A few weeks ago, a colleague passed along a Nov. 15 blog entry by Tom Smith
sounding the alarm about a possible case of censorship:
Apparently some major state university has threatened a lawsuit
against the movie "Indoctrinate U," and the websites about the
movie have been temporarily (one hopes) frozen. What is going on
here? Which university has threatened them? And what with? This
should be exactly the sort of thing one should be able to find
out about in the blogosphere, but I see nothing on Instapundit,
Volokh or the usual suspects (I may have missed it though; if so,
sorry. Maybe I am the only one who doesn't know. It wouldn't be
the first time.)
This is news, oh fellow bloggers. [Evan Maloney, director of
"Indoctrinate U"] is understandably reluctant to comment. I
suspect he has gotten a cease and desist letter, and he and his
lawyers are deciding whether to push on and risk suit or perhaps
seek a declaratory judgment in some court or other. I am not First
Amendment scholar, but I use the First Amendment nearly every day.
Surely the sort of political commentary that the movie is, would
have a wide latitude under the Constitution, reviled post-colonial
document enforced by hegemonic white males though it may be. So
what gives? Minorities in the academy want to know.
Smith linked to a post on Maloney's blog:
Due to a threatened lawsuit from a major taxpayer-funded university,
the Indoctrinate U homepage has been taken down temporarily. On
The Fence Films LLC is deciding how best to proceed, and we will
not be commenting on anything until after our final response has
been executed.
Don't worry, though, this will not derail the film.
"Indoctrinate U" will be back.
Soon enough, it was. "Darren," a blogger who describes himself as "a
conservative teacher," wrote on Dec. 4 that "in what I can only assume is
a
victory for free speech and yet another loss for fascist lefties, the
Indoctrinate U web site is back up."
We contacted Maloney as soon as we got word of the shutdown of his Web
site.
He told us he wasn't yet able to discuss the matter, but promised to fill
us
in when he was. Having had our own brush with political censorship as a
college student lo those many years ago, we too assumed this was a case of
"fascist lefties" trying to protect themselves from exposure.
The reality is more ambiguous. Maloney sent us a statement explaining the
situation, which we've posted here [1]. This is, at least ostensibly, an
intellectual-property dispute that has nothing to do with the content of
the
movie.
In brief, a lawyer representing Indiana University wrote to Maloney's
company
early last month claiming that the "Indoctrinate U" logo was similar to
IU's.
Maloney does not concede the claim of infringement, arguing that
differences
between the two logos are "readily apparent" and that in any case his
movie
does not compete with IU's educational offerings. But he decided to stop
using
the logo anyway, figuring it was cheaper than fighting.
"In an act of good faith, we voluntarily took the Indoctrinate-U.com site
offline while we reviewed our options," he writes. He didn't publicly name
the
university because that "would have caused needless controversy and made
it
harder to reach a mutually agreeable resolution to the dispute." The Web
site
returned once the logo had been stripped from it, from the promotional
videos
and from the movie itself.
That's that, right? Well, not quite. According to Maloney:
The university is now demanding we hand over a sum of money
that would essentially bankrupt On The Fence Films.
I have to say, I'm a bit stunned. I understand that some
academics might have a problem with our film; it covers
academia's dirty little secrets. Nobody likes to be criticized.
But Indiana University is not mentioned in the film at all! So
their heavy-handedness seems a bit extreme.
Rather than ascribe negative motives to Indiana University,
I'd rather assume it's just a matter of ignorance about our
film: "Indoctrinate U" hasn't been screened within a six-hour
drive of Indiana University, so perhaps their legal team is just
unaware of its content. Maybe they're worried that we snuck our
cameras onto campus once or twice. If that's the case, then I
hope everything can be resolved by my personal assurance to the
Trustees of Indiana University: You can breathe easy. Your school
isn't in the film. So please--call off the dogs.
We've seen "Indoctrinate U," and the university officials who are featured
in
it come across looking both thuggish and incompetent, to very entertaining
effect. If we were running a university, we would be at pains to stay OFF
Evan
Maloney's radar screen. But then maybe the guys at IU have decided the
best
defense is a good offense.
[1]: http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110010952
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
|
