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A revealing debate
For several months, Evan Coyne Maloney's scorching film about how American colleges and universities stifle free expression has been garnering close attention from the media and from higher education leaders. The New York Post calls Indoctrinate U "alarming and funny." The Rocky Mountain News pronounces it "excellent." University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds calls it "a gripping hour and a half." And ACTA president Anne D. Neal, who appears in the film, has said that Indoctrinate U "has the potential to motivate and activate the younger generation on behalf of the free exchange of ideas."
Even the New York Times is paying attention. In a review published earlier this week, the paper of record devoted over 1,000 words to the film--and has sparked quite a remarkable response from readers across the political spectrum.
The Times article assesses Indoctrinate U in light of a recent case of censorship at Vassar:
The fact that the Times is covering Indoctrinate U at all shows how seriously people are taking Maloney's important contribution to our national dialogue about higher education. But Berger's take on the film as well as on the issue of campus speech leaves much to be desired. Having cast the Vassar incident as an example of free speech on campus, Berger goes on to suggest that Indoctrinate U overstates its case by focusing on isolated, atypical incidents. These gestures in turn drew swift and strong criticism from knowledgeable commentators.Does the film offer a fair picture of campus life in 2007, or is it just a pastiche of notorious events? One answer might be found here at Vassar, which faced its own dispute over what some called hate speech and others "political correctness," and emerged with its integrity more or less intact.
The Imperialist, a publication of the school's Moderate, Independent and Conservative Student Alliance, published a contributor's article in 2005 that criticized social centers for minority and gay students. The article called such centers "ghettos" and said they turned Vassar into a "zoological preserve."
Students complained that the language was insulting and called for banning The Imperialist. For weeks, the issue was debated by the student association, which finances the publication. Ultimately, the group withheld its money for one year and publication was suspended.
Students like Victor Monterrosa, a son of Salvadoran immigrants who recently graduated, still thinks that the question of whether students should be clustered by race or sexual orientation does not deserve a forum since Vassar "is supposed to protect diversity" and "these discussions ended up making us more polarized."
"There are students who feel comfortable putting us on the back burner who ended up fighting for free speech on campus," he said.
Others, like Randall Stuebner, a senior who describes himself as a Republican who votes Democratic, feel speech should be unfettered. "It's my duty to be as provocative as possible," he said.
What was notable was that Vassar, a college of 2,360 students founded in the 19th century on progressive ideals--and a place where conservatives remain a distinct minority--hashed out the matter without violence and did not trash or burn newspapers as has happened at other campuses.
The Imperialist is publishing once again. Vassar seems to have made a distinction between forbidding publication of an idea and not allowing gratuitous racial insults to be hurled while examining that idea.
"Ultimately, free speech was respected," said Mark Goreczny, 20, a student. "There was a dialogue, polarized as it may have been."
Foundation for Individual Rights in Education president Greg Lukianoff, who is quoted in the article, criticizes Berger for misrepresenting the facts. Noting that he spent hours with Berger explaining the issues involved in campus speech, outlining the law for him, and supplying him with numerous examples of schools that have violated students' rights, Lukianoff expresses absolute shock at the article's bad faith:
... any journalist should recognize that suspending a newspaper is a drastic step. Nonetheless, Berger overlooks the disturbing ramifications of The Imperialist's punishment, content instead to praise Vassar's student body for responding "without violence" ... While I can think of few things more chilling than employing violence, theft and destruction to suppress unpopular opinions, lauding students--as Berger does here--simply for not resorting to such illegal, illiberal and immoral tactics is stunning. The bottom line is that a student newspaper criticized the polarization of students by race and orientation--and, for doing so, the newspaper lost funding and was suspended for a year. Exactly how is that an acceptable outcome at an American liberal arts university?
At Volokh.com, Dartmouth trustee and George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki agrees with Lukianoff that Berger is confused about what free speech is. "What struck me about the article," he notes, "was the utter confusion by the reporter... about the central point of the article--the distinction between controversial ideas on one hand and abusive or derogatory language on the other." Making it clear that he is not himself endorsing the content of the students' censored speech, Zywicki explains how Berger's attempt to distinguish between offensive ideas and offensive language is nonsensical--not only according to the law, but also according to the parameters Berger himself lays out. Finally, Zywicki praises Maloney's work: "It is a good movie and Maloney lets the students and faculty involved in these incidents simply tell their story."
