You may have heard about the “Professor Watchlist” being kept by Turning Point USA, whose mission—according to its website—is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.”
Want to dilute the effectiveness of this list? You can sign the open letter to Turning Point USA supporting academic freedom, standing in solidarity with your threatened collegues, and adding your name to the Professor Watchlist.
The Professor Watchlist site is a blacklist. Such lists have been used in the past to harass and intimidate faculty, and have a chilling effect on academic freedom and free speech. Last week, an AFT member in California who was on the watchlist received death threats after Republican operatives circulated a video of her briefly discussing the election in class.
We will not tolerate the policing of our colleagues’ work, thoughts and teaching. We will not accept a situation in which our colleagues are targeted with death threats because of their ideas.
The Professor Watchlist has declared that because of the creative response of faculty who overwhelmed the site with submissions, it will no longer publish the names of faculty involved in “incidents that had not been reported by a credible source.”
When two University of Notre Dame faculty members were been named on the site after passing this higher bar, 100 of our colleagues asked the Professor Watchlist to add their names as well. They have also invited faculty at other institutions to join them in their request. They—and everyone else on the Professor Watchlist—need our support.
You can join our colleagues at Notre Dame in saying: “we wish to be counted among those you are watching” and stand up for free speech and academic freedom!
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