A Disturbing New Website Is Cataloguing Liberal Professors
In what seems to be a never ending litany of disturbing news in the post election era, a new website has sprung up aimed to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The list so far features more than 50 schools and over 100 professors.
So far, only three NYU professors have been listed, which mostly means that if anything, the curators of this website aren’t very good at doing their research. We could have an entire column called “Communist Talk Overheard in Faculty Offices.” We at Local were actually a little insulted, because for the number of times we’ve heard that NYU was a petri dish filled with liberal zombies, we were really expecting more of our commie hero professors to be featured. A junior majoring in sociology and philosophy in CAS was genuinely surprised when none of their professors were listed on the website.
What’s more upsetting however, is that the website features full names and photos of the professors they accuse, and list the University they teach at as well as their supposed offenses. The website listed NYU Professors Frank Roberts, Arthur Caplan, and Mark Crispin Miller.
We spoke to a junior who took three of Mark Crispin Miller’s classes who didn’t find it at all surprising for Miller to be listed on the site. “He’s the most liberal person I’ve ever met but he changed what I am interested in,” they say. “He wrote a book on the connections between the Bush family and the Hussein family, but I could never imagine him comparing Bush and Hitler, because his assertions are fact based and researched based.”
This directly contradicts the site’s assertion that Miller compared Bush and Hitler, in addition to Miller himself denying the incident. “I’d also like to know exactly what [Charlie Kirk] means by ‘anti-American values,’” adds Miller, “Since I’m a firm believer in the Bill of Rights, especially committed to the freedom of the press, and to electoral democracy.”
Miller added in regards to the accusations made on Professor Watchlist, “The only similarity [between Bush and Hitler] that comes to mind is that Bush also likes to paint.”
Academics are now flooding the site with false reports to stand in solidarity with the professors listed.
The site’s founder, Charlie Kirk, is a rising star in the conservative party. He was profiled by The Atlantic in 2015 as young, smart, and inspiring, a spokesperson for the GOP who had a firm grasp on policy and who was an incredibly rousing and charismatic speaker. He, along with Bill Montgomery, founded Turning Point USA, which has a presence in high school and college campuses all over the country. They aim to “re-brand free market values” through grass roots movements. Some highlights of their flyers from their website are posted below.
We reached out to Kirk to clarify some of our confusion about the site and make sure that we were understanding the function it was supposed to serve.
This was our interview in full that we conducted via email with Matt Lamb and Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA:
NYU Local: Your site uses only previously reported on incidents, but is there a vetting process for these sources? How do you test reliability? For instance, we have been contacted by a professor who disputes the story published about them on your site.
Turning Point USA: In order to be included on the list, the story must be documented by a news source or otherwise documented (i.e. a syllabus or powerpoint slides) Hearsay accusations will not be accepted.
Local: Do you think your site could endanger the safety of professors or cause harassment from individuals who use the information you publish against the professors you name?
TPUSA: The site is an aggregated list of documented news stories. Putting news sources into an easy to search database does not endanger the safety of anyone.
Local: Have you been contacted by any of the professors listed on your site?
TPUSA: We have received thousands of submissions since Monday, many fake, and will consider any objection to the website if their is false information, but we will not be removing names just because someone doesn’t like being on the list.
Local: If the situation was reversed, and there was an online list of conservative professors pushing their values in university classrooms across the country, what would your response be?
TPUSA: Turning Point USA opposes indoctrination and professors that shut down debate in classes no matter the political side.
Local: Aside from informing students, parents, and alumni about these professors, are there any other aims for ProfessorWatchlist.Org? Would you consider the watchlist a database?
TPUSA: That’s the main goal, and yes.
Local: Do you think conservative parents have the right or responsibility to monitor their college aged children’s education?
TPUSA: Since parents pay tens of thousands of dollars for their college-aged children’s educations I would hope they are keeping an eye on where their money went.
Local: How long has the idea for this website been in the works?
TPUSA: We’ve been working on the site since the summer so about 6 months.
