Sickos: 'Indoctrinate U' & Evan Coyne Maloney

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EVAN COYNE MALONEY is often called "the right-wing Michael Moore," and that characterization won't be dispelled by a screening of his documentary, "Indoctrinate U" at the Kennedy Center on Friday as part of the American Film Renaissance Festival.

The movie plunges into the thickets of free speech, ideological conformity and censorship on American college campuses. In it, Maloney speaks with students and professors whose opinions were suppressed, who were fined, threatened or even sued for expressing unpopular views.

The twisty tale Maloney tells is one in which the layers of identity politics and administrative rear-covering are sliced thinner and thinner until they are almost invisible. The filmmaker is shown being forcibly ejected from more than one campus for such transgressions as trying to ask a school administrator a question or requesting a look at a document.

Maloney, a libertarian blogger and first-time filmmaker, talked about his trip through the higher education looking glass.

» EXPRESS: When did this issue arise for you?
» MALONEY: Well, it was something that I noticed when I was in college. I had a current events and opinion paper, and I noticed in my case that the paper was very often stolen and thrown away. I actually received death threats for an editorial I wrote arguing that Martin Luther King Jr. would oppose affirmative action as it is practiced today.

From the first day of orientation, we are told that the primary values of the college experience are tolerance and diversity, but there was no tolerance for opposing points of view. If you didn't share in the dominant political opinions on campus, you were basically a second-class citizen.

» EXPRESS: It actually sounds more like a subject for a book.
» MALONEY: Nobody has put together a comprehensive look at the problem ... a book doesn't have the same emotional immediacy that a film has.

» EXPRESS: In the film, you sure get thrown out a lot. Was that a surprise to you?
» MALONEY: Not really. I knew those administrators didn't want to talk to me, because by that point I had made about 200 attempts to contact different administrators to talk on camera about the actions they had taken. I really had no choice but to try and get people on camera. I felt that, in a lot of places, these administrators were effectively public employees, but it seemed that people had absolutely no recourse. [The school] was immune from public oversight.

» EXPRESS: What's your explanation?
» MALONEY: College campuses are a bit of community unto themselves, and I think one of the reasons the administrators were so reluctant to talk is because the cases that I covered were blown up in the media. They know the things that happen on campus that seem completely normal, like shutting down someone's speech, can look very different outside of a college campus.

» EXPRESS: Why aren't students speaking out?
» MALONEY: Students are savvy enough to know what sort of things they are expected to say and what sort of things will get them intro trouble if they do say it. A lot of people think of higher education as a stepping stone to a career rather than an end unto itself, the search for truth. But that doesn't work if you're teaching kids to take the path of least resistance.

» EXPRESS: You are going to be characterized as a right-wing nutjob after this film comes out.
» MALONEY: You know, people will classify me as whatever they want. I don't really mind that, because I've spent the last six years writing my opinions all the time on my Web site. In my opinion, it's better that any potential viewer of the film understand exactly where I'm coming from. It's really the bedrock of any free society — the ability to think and speak freely. And if those are not permissible, there's no way we can survive as a free society.

» Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW; Fri., $10; 202-467-4600. (Foggy Bottom-GWU)

Photo courtesy CRC Public Relations