirty campuses, including Cornell, UC Santa Cruz, Indiana, Wisconsin, Michigan State, Bucknell, Oberlin, and Rutgers. Here's hoping Boulder will add itself to that list.

This weekend, the University of Southern California will host "How Free Is the University?", an international conference that gathers some of the most celebrated minds from the United States and abroad to debate the present state and future of academic freedom around the world. The Moving Picture Institute will have a strong presence at the conference: MPI's founder, film producer and civil liberties advocate Thor Halvorssen, will participate in a Saturday morning session on indoctrination, ideology, and intimidation in academe, and on Sunday evening, the American Freedom Alliance and the USC College Republicans will co-host the Los Angeles premiere of MPI fellow Evan Coyne Maloney's acclaimed documentary Indoctrinate U.

A powerful film that documents how America’s colleges and universities have degraded our educational atmosphere with speech codes, biased teaching and scholarship, and entrenched double standards, Maloney's film met with a rapturous response from students when it toured campuses nationwide during the spring semester. "The Indoctrinate U screening was a great success!" enthused a student at the College of St. Benedict and St. John's University. "I was pleasantly surprised by how funny people thought it was." An East Tennessee State student remarked that "those in attendance will definitely be looking at their experiences on campus differently in the future." And a Cornell student called Maloney's documentary "a rare opportunity for validation."

Sunday's premiere will be held at 8 p.m. in USC's spectacular 1200-seat Bovard Auditorium. Admission is free for students with valid ID; the admission charge for non-students is $10. In honor of Father's Day, a father and child may enter for the price of one.

Reviewing James and Maureen Tusty's The Singing Revolution for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, film critic Joe Williams called the film "inspiring if one-sided," questioning whether the directors ignored ethnic violence against the many Russians who entered Estonia under Soviet transplantation programs (such ethnic Russians now comprise a quarter of Estonia's population). But after his review ran, Williams received a phone call from a reader that changed his presumption that the Tustys' documentary glosses over a bloody history of ethnic strife:

For most Americans, the tragedies wrought by Stalin, Hitler, Mao and other tyrants are mere abstractions that we glimpse on the History Channel while we're searching for "reality" TV. But for a reader from Shiloh, Ill., a documentary about Estonia called "The Singing Revolution" (which is currently playing at the Tivoli) was a chapter from his life story.

On the voice mail he left for me, the gentleman did not reveal his name; but the accent and the emotion in his voice convinced me his story was genuine. He said when was a student, the Soviets who had wrested Estonia from the Nazis--and would occupy it for sixty years--labeled him a capitalist sympathizer and sent him to a series of concentration camps in Siberia. (His family's problems with Russians started earlier, when his uncle's shoes were stolen by Josef Stalin's father.)

The man was back in Estonia during the so-called Singing Revolution of the late '80s, when large public gatherings were galvanized by patriotic folk songs. The film suggests that as the numbers swelled and Soviet tanks rolled into the Baltic nations, the people responded with non-violent resistance.

I said in my review that the film was one-sided, because surely there was bloodshed and retribution on both sides of the struggle. But maybe there really is such a thing as heroic pacifism, and the will of the people can't be stopped when they unite behind their principles.

Williams does well to acknowledge that the Estonian people did not let destructive ethnic conflict supplant their common pursuit of freedom. Their country's peaceful triumph over authoritarianism has since allowed the small Baltic nation to establish itself as a solidly democratic parliamentary republic, to liberalize its economy, and to expand individual freedoms beyond once-wildest imaginings. The Heritage Foundation now ranks Estonia only marginally behind the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom among the world's freest countries, an achievement that is all the more remarkable for having been achieved peacefully, democratically, and cooperatively in less than two decades.

James and Maureen Tusty's The Singing Revolution is now screening in theaters across the United States. For more details of current and upcoming screenings, see the film's website at SingingRevolution.com.

