Chicago student blasts 'disinformation' conference as an 'indoctrination session,' says it pushed 'propaganda'
Categories: US Education News
University of Chicago student Christopher Phillips took aim that the so-called "disinformation" conference his school held last week that sparked national attention. The "Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy" conference, co-hosted by The Atlantic magazine and the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, had high-profile journalists and politicians including former President Obama to discuss how to combat what they deem is purposefully false information that is shared. But Phillips said they were "all on board" with the same mission.
"It was a huge indoctrination session," Phillips told Fox News Digital in an interview. "It was essentially a conference initiated to spread propaganda. And it was all from one perspective, there was no perspective from the other side, which is that we need to actually preserve freedom of the press."Phillips told Fox News Digital that the "number one criterion" of The Chicago Thinker isn't about political-leaning or writing abilities but rather "bravery."
"You have to be brave to speak your mind and not to conform to the mob," Phillips said. Our motto is ‘Outthink the mob’ because at the end of the day, at an institution like this… it's still definitely a predominantly left-leaning institution. And so we get a lot of criticism for our views and for saying what we say, so you have to be brave to join The Chicago Thinker."
He continued, "Our mission is essentially to promote news and combat campus craziness and to do so from a conservative perspective, which are values that are not really shared often on campus. So we want to bring a lot of the stuff that's going on campus, which, at the end of the day, a lot of the stuff that happens here, it goes out into the corporate world and is ingrained into society. So this is sort of the birthplace of the woke theology. We want to shine a light on that for the outside world."