Far-right activists have added more professors to a ‘watchlist’ of liberal academics

The Professor Watchlist – a stupid burn book of left-wing academics named and shamed by conservatives – is back, and has added a load of new profs.

The watchlist, which was set up by the goons at Turning Point USA, wants to "expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."

The site was denounced as "McCarthyism for the bullying age" by academics when it launched in late 2016, and professors everywhere hit back at Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk for having "no idea what universities are for" (To his credit, Charlie did not go to university).

In response to being named in the update of the Professor Watchlist, writer and advocate Preston Mitchum told The Tab why he "will not be silenced."

What do you make of being placed on the watchlist?

I randomly received an email from a friend saying "Congratulations for making the list, you must be doing something right." Honestly, I was immediately terrified because I’ve never heard of the list. I am a black queer scholar and understand history and context so I do know what it means to be targeted by conservative groups.

I’ve done a lot of writing on the Trump administration and during the election, a lot of work against conservative propaganda and against racism, sexism, LGBT antagonism, etc. So it doesn’t surprise me that I made the list.

I’m an adjunct professor and a lecturer – the list mostly covers tenured or tenure-track professors. I usually just teach a class a semester, so it’s interesting to be targeted by this. Because I am very vocal on social media, it doesn’t shock me. But it does worry me. I believe in community and safety and love and support.

What does it say about Turning Point USA that they’re still adding professors onto the watchlist?

The watchlist is against the First Amendment for freedom of speech. The founder says he doesn’t want to impair freedom of speech, but it’s obvious that’s what’s actually will happen. If people feel terrified to speak up because they think they’ll be targeted, then they’re being silenced. But I won’t be silenced. I refuse to be silenced. That is in a nutshell what I believe about that. As someone who has been in a marginalized community for my entire life, I’ve been silenced for so long. It will not happen again inside the classroom or outside of the classroom.

What I do care about is my safety, my family’s safety and my friends’ safety. That is always what I want to keep. Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist is dangerous, problematic and it should be shut down.

Do you see this as part of a trend of professors being silenced in Trump’s America?

To be honest, I don’t have enough information to give a full opinion on that but I will say that it makes me nervous. The purpose of a college setting is to give information to students to make their minds grow, so students can think for themselves. Professors have spoken of academic freedom in and out of the classroom. When you’re curtailing a professor’s speech, their ability to teach in the way they think is the best for students to learn and thrive and be successful, you’re really doing a disservice to the academic setting.

So I think it’s disappointing that universities would take the position that they would need to terminate a professor for espousing their viewpoint. Viewpoints especially that aren’t harming anyone. Now if it leads to violence and threatens the safety of multiple students in the classroom, if it leads to students literally thinking they won’t make it out alive, if it gets that far then that’s a different conversation we can have. But for just terminating a professor for espousing viewpoints – that’s antithetical to the academic environment. It does a disservice to the students.

Conversation edited for clarity and length.