My friend the filmmaker

A while back, while surfing the net for a column idea, I ran across a web site for little film called "Indoctrinate U." It's a documentary by filmmaker Evan Coyne Maloney about the lack of political pluralism on American college campuses. In the movie, Evan highlights several cases of incredible bias against students whose political views aren't shared by the educational establishment. At that time, there wasn't a way to see the film except at private screenings so I wrote to Evan and asked if I could borrow a DVD to show to a group of friends. He agreed and sent me a copy of the film.

It was an interesting experiment in "salon style" entertainment. Jim and I asked several friends for a casual dinner, after which we would view the film. We decided it would be more interesting to include friends of various political stripes -- some liberal, some conservatives (some of our best friends are...well you get it). After the screening, we even had Evan on speaker phone to take questions and comments from our small audience.

I can't say the evening was a great success, though the dinner wasn't bad. It turns out you really should avoid conversations about politics and religion in social settings, especially when your guests don't really know each other. Anyway, the good news is you don't have to borrow a DVD from Evan to see the movie -- it's now available at http://www.indoctrinate-u.com/pages/welcome.html.

Evan appeared earlier this week on Fox. Check out his appearance here: http://www.foxnews.com/video2/video08.html?videoId=b5248017-d745-4af9-933b-f03d7082861b&sMPlaylistID=

I recommend this film to everyone interested in politics and culture, but especially to young adults heading off to college. It's terrific food for thought.