Press Releases
Documentary 'Indoctrinate U' to Spotlight intellectual Diversity, ACTA
March 29, 2007
ACTA Press Release
WASHINGTON, DC—The makers of the documentary Indoctrinate U recently announced that their film will be released in the coming months. The landmark motion picture will expose the lack of intellectual diversity on today’s campuses—and will feature the American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s efforts to fix the problem.
“This documentary is a call to arms for trustees and alumni who care deeply about quality higher education,” ACTA president Anne D. Neal said. “Indoctrinate U vividly illustrates how the stifling intellectual monoculture on campus denies students and faculty the robust exchange of ideas they deserve.”
The director of Indoctrinate U, Evan Coyne Maloney, interviewed students, professors, administrators, and higher education experts for two years. In the trailer, one student—who was punished for posting a flier advertising a political speaker—says, “The big buzzword on college campuses is diversity, diversity, diversity. They talk about diversity of skin color, they talk about having different ethnicities come to campus. The university is totally ignoring diversity of thought.”
Elsewhere in the film, Maloney speaks with ACTA’s Neal in New York about the organization’s nationwide survey of college students. In 2004, ACTA commissioned the Center for Survey Research and Analysis at the University of Connecticut to poll undergraduates at the top 50 colleges and universities as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
The results included:
49% said professors frequently injected political comments into their courses, even if they had nothing to do with the subject;
48% reported campus presentations on political issues that “seem totally one-sided”;
46% said professors “use the classroom to present their personal political views”; and
42% reported reading assignments that presented only one side of a controversial issue.
In February of 2007, ACTA commissioned a similar poll of undergraduates at the two largest public universities in Missouri. There, legislators are considering a bill that would require the state’s public universities to issue simple annual reports on the actions they are taking in pursuit of intellectual diversity. The results were similar:
58.7% of the students reported that “some professors use the classroom to present their personal political views”;
56.8% reported courses that “have readings which present only one side of a controversial issue”; and
51% reported “courses in which students feel they have to agree with the professor’s political or social views in order to get a good grade.”
“Something is rotten on our campuses, and now Indoctrinate U will show it on the silver screen,” Neal noted. “I look forward to continuing to work with trustees and alumni on solutions to the problems this film vividly documents.”
The American Council of Trustees and Alumni is a bipartisan, national nonprofit dedicated to academic freedom, academic quality, and accountability in higher education. ACTA has a network of trustees and alumni around the country and has issued numerous reports including How Many Ward Churchills?, Intellectual Diversity: Time for Action, The Hollow Core, and Losing America’s Memory: Historical Illiteracy in the 21st Century. For further information, contact ACTA at 202-467-6787 or visit www.goacta.org.