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Michigan State Program Called 'Thought Control'
by Pete Winn, associate editor

University seminar focuses on changing student beliefs.

Michigan State University is conducting what critics call a "brainwashing" program -- and a free-speech organization is calling for it to be dismantled.

Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), said the university’s Student Accountability in Community Seminar (SAC) forces students whose speech or behavior is deemed unacceptable to undergo ideological reeducation at their own expense

"This is truly one of the most Orwellian re-education programs we've ever seen," he told CitizenLink. "The program isn't satisfied with punishing students who have committed actual offenses. It seems to want to change students from the inside out."

Lukianoff said one 20-year-old woman was forced to attend the seminar for multiple sessions because she got into a fight with her boyfriend and slammed a door.

"For that, she had the honor of sitting down with an administrator who had tried to get her to explain correctly what she had done wrong," Lukianoff said. "Something like that wouldn't even raise to the level of an offense in most circumstances."

The program, he added, came out of the domestic-violence program at Michigan State. Students can be forced to attend the seminar if a university administrator determines they have committed "aggressive" behavior.

"It seems to look at all students with an eye that expressing any anger is unacceptable -- and that students are basically violent, ticking time bombs," he said.

Another example: A male student was "sentenced" to attend the re-education seminar because he had been rude to a dormitory receptionist. When asked what he had done wrong, the student said, "I shouldn't have been rude to the receptionist."

"That answer wasn't good enough," Lukianoff said. "The answer that they really wanted, after giving him 'the power-and-control wheel' and having him circle what kind of 'privilege' he had abused, was that he really felt like he was entitled to be in the dormitories -- and that was wrong."

Failure to submit to the program -- or to confess wrongdoing -- can lead to a student being prevented from taking classes.

This is brainwashing, he said, not too dissimilar from the type that the Russians and Chinese Communists utilized in the 1950s. Lukianoff calls it "compelled speech."

"Compelled speech is completely incompatible with a free society," he said. "Not only do you have to confess what you've done wrong, you have to confess the attitudes you had in the first place -- and say what you did wrong correctly. This is completely invasive."

Political correctness is well-entrenched on college campuses.

"The sad thing is that speech codes are probably more prevalent than they ever have been," Lukianoff said. "But universities tend to be a little better about at least paying lip service to free speech.

"During the 1980s and 1990s, it wouldn't have been too surprising to run into an administrator who didn't really believe in free speech as a concept, if that speech was offensive to the administrator's sensibilities -- or offensive to some students. At least now there is some recognition that speech codes are inappropriate -- and even unconstitutional at a university."

What seems to have gotten worse, Lukianoff said, is the appreciation of the right of private conscience on campus -- the right of free citizens to hold internal beliefs and values.

"This is terrifying because, as bad as it is to tell people what they can't say, it's even worse to tell people what they must say -- and worse, still, to tell them what they must think or believe," he said.

Michigan State says only that it is "reviewing" the program.

Bruce Hausknecht, judicial analyst at Focus on the Family Action, said the university shouldn't review the program -- it should cancel it and apologize to students and their parents.

But he said the same basic idea behind the Michigan State campus program is one that liberals in Congress would like to impose on society as a whole via the criminal code -- in the form of hate-crimes legislation.

''Hate crimes simply add another layer of punishment based solely on what the perpetrator was thinking," Hausknecht said. "Instead of punishing the actions, we would be punishing people for what they think."

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., and other liberals have promised to reintroduce hate-crimes legislation, which would add homosexuals to a list of protected classes, and call for harsher sentences if a crime was committed against a homosexual.

That's essentially thought control, Hausknecht said.

"When we decide to punish the motive," he noted, "the criminal-justice system will become a simple tool of liberals to further push their ideas of socialism and secularism on civil society."