A U.S. right-wing group, with a mission to educate students about “free market values” has put together a website called “Professor Watchlist” which is a list of 200 professors who are advancing “leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
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The site went live online on Nov. 21 and says these professors are pushing the students towards “a radical agenda” while discriminating against those who do not agree with them.
“We aim to post professors who have records of targeting students for their viewpoints, forcing students to adopt a certain perspective, and/or abuse or harm students in any way for standing up for their beliefs,” Matt Lamb, an organizer of the site, wrote.
The group behind the site is Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization whose stated mission “is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government."
Charlie Kirk, the group’s founder and executive director, wrote in a blog post the day the site launched saying “it’s no secret that some of America’s college professors are totally out of line” and that it was time to expose them.
"It would've been humorous a few months ago," Greg Hampikian, a professor of biology at Boise State University, told the Chronicle of Higher Education after finding himself on the list. "It's not funny now."
The website says it accepts tips on professors who fit within the agenda of pushing for leftist radical agendas. Many of the professors on the list are people of color, latinos, Black people as well as Muslims.
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The list is using “news stories” as evidence of the professors’ leftist and radical agendas. However, many of those news stories are from right-wing outlets including the self-declared forum for alt-right and Nazis in the United States, Breitbart, whose founder Steven Bannon is the chief advisor for President-elect Donald Trump.
The list includes several people who have expressed mere criticisms of the state of Israel, the conservative Tea Party, the National Rifle Association, as well as the United States Pledge of Allegiance and National Anthem.
Many of the professors on the list could not help but make a connection with the election of Trump. University of Texas at Austin journalism professor Robert Jensen said that such a list will end up being a tool to harass minority and non-white professors.
“It would be easier to dismiss this rather silly project if the United States had not just elected a president who shouts over attempts at rational discourse and reactionary majorities in both houses of Congress,” the professor wrote in a reaction to his inclusion in the list.
“I'm a tenured full professor (and white, male, and a U.S. citizen by birth) and am not worried. But, even though the group behind the watchlist has no formal power over me or my university, the attempt at bullying professors — no matter how weakly supported — may well inhibit professors without my security and privilege.”