CAMPUS

XXXtra, XXXtra, Read All About It: UMD cancels porn screening

If you follow higher education news regularly (which I’ll assume you do, as you’re a savvy CAMPUS reader), you know that the collegiate intelligentsia often imposes unconventional education methods on us poor unsuspecting students who really just trying to make it until our next break. The University of Maryland at College Park, UMD’s flagship campus, recently tried such a move by sponsoring a screening of a new X-rated movie, coupled with a Planned Parenthood presentation. Many taxpayers made such a racket that the Maryland state senate put considerable pressure on UMD-CP to cancel the showing, threatening funding withdrawals if the university did not comply. The school folded.

FIRE’s Adam Kissel has already blogged about the First Amendment issue behind this, so I won’t steal his thunder. Instead, I’ll quote the Orwellian witticism that “some ideas are so profoundly stupid only an intellectual would believe them.” The idea that screening a pornographic film is as important—in fact, maybe more important—to education than Aristotle, Plato, or America’s Founding Fathers is one such idea.