Professor Watchlist is a website run by Turning Point USA that lists US professors which it alleges "discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom." It was launched in 2016. As of December 2016, the website included about 200 professors. The list's claims about the people it includes have been contested as misleading or inaccurate, and its existence has been criticized as an effort to silence or shame ideological opponents. Some critics consider it a threat to academic freedom while others consider it "more annoying than dangerous" according to Inside Higher Ed.
Response
Slate columnist Rebecca Schuman described the website as "abjectly terrifying" and said that she feared for the safety of the listed professors. Some have criticized the website as a threat to academic freedom; Hans-Joerg Tiede, the associate secretary for the American Association of University Professors' department of academic freedom, tenure and governance, told TheNew York Times: "There is a continuing cycle of these sorts of things. They serve the same purpose: to intimidate individuals from speaking plainly in their classrooms or in their publications." One professor included in the site, George Yancy, wrote that it is "essentially a new species of McCarthyism, especially in terms of its overtones of 'disloyalty' to the American republic". According to Inside Higher Ed, some critics consider the website "more annoying than dangerous". Critics including Peter Dreier of Occidental College—who is listed on the site for having criticized the National Rifle Association and using Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as a required text—have pointed out errors of fact that may make Professor Watchlist less than reliable as a source of information. Dreier's entry formerly listed him as a former employee of the Industrial Areas Foundation and as the man who inspired college studentBarack Obama to become a community organizer. Dreier identifies these claims about him as "complete fantasy". He also noted elements of his biography that the website completely omitted, such as his work with labor unions, his activism in favor of a minimum wage, and the books he wrote. Kent State professor Julio Pino said to The New York Times the site is "a kind of normalizing of prosecuting professors, shaming professors, defaming professors." The website's organizers say that it simply provides conservative students with a guide to their professors, akin to Ratemyprofessors.com, enabling them to avoid left-wing classes. Over one hundredUniversity of Notre Dame faculty members signed an open letter asking to be included in the site, saying in part: In response to the Notre Dame letter, University of Chicago psychology professor Leslie Kay started the website "Free Academics". This website lists the names of professors across the United States who have signed it to ask for their names to be added to the list. As of December 2016, it had over 1,500 signatories.
