Just in time for Donald Trump’s America comes the Professor Watchlist, launched this week by Turning Point USA.
It’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line.
Everyday I hear stories about professors who attack and target conservatives, promote liberal propaganda, and use their position of power to advance liberal agendas in their classroom.
Turning Point USA is saying enough is enough. It’s time we expose these professors.
Today, Turning Point USA is proud to announce the launch ofProfessorWatchList.org, a website dedicated to documenting and exposing professors who discriminate against conservative students and promote anti-American, left wing propaganda in the classroom.
Thus saith Charlie Kirk, founder and executive director of the org, who is all of 21 years old. Kirk is hailed as a wunderkind of the conservative movement who racks up accolades and cash from the movement wherever he goes.
"Standing behind free markets and limited government," Kirk, now 21, told National Journal, [Turning Point USA] is a conservative activist organization bent on drumming up excitement for conservative principles through community-organizing. Since launching Turning Point, Kirk has written op-eds for The Washington Times and Breitbart, appeared frequently on Fox News and CNBC, built a network of thousands of student activists around the country, and been entrusted with, he says, at least $1 million by donors enthralled by his conservative promise. His backers swear he's the future of conservative politics—and he's only just old enough to drink.
Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist is by no means a new idea. As Professor David Perry writes over at The Establishment/Alternet,
“ … the American right wing is currently organizing, and has long been organizing, to actually repress speech on campus. This Super PAC-funded watchlist is just the most recent example of this. As the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) pointed out in a comment on the watchlist: “The AAUP has spoken out against organizations that conduct these kinds of activities going back to the 1920s, when it was the American Legion, through the 1980s, when it was an organization that called itself Accuracy in Academia.” The AAUP is concerned that “External monitoring of in-class statements not only presents the prospect that the words uttered will be distorted or taken out of context; it is also likely to have a chilling effect and result in self-censorship.””
“When I was in graduate school just starting to teach, people were worried about David Horowitz, a conservative who urged students to monitor their professors and eventually published The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America. Since then, other attempts to use the internet to name, shame, and even punish liberal professors have proliferated.”
The Professor Watchlist currently has a directory where you can search by school or a person’s name. Dozens of colleges and universities are currently listed, but not all of them have identified professors who have run afoul of the conservative movement.
Yet.