When Senator Barack Obama gave this year's commencement address at Wesleyan University, he had harsh words for those who would choose private enterprise over collective obligation:

You can take your diploma, walk off this stage, and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and the other things that our money culture says you should buy. You can choose to narrow your concerns and live life in a way that tries to keep your story separate from America's.

But I hope you don't. Not because you have an obligation to those who are less fortunate, although I believe you do have that obligation. Not because you have a debt to all those who helped you get to where you are today, although I do believe you have that debt to pay.

It's because you have an obligation to yourself. Because our individual salvation depends on collective salvation. Because thinking only about yourself, fulfilling your immediate wants and needs, betrays a poverty of ambition. Because it's only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role that you'll play in writing the next great chapter in the American story.

While few would deny that Americans have obligations beyond their immediate wants and needs, Senator Obama's contemptuous opposition to "the big house," "the nice suits," and "our money culture" is tinged with the kinds of hypocrisy documented by MPI fellow Nick Tucker in his forthcoming documentary film Do As I Say. Adapted from the bestselling book by Peter Schweizer, Tucker's film highlights the many public figures who preach one philosophy but live by another.

Wesleyan graduates may have been uplifted by Mr. Obama's vision of "collective salvation." But they may not know that the same senator who dissuades them from chasing after big houses actually lives with his family in a stately $1.65 million Georgian-revival mansion, replete with four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases made from Honduran mahogany, and a thousand-bottle wine cellar. They may not realize that the politician who scathingly dismisses sartorial elegance was recenty named one of the world's best dressed men by Esquire magazine, thanks to his wardrobe of "sharply tailored two-piece suits" and his "peerless collection of light-blue ties." And they may not be aware that the candidate who rails against America's "money culture" is doing quite well for himself financially: In 2005, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle reported a combined income of $1.67 million, placing them well above America's median annual household income of $48,201.

Senator Obama is far from alone among public figures who criticize capitalism, private enterprise, and personal luxury while living comfortably and profitably within a system they profess to detest. Chasing similar hypocrisy from coast to coast, Tucker's Do As I Say gives us an extraordinary exposé of the Kennedys' oil profits and offshore accounts, the Clintons' predatory lending schemes, Michael Moore's secret stock portfolio and lavish lakeside mansion, Noam Chomsky's multi-million-dollar irrevocable trusts, and much, much more. The film is still in production, but you can visit DoAsISayMovie.com to view the trailer, read the filmmakers' blog, and sign up for a screening in your area.

Congratulations to MPI fellow Ben Lewis, whose remarkable documentary about Communist jokes, Hammer & Tickle, now has a hardcover companion. Here's what the London Times has to say about it:

This marvellously original new study of the collapse of the Soviet bloc began as an article on communist jokes in Prospect magazine. Ben Lewis's thesis is not simply that jokes alleviated the sufferings of those who lived under Soviet communism during those long, grey decades, but that by constantly depicting communism as ludicrous and unworkable, they ultimately - along with numerous other factors, of course - helped bring about its collapse.

Lewis has worked hard and travelled far and wide in pursuit of his mission, or obsession. He interviews an ancient Soviet-era cartoonist in his Moscow tower block, now aged 107, who once made jokes against Trotsky to please Stalin. He looks up Lech Walesa, still living in Gdansk, and now rather an embittered figure, like so many former political leaders. And he unearths the kind of jokes that wouldn't necessarily work too well today in the pub. One from the early days, for instance, goes, “An old peasant woman is visiting Moscow zoo, when she sets eyes on a camel for the first time. ‘Oh my God,' she says, ‘look what the Bolsheviks have done to that horse!'

[...]

[H]is study is a fine tribute to the joyous, humane anarchy of laughter, whose nearest political analogue is that ramshackle, chaotic system of political wishful thinking called democracy. His book even has a moral, which is that we should never stop making jokes about Gordon Brown and David Cameron, eco-warriors and idiot police chiefs, billionaire oligarchs and incompetent jihadists... the targets are countless, as always.

