Watch me now

A “watchlist” has one major job: to intimidate. And boy, Professor Watchlist does that in spades.

The mission of Professor Watchlist is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom. 

And just like that, we’re in a new era of McCarthyism. The website is horribly vague on what confirmation or vetting goes into this list, what an “anti-American” value is, or what constitutes “leftist propaganda.”

I agree with one thing on this list: professors shouldn’t discriminate against conservative students. Because professors shouldn’t discriminate against anyone.

But hey, conservative students, your ideas have to compete in the free market of ideas and be supported with facts and evidence. That is, conservative students, you don’t get to cry “Discrimination!” if I say, “Evolution is the best scientific explanation we have for diversity of life on this planet” because you happen to be a conservative young Earth creationist.

The website says it’s a project of TurningPoint USA, but the link to it is not always predictable. A link on Twitter informed me that this is the brainchild of one Charlie Kirk.

I clicked on one entry at random, and it linked out to a site called Campus Reform, which I’m pretty sure I’d seen before. It’s part of the Leadership Institute, which describes itself as “Training conservative activists, students, and leaders since 1979.”

I agree with Dr. Becca. Universities need to talk about sites like this, publicly. I was also toying with something Trina McMahon did: flooding the site with “tips.”

And perhaps this is an apt moment to repost this:

Update, 23 November 2016: One of the creators of Professor Watchlist, Alana Mastrangelo, is super happy that people have taken to trolling the “tips” section of the website. Free publicity.

Another creator of Professor Watchlist, Crystal Clanton claims that the tip line to inform the site’s creators, “I pray for your deaths every day.”

To anyone who would consider writing something like this:

You’re not helping. Knock it off.

External links

Professor Watchlist

The 21-Year-Old Becoming a Major Player in Conservative Politics (from 2015)
David Perry discussing the Watchlist
Heather Cox Richardson on being added to the Watchlist
Exposing 'crazy radical professors': 12 of the best #trollprofwatchlist tweets
Professor Watchlist Is Seen as Threat to Academic Freedom
Teaching in a time of professor watchlists
Academic witch hunts are back: The new McCarthyism, a sign of the stupidity of the post-truth era