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The latest manifestation of the conservative targetting of academia is the Professor Watchlist, created by the "activist organization" Turning Point USA, founded by rising star Charlie Kirk. It's stated purpose is to "watch" professors "who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom"
Of course, this is not new. David Horowitz has written a book called The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America . HeterodoxAcademy.org has rational articles discussing the liberal slant to modern college campuses. Nicholas Kristoff writes an interesting piece on the same topic. However, with the election of President Trump, the stakes may have been raised. A professor in California has gone incognitio after criticizing Trump in the classroom and receiving death threats.
But more important is how the attempt to blacklist liberal academics has actually backfired. George Yancy [not the George Yancey from the Kristoff piece above] published a response, "I Am a Dangerous Professor" in the New York Times, and since then it seems to have become de rigueur for all academics to get their name on the Professor Watchlist in order to cement their tenure. An entire hashtag on Twitter has taken form: #trollprofwatchlist! People have taken to mocking the list by suggesting candidates such as Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, and Jesus, not to mention Socrates, who obviously belongs.
Charlie Kirk may not be dangerous, but he did start this list. I am watching him now.
[Editor note - This story was substantially rewritten for balance. As always, the original submission is available at the link below.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @03:49PM
Why do people keep using the term SJW?
Because some astroturfing company hired by the Koch brothers or similar cooked it up and introduced the idea onto the alt-right "grass roots" websites. The idea spreads from there because it is designed to appeal to that demographic.
They invent this phantom bogeyman of a world-controlling conspiracy of "SJWs" and pin all the world's racism and bigotry and injustice on them. Then the people they want to influence can simply label their enemies with that term and no longer need to think of any reasons for their choices or consider any other points of view. For ultimate irony, they then accuse the other side of using derogatory labels to silence their opponents. It also gives all the racists and bigots and promoters of injustice a nice warm glowy feeling because they can now convince themselves that they are no longer the bad guys, and they can say and do and vote racist and bigoted things and not feel guilty about it, in fact, to feel proud for it. They also get to play at being the poor oppressed minority standing up bravely to the Evil Empire.
These terms are ephemeral, they come and go. SJW is about dead now. "Identity politics" is the new one, and now "Safe Spaces". If you watch you can see them come and go in waves - all of a sudden, a term that was used in every other post by every other poster disappears, and in its