The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) recently created a short video, “Think What We Think...Or Else: Thought Control on the American Campus,” to document the misdoings in the University of Delaware’s ideologically coercive residence life program. This is the first video documenting the Delaware “treatment” which NAS and FIRE successfully exposed in 2007 and 2008.
We are pleased to note that the video has gotten over 27,500 views since it went up on FIRE’s YouTube channel on March 31. Its popularity places the FIRE channel at #13 for Nonprofit Most Viewed This Month, where it is ranked near Greenpeace, PETA, and MPR. The video also earned 74 comments which sparked debate and kept the conversation going.
Appearing in interviews throughout the film are University of Delaware honors professor Jan Blits (president of the Delaware Association of Scholars), UD honors professor Linda Gottfredson (DAS secretary), FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff and Adam Kissel, and three UD students: Bill Rivers, Kelsey Lanan, and Alyssa Koser. At the end, Lukianoff pronounces, “You’ve just witnessed the most extensive and systematic attempt to mandate student belief that I’ve yet seen...In a free society, if you want to change people’s opinions, you need to rely on the power of your words and the persuasiveness of your arguments. In this case, the University relied instead on coercion, force, and threats.”
The video’s popularity is welcome news. It shows that this story resonates with thousands of Americans who care about freedom of speech and conscience on the college campus. We encourage you to watch the video and share the link with others.