Meanwhile, my favourite joke here, for what it's worth: “What stage comes between socialism and communism? Alcoholism.”

Film may be art, or entertainment, or education--but it's also business. Very big business. The two cannot be separated--and must be thought about together. That essential insight inspired MPI intern Jonathan Willbanks to found the Southern California Business Film Festival this past spring. As a USC freshman studying business and cinematic arts, Willbanks brought with him to college experience founding and running two successful e-businesses--and the soul of a cinematic entrepreneur. The SCBFF brought together business students and film students in the effort to make short films centering on business--and it was a timely success.

Here's what Willbanks had to say to TheStreet.com:

TheStreet.com: Who is the festival's target audience?

Willbanks: The competitive student film screening will be open to the entire student body and the public. Attendance is free at all of the events, which allows us to market to a very large audience. USC plays an integral role in the Los Angeles community and we want to open it to anyone who might find entertainment or education by attending.

As a business-themed film festival, our primary target audience is business and film students. But given the popularity of film -- especially at USC -- we've seen a lot of interest and participation from students of widely disparate fields of study. We have international relations, journalism, communications, and even a neuroscience student competing in the festival.

TheStreet.com: Why is now a good time to start a business film festival?

Willbanks: I think the potential has probably been there for a quite a while. No one's just seized upon it yet. I do think that the potential for success of a business film festival is probably stronger now than it was just two or three years ago. The whole world seems to be embracing business at an increasing and unprecedented rate. I think students are starting to pick up on this and realize how important a firm grasp of business is -- regardless of their future profession.

Business affects every aspect of our lives. I think that as the world has become more globalized, U.S. businesses have had to step up their game to remain competitive in the now global business services market. Students are aware, or at least can sense on some level, this recent shift toward higher performance, knowledge, and educational expectations in the business world, making them far more open to the exploration of business concepts.

It seems that film students want to enhance their understanding of business, while business students want the practical management experience the festival provides, along with the ability to express their business knowledge and skills through an artistic outlet, an opportunity rarely afforded to business students.

TheStreet.com: What was the biggest challenge the students had in making business-themed films?

Willbanks: Before viewing the final submissions, I was worried that students might try to force the business concepts into the films, making the concepts obtrusive and distracting rather than beneficial and educational. Nearly all of the teams avoided this pitfall and managed to work their business content into the films in a natural way.

TheStreet.com: What is your take on the submitted student films?

Willbanks: We received a very diverse range of submissions, ranging from lighthearted comedies to moving melodramas to dark thrillers. Each team learned something different, but it's clear from the films that all of them learned something about business -- often in creative and indirect ways.

For example, one film, Big Bang, is a comedy about a business student who is given an assignment to create a working business plan. Upon cursory examination, the film simply looks like a modernized short version of Risky Business. But when you break it down, the students (not to mention the audience), have learned about demographics in market research, the value of niche markets, supply and demand and the high profit potential of a high demand/low supply scenario, and market competition.

TheStreet.com: What is your favorite business film of all time?

Willbanks: Without a doubt, There Will be Blood. It packs a heavy duty educational wallop, leaving the viewer with a pretty thorough history lesson on the birth of the oil industry in the US.

Bronwen Hughes' 1996 adaptation of Louise Fitzhugh's 1964 classic, Harriet the Spy is a surprising and refreshing conversion of a great novel to film. Set in a timeless, harmless Manhattan filled with primary colors and devoid of distracting devices--phones, computers, televisions--Harriet the Spy updates Fitzhugh's novel by taking it outside of technology, and so outside of time. In this, it anticipates Napoleon Dynamite, Juno, and other movies about adolescent life. And it also says something--by not saying something--about the role technology is playing in isolating and dividing us. You can't have an effective teen film if everyone in it is spending every moment texting on their cell phones or plugged into their iPods. You have to strip a film of all that paraphernalia if you want to portray personalities and relationships.

Hughes saw this instinctively and pre-emptively, well before things began to get to the over-wired state they are in today. And she used the simplified setting--at once very 90s and still somewhat 60s--to bring Fitzhugh's remarkable tale of budding individualism to life. Harriet spends much of the sixth grade being bullied and ostracized for being different--instead of joining the crowd, she watches it and writes down what she sees in her notebook, and what she sees is not always pretty, and what she suffers when she's caught is not pretty at all. But she has strength of character to see her through, thanks to a nanny named Ole Golly. She stands by what she believes, does not surrender her sense of self, and winds up happier, wiser, and better liked because of it.

When Harriet the Spy was first published in 1964, it caused a sensation. Harriet's character was too unusual, too unlike her closest literary counterpart, Nancy Drew. People were so uncomfortable with the book's individualist message that they even banned it. Individualism is scary stuff -- which is exactly the point of the book--and the movie. As Ole Golly tells Harriet, "You know what? You're an individual, and that makes people nervous. And it's gonna keep making people nervous for the rest of your life."

You know you want an Indoctrinate U t- shirt. Or keychain. Or mousepad. Or mug. Get your IU gear here.

When Aldous Huxley published Brave New World, his dystopian novel about the consequences of excessive state-run social engineering, his purpose was to satirize--and terrorize--the utopian faith of socialists who believed in the oxymoronic prospect of a benevolent totalitarianism. Huxley was seeking to provide an alternative, and an antidote, to the dangerous utopian fantasies of writers such as H.G. Wells and George Bernard Shaw--and what he got instead was almost universal disapproval. The critics panned the book--and the censors banned it. Today, Brave New World is an acknowledged classic, a vital and historic statement about the damage collectivism does to human individuality--but it's still on the censors' most wanted list: The American Library Association ranks it #52 on its list the 100 Most Challenged Books from 1990-2000.

And small wonder--this novel is no longer futuristic. Its insights into how readily humans sacrifice themselves to trivial amusements and easy distractions have become the stuff of contemporary psychology. As Christopher Hitchens put it in a 1999 article, "the forbidding dystopia of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four already belongs, both as a text and as a date, with Ur and Mycenae, while the hedonist nihilism of Huxley still beckons toward a painless, amusement-sodden, and stress-free consensus."

So it's timely indeed that the moment has finally come for the first major motion picture adaptation of Huxley's novel. Huxley's estate was in dispute for a number of years--but now that the issues have been resolved, the way forward to this necessary and overdue film is open. Ridley Scott will direct and Leonardo Di Caprio will star.

Last fall, playwright and filmmaker David Mamet scandalized the entertainment world--and the world of the political left--by using the left-leaning pages of the Village Voice to come out as a libertarian. In "Why I Am No Longer a Brain-Dead Liberal," Mamet spoke of his mid-life reckoning with the false collectivist assumptions of his youth, of how that has led him to a new appreciation of the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers, and of how he has been delighted to discover the work of freedom-oriented thinkers such as Milton Friedman and Thomas Sowell.

"I realized that the time had come for me to avow my participation in that America in which I chose to live, and that that country was not a schoolroom teaching values, but a marketplace," he wrote. "A free-market understanding of the world meshes more perfectly with my experience than that idealistic vision I called liberalism."

It was a delicious moment for freedom and common sense -- and it was also no surprise to anyone who has ever regarded Mamet's work through the lens of liberty. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's 1946 play, is a stunning exploration of the importance of due process, of justice, and of standing up for principle even when the personal price is high. It frequently appears on lists of favorite libertarian films. Likewise, Mamet's Oleanna, which began as a two-person play and then became a singularly gripping film, explores with excruciating precision the way in which "sexual harassment" as a category can wreak havoc with fairness, honesty, principled behavior, and due process for the accused.

Mamet's work has long had freedom woven into its essential fabric. It's just that now, his formal sense of his politics has caught up.