How ironic that of all the places I could have done a PhD about brainwashing I chose Aberdeen University. When I told my undergraduate friends what I was doing, there was the expected chorus of mock-concern, "Oh...don't let those happy-clappy Christians brainwash you", said one friend, "You'll be releasing poisoned gas on to the Underground network before you know it!" In fact, the group I'm studying haven't attempted to actively brainwash anyone. There are all the subtleties, of course, that we're trained to pick-up on --mild lovebombing, mild thought control. But there is only one group at the university really trying to brainwash people--Aberdeen University itself. 

Aberdeen University has always had an ideology. It was established in 1495 by Bishop Elphinstone to train priests. In the 18th Century it sacked a number of lecturers for Jacobite sympathies and the anthropologist William Robertson-Smith was famously fired for being a liberal Christian. Needless to say, its current ideology is precisely the ideology we would expect of a university in contemporary Britain. It is Leftwing, it is politically correct and it is utterly intolerant of anything that stands in its way. Like all tightly controlled sects, students must sign up to the ideology before they join. They must assent to "a multicultural environment", which may be laudable but it is only part of the currently accepted ideology. As long as they signed up these politically correct articles of faith and kept their heads down, it used to be the case that the university would interfere no further with their lives--but not any more. 

Now, control of information at Aberdeen is so proactive that students cannot even see things that do not fit in with the university's ideology, at least not on campus. Under the policy of 'Web Content Filtering', students and staff are now prevented from entering any pornography sites. This in itself might sound reasonable, but the university's policy is not just to bar students from accessing pornography sites but any sites they deem 'undesirable'. Only the People's Republic of China--with its very different Leftwing ideology--operates such a draconian and anti-civil-liberties policy on the Internet. More than anything, this is a deeply anti-intellectual policy. This policy ensures that students are dependent on the whims of some higher power--the People's Republic of Aberdeen University deciding that something might be a bad influence on their comrade. 

I was under the impression that one of the most important things which a university was supposed to teach students was independence--independence of thought, and the ability to live independently. But, more importantly, what is this term 'undesirable'? It would be one thing if the university had prevented students from entering the sites of child pornographers or political groups that advocate violence. Although such restrictions would be anti-intellectual, because they assume the rightness of the political status quo, and also deeply patronizing, many people would understand. But the policy blocks 'undesirable websites'. This term 'undesirable' may sound harmless but it is, in fact, one of the most dangerous terms there can be. 

A list of undesirable websites will simply reflect the ideology of the people compiling the list. So, this policy is nothing more than an attempt to impose an ideology on student's lives--or at least their Internet lives. It is really akin to American prohibition. The university cannot stop people drinking, making alcohol or selling it but it can stop them doing it in the public domain--or on Aberdeen University--and thus make this domain appear sober. Of course, this is total fantasy. But who cares, as long as things seem okay to the outside observer? It is also a haphazard policy which allows certain 'undesirable' websites to slip through, while objectively 'desirable' websites are prohibited. 

But the university's policies, at any one time, are, of course, intellectually built on sand. They simply reflect a questionable and contemporary ideology. In this case it would be the current paradigms that men and women are equal, all races are equal and democracy is better than violence. I'm not going to even discuss these paradigms only to say that they are purely contemporary and have not always been assented to. The university does impose these paradigms on students and, to a degree, indoctrination is the whole point of education. We are taught to believe in empiricism over divine inspiration, reasoned argument over rhetoric. But Web Content Filtering prevents students from accessing anything on the Internet which begs to question these paradigms. This is clearly completely at odds with the very purpose of a university--to question, to debate, to discuss, to be impartial and unbiased and listen to and examine alternative ideas and ways of life. At Durham University, where I was an undergraduate, students had to click "OK" on a form stating that they would "use the Internet for mainly academic purposes" before they were allowed to enter the network. If they looked at pornography--or the websites of terrorist groups--they had to justify it or face disciplinary action. But at least at Durham they had (and have) the choice. They could think for ourselves and face the consequences. 

At Aberdeen, there will soon be no choice, no room for independent thought or maneuver. Web Content Filtering policy imposes an objective moral code, although most academics would agree that there is no such thing. In order to run the university, there must be some kind of moral code but one would expect the University to want to avoid imposing this--and compromising its academic integrity--wherever possible. 

Unsurprisingly, it is impossible to have an intelligent debate at the university over this crucial issue. When I raised it in the university newspaper, the head of IT published a response in which she sought to question my academic integrity. She then wrote to me to inform that her reasons for implementing the policy were, in fact, nothing to do with ideology. Apparently, on one or two occasions, female students had been in the computer room at 4am and had felt deeply threatened by male students at on-lin pornography. 

If this is so, the policy is an extreme knee-jerk reaction akin to banning sweets because two children have choked on them. One could equally react by putting special screens on the monitors so that one could only see their contents if one were directly in front of them. It is, moreover, a highly emotive style of argument which essentially portrays its antagonist as misogynistic. Intelligent people must rise above such sophistry. But most importantly, it clearly reflects an ideology: to the university, it seems that the right of a woman not to be emotionally disturbed when looking at someone else's computer monitor in the early hours of the morning is more important than academic freedom. 

And it is not just in higher education that these attempts at indoctrination occur. Recently, the government quietly dropped the compulsory modern language at GCSE to replace it with "Citizenship Studies". Now, one should always be wary of something with the word 'studies' in it. It will almost certainly have a political agenda and be so vague as to teach students everything and nothing at the same time--think of Women's Studies and Media Studies. But at least these have a little subtlety. Citizenship Studies is overtly ideological. Students will be taught what it is to be British--which will of course be 'part of a diverse multicultural society'--or at least what Labour thinks it is. Teaching students a foreign language and--by extension a foreign culture--would make them think about the nature of Britishness and give them a useful skill. But for Labour, the indoctrination aspect would not be present. Just teaching a foreign language is too haphazard for their purposes. No wonder the British are the worst in Europe at foreign languages. 

Academia is not about ideology. It is about independent, critical thought. These days, most people find it amazing that, for example, one could not teach at Aberdeen in the 19th Century unless one was a Christian or that one could not teach Einstein's theories at German universities in the 1930s. But the same problems occur today, with academics being boycotted because they are Israeli or Rightwing. A policy like that recently imposed at Aberdeen is an intellectual coup d'stat. The fact that we won't be allowed to enter pornographic and 'far Right' websites might seem trivial to many. But this policy is not a hundred miles from public burnings of books by Freud and Einstein, the banning of books by D.H. Lawrence and the sacking of professors at Berlin University because they would not say, "Sieg Heil". 

And how successful is this scheme? I am studying in Holland next year, yet I was prevented the other day from entering a website to help me learn Dutch because it had been 'blacklisted'. So in my case at least, Aberdeen is stopping a student from learning a foreign language--I'm sure Mr. Blair would support this policy wholeheartedly. 

Ed Dutton writes from Aberdeen