Maloney himself takes issue with the article's cavalier treatment of facts:
Most of the article was spent addressing cases that weren't in the film, rather than addressing what was in the film. The author also claims that "professors, administrators and students say the national picture is far more complicated than that pictured in 'Indoctrinate U,'" although I don't know how they could know that, because none of those people actually saw the film.
One of the examples cited in the article (but not the film) was the case of a student paper published by Vassar's Moderate, Independent and Conservative Student Alliance. It was an odd selection of cases if the point was to argue that there's more "nuance" to reality than what is shown in Indoctrinate U, because a close inspection of this case shows that it actually backs up the thesis of my film.
The paper was de-funded and shut down for a year after publishing a piece criticizing the school's funding of special "social centers" for minority and gay students. But because the paper was eventually allowed to start publishing again--the following year--the Vassar case is presented as one in which "[u]ltimately, free speech was respected."
Sorry, but shutting down a paper for a year is not a benign event, and it is certainly not one in which we can say "free speech was respected." If Homeland Security shut down the Times for a year after exposing ways that we track terrorist financing, I'm sure they'd understand my position on this.
Rather than address the multiple cases in the film where people were told to see school psychologists because they had the wrong set of views, rather than address the fact that people's academic careers were put in jeopardy for things like being registered in the "wrong" political party, this piece ignores the evidence presented in the film to set up an alternative straw man to knock down.
And when the author finally gets around to discussing cases that are actually in the film, he minimizes them by leaving out the most vital information.
One student, he says, "underwent a daylong disciplinary hearing for posting a flier." Actually, that student had the police called on him, he was ordered to see a psychologist, he was questioned by an attorney without being allowed to have one of his own, he was threatened with expulsion, and he was "convicted" by the university for an offense that they couldn't even define when asked.
The student's crime? Posting a flyer which promoted an upcoming speech by an author named Mason Weaver. It merely had a picture of him, the title of his book, and the date, time and location of the event. Yet university regarded the flyers as "literature of an offensive racial nature," and used it to railroad a student whose views they didn't like. This case lasted 18 months and ended up in federal court before the student finally prevailed.
I think all that amounts to a tad more than "a daylong disciplinary hearing."
These reasoned correctives to a problematic article supply a strong contrast to the disappointment expressed by Craig Smith of the American Federation of Teachers at the "Free Exchange on Campus" blog. Where Lukianoff, Zywicki, and Maloney criticize Berger's article for downplaying the widespread problem Maloney documents, Smith thinks Berger both misunderstands the Vassar case and gives Maloney's critique too much credit. "Vassar isn't an exception," he writes; "it is the rule (whether you agree with how they handled the situation or not). They involved students, faculty, and administrators and collectively made a decision. The whole process from students trying to find a voice to express a position, to outrage at what they said, to the resolution, is all educational and the reason to protect the free exchange of ideas and to let college communities handle these situations as a community rather than having trustees or legislators policing campuses."
Smith wants to deny the existence of the problems documented in Indoctrinate U. But his attempt to do so unwittingly corroborates the film's argument. If it's true that Vassar is "not an exception" and that it "is the rule"--and organizations such as ACTA and FIRE have found that the censorious and intolerant behavior of Vassar's administration is indeed quite typical--then Smith is not actually disagreeing with the claims of either organization or with those of Indoctrinate U. Rather, he is defending schools that censor by defining their punitive failure to respect free speech as acceptable, reasonable, and good--even as the essence of free exchange. But few would accept the argument that a college's year-long inability to allow students to engage in unfettered exchange represents a triumph of intellectual vitality. And few would seriously argue that colleges and universities are serving the ideal of free inquiry when they punish protected speech.
Posted by acta online at June 29, 2007 04:17 PM
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Comments
"What was notable was that Vassar, a college of 2,360 students founded in the 19th century on progressive ideals--and a place where conservatives remain a distinct minority--hashed out the matter without violence and did not trash or burn newspapers as has happened at other campuses."
We have traveled very far down the road of fascism indeed where anything less than violence and the burning of dissenting views counts as "emerging with [...] integrity more or less intact." If people took basic history courses, they would understand what the film, and this commentary on it, really mean for both education and society at large.
Very, very scary.
Posted by: Federal Dog at June 29, 2007 04:37 PM
I notice that no attorney was quoted on the definition of "censorship" used by ACTA.
No one at Vassar was prohibited from expressing himself freely. Vassar is not a government and has no power to coerce students beyond that given by its contract with them -- which is the same power that your video store, cruise line, retirement home, or any other contracting party has over you.
