Pun Salad

This documentary takes aim at a pretty fat target: the leftist political orthodoxy on American university campuses, and how it plays out to the detriment of students. There isn't a lot here that will surprise (say) a frequent reader of the website of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. The campus's political monoculture generates plenty of double standards and hypocrisy. Although lip service is paid to equality and integration, we get affirmative action and racial balkanization. They're all for diversity, except for ideological diversity.

And the self-proclaimed champions of tolerance turn out to be remarkably adept at humorless persecution of viewpoints at odds with theirs. One early scene shows Ward Connerly being shouted down at a speech, lest his views on affirmative action reach sensitive ears.

The filmmaker, Evan Coyne Maloney, has a keen eye for all this. We follow him into campus Women's Centers as he asks hapless inhabitants the directions to the "Men's Center". He records interactions—can't exactly call them interviews—with uncooperative administrators, many of whom call out the campus constabulary in response. This could have been tedious if overdone, but it worked for me.

There are also some talking heads mustered in support of the movie's thesis. Glenn Harlan Reynolds makes a brief appearance. K. C. Johnson, who was actively involved in the Duke lacrosse team travesty appears quite a bit.

I found myself amused and outraged in about equal amounts. All in all, much worth seeing.