Not content to push global warming theories on students even when temperatures don’t support them, Florida Gulf Coast University is trying to censor skepticism off of its campus. When Brandon Wasicsko of the FGCU Eagles 4 Liberty club attempted to advertise a showing of the documentary Not Evil, Just Wrong, Patrick J. Greene, an associate professor of Educational Technology, went berserk. “This email is a violation of the FGCU policy to not use our email system for Political propaganda,” Greene wrote in an electronic missive to Wasicsko on October 19, 2009. “It also is a fundamentalist right-wing set of lies about the environmental necessity to control our carbon emissions so that our children and there’s [sic] can have the same quality of life that we enjoy.”
“This film, [sic] also represents the polar opposite of what FGCU is trying to inculcate into our students through the Colloquium requirement, namely a profound respect and understanding of our environmental responsibilities. If you feel that our lust for power should allow corporations to damage our health, well-being and future then present that idea in a forum that shows some responsibility to the University that is educating you.”
Greene then forwarded his correspondence with Wasicsko to the provost at FGCU. Although he toned down his reaction, his biases still come through.
“I did not view the trailer you sent out, because I was not objecting to the content, only the delivery method,” he admitted in an e-mail to Eagles 4 Liberty on October 27, 2009. “So, I am not aware of your ideas.”
“I teach Colloquium, and in that position, I feel the need to be open to student views, many of which (on this campus) are fundamentalist and right-wing with little or no scientific backing. Whatever views a student expresses, I expect him/her to be able to back that up with evidence. I do not, though, expect student views to be similar to my own.”
Wasicsko contacted the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) which provides legal representation to students in danger of losing their first amendment rights. He also made contact with Adrienne Royer, who runs the Leadership Institute’s new website, campusreform.org, an online forum on which students from across the country can post information on their classes and campuses and alerted us to the problem.
Not Evil, Just Wrong tells the story of what happened in Great Britain when the government attempted to make the showing of An Inconvenient Truth mandatory in British schools. Parents questioned the accuracy of Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning film and a British court agreed, finding nine errors of fact which the former vice president has yet to correct.
Greene does not teach the only aggressively environmental course at FGCU. For instance, Unitarian minister Wayne Robinson presides over Foundations of Civic Engagement, in which students spend their semester trying to eliminate tobacco use in the surrounding county by:
- “Presenting to area civic organizations and municipalities, information about the ‘Great American Smokeout Day: Nov. 19’ (GASOD) and the smoke free drive in Lee County, by ‘Tobacco Free Lee.’”;
- “Monitoring compliance with local, state and federal regulations on tobacco sales and advertising at retail outlets, especially convenience stores.”; and
- “Using a team and class-constructed survey(s), conduct person-to-person polls with students at FGCU re: FGCU’s becoming a smoke-free campus.”
Disparate as these topics—climate change and tobacco use—are, there is a common thread through them. This constant was probably enunciated best by the winner of Accuracy in Media’s Reid Irvine award for investigative journalism, author M. Stanton Evans: “Liberals don’t care what you do as long as it’s compulsory.”
Malcolm A. Kline is the executive director of Accuracy in Academia.
