On Monday night, I attended the first New York screening of Indoctrinate U, a smart new documentary by Evan Coyne Maloney about the domination of lefty politics and political correctness on college campuses. It’s a nicely-made, enjoyable film, and it’s often quite funny: Collegiate activism tends toward ridiculous, and the blithering incompetence displayed by campus administrators when confronted on camera by Maloney makes for some of the film’s best scenes.
I’ve been following the issue at least peripherally for a while now (I believe John Leo was the first conservative columnist I read on a regular basis), and I’m not all that long out of college myself, so I can’t say the film surprised me too much. For a variety of reasons, college administrators and faculty tend to lean left, and this, combined with the parentally-subsidized freedom afforded to many college students, leads to a lot of very silly behavior and practices.
The film isn’t perfect: Not every example is a knockout, and, like most independent filmmakers shooting on digital video without a lot of cash to throw around, Maloney doesn’t quite transcend the limitations of no-budget digital filmmaking. But for those who haven’t been keeping up with the many absurdities of the current campus political scene–or anyone who needs a reminder–the movie provides an amusing, entertaining primer on just how awry things have gone on some of the nation’s campuses.
Update: At Phi Beta Cons, Carol Iannone has also seen the film and Allison Kasic points us to this interview with Maloney.