Vassar seems to deserve a scolding, but to pretend that "censorship" took place or even could exist weakens the position of the watchdogs, making them look shrill and unthinking.
Posted by: Feral Dog at July 2, 2007 09:07 AM
"No one at Vassar was prohibited from expressing himself freely."
The paper was shut down for a year.
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 2, 2007 11:30 AM
How does the shutdown of the paper by a private student association, which funded it in the first place, prohibit anyone from expressing himself? Every student was just as free from government censorship after the shutdown as he was before. If ACTA took down this website on the basis of someone's comments, would he be prohibited from expressing himself in any way (let alone by any government)?
Are you trying to say that you believe that some kind of private censorship can exist, perhaps that Vassar's power to expel a student makes it into an arm of New York state? Please elaborate.
Posted by: feral dog at July 3, 2007 11:08 AM
No one said that Vassar is a state school. Your bad faith is obvious, and is your inability to refute concerns raised by the film and Vassar's actions. Contrary to your false contention, shutting down the paper based on viewpoint alone is prohibiting people from expressing themselves freely.
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 3, 2007 01:30 PM
I understand it now. If you're a professor -- say, one of 88 at Duke -- then your speech can be censored and you can be punished for it by your employers with no infringement on the ideal of freedom of speech.
But if you're a student, and a student committee decides your speech isn't worth funding, then you're a victim of infringement of freedom of speech.
Get it? Lefty profs are subject to the Brain Police. Conservative students are not.
Posted by: Linval Thompson at July 4, 2007 01:33 AM
"If you're a professor -- say, one of 88 at Duke -- then your speech can be censored and you can be punished for it by your employers with no infringement on the ideal of freedom of speech."
I am unaware of sanctions levied against them. What sanctions did Duke impose?
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 4, 2007 11:48 AM
Federal wrote: "No one said that Vassar is a state school. Your bad faith is obvious[.]"
Federal, the point is that Vassar is not a state school. That's what I've been trying to say. Vassar is not a state school. Therefore any action it could possibly take (up to and including expulsion, which is the extent of the power it has over students) cannot be censorship by definition.
Can you explain why you believe that any institution other than the state is capable of prohibiting someone from expressing himself freely? Governments censor, but cruise lines, retirement homes, private colleges, hotels, and any others with whom you contract for services would not be capable of censoring you, even if they wanted to. What could they do besides kick you out? Nothing. They simply have no power over you that you have not given them through your contract.
Some student's confusion of Vassar with the state of New York does not somehow make Vassar's actions those of the state; a private school's halt in funding for a newspaper simply cannot constitute a prohibition against any student's free expression. He is not prohibited from writing articles in some other paper, or posting them on the web, or photocopying them and handing them out on streetcorners, all of which are actions a government could try to prohibit but which Vassar simply could not, even if it wanted to.
Posted by: feral dog at July 10, 2007 11:47 AM
You are confusing censorship per se with a constitutional violation. Only the latter is impossible when the school is private.
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 10, 2007 04:52 PM
"You are confusing censorship per se with a constitutional violation. Only the latter is impossible when the school is private."
No, censorship per se is also impossible when the school is private. I'm defining censorship as government prohibition of expression, since anything else is merely a difference of opinion between private parties and thus fully permissible -- how would you define censorship?
Posted by: Feral Dog at July 13, 2007 10:36 AM
The fact that you have declared censorship restricted to government does not change its actual definition. Censorship means the removal and withholding of information from the public by any controlling group or body. Media commonly censor matters, as do businesses to protect commercial practices and intellectual property.
You should take the time to inform yourself before posting.
Posted by: Federal Dog at July 13, 2007 02:33 PM
Your definition of censorship is incorrect as well as being so broad as to be meaningless. What's the point of defining censorship so broadly that it would include parents who tell their kids to be quiet in the movies, or a Fox News reporter who declines to report on a press release by the ACLU for political reasons? That's not censorship, it's a business decision. No government (nor even any private party) has told the ACLU that it can't say something.
And how can a company's decision not to release its secret formula or internal memos be considered censorship? Your family and your employer have no duty to make their private things public, which means that their decisions to keep private information private cannot possibly be considered censorship. Should a large corporation be any different? Do you draw the line based on whether you have a positive feeling about the particular "censoring" company? It's okay for a neighborhood drycleaner or grocery store but not for Coca-Cola or Vassar to express its disagreement with a private party?
What makes your definition of censorship the "actual definition" anyway? Your authority?
Posted by: Feral Dog at July 16, 2007 01:59 PM