The political right has long derided institutions of higher education as a dangerous web of liberal ivory towers, practically a network of Mordors disseminating progressive, anti-American ideas into the lands below. But as Evidence, the fourth feature-length documentary from director Lee Anne Schmitt, reminds us, the conservative movement has strategically and successfully infiltrated American higher education for generations. And central to that mission have been private grant-making institutions like the John M. Olin Foundation, which helped establish the Federalist Society, among many other influential conservative think tanks.
An essay documentarian and artist, Schmitt explores the nexus of political ideology, landscapes and personal experience. Evidence, which traces the influence of the Olin Foundation and the egregious environmental record of its corporate predecessor, the Olin Corporation, is right in that wheelhouse. But in Schmitt’s hands, what could have been a straightforward takedown of conservative philanthropic activism is instead a personal meditation on control and the ways that institutions and systems exert control over our beliefs, lives and bodies.
“This film very much started like, ‘I’m curious,’ ” says Schmitt, who has a unique personal connection to her subject matter: Her father was the head of international for the Olin Corp. “I’ve had these discomforts my whole life around the system.”
Schmitt, who also wrote, shot (on her usual format of 16mm film) and edited the film, and provided the voiceover, weaves the personal and political together from the first frame. Evidence opens with a montage of dolls that Schmitt’s father brought home for her from around the world. Those dolls were “a real beginning point,” she says, “because there’s so much love in that, to travel and bring back something.”
The dolls give way to old family photos as we hear audio from a family home video. The tone is raw and intimate — her father talks about “a chemical association dinner dance,” Schmitt’s childhood self proclaims, “I paint, I make things” — as Schmitt segues into the history of the Olin Foundation.
Schmitt’s personal connection to the Olin Corp. made for a natural entrée into the topic of institutional money and the way it shapes America. But the film is far from a simple exposé. “This is one way into the system,” Schmitt says. “But this was what influential people were urged to do and organized to do.”
The evidence, so to speak, that Schmitt showcases in the film includes works from the large corpus of conservative literature published since the mid-20th century, including books like Dare to Discipline by Dr. James Dobson, Manliness by Harvey Mansfield, and The Bell Curve by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, among many other works by prominent Olin-backed conservative thought leaders. There’s also archival footage of Dobson’s Focus on the Family and William F. Buckley Jr.’s Firing Line, both funded by the Olin Foundation.
Says Schmitt: “For me, essay documentary, which is what I think I do, it’s a form — it’s not an activist form, but it really is using time to give you this sort of contemplative place around ideas, to grapple. And what I try and do in all [my] films is bring in things that seem disparate and make them live together, so that maybe there’s these connections made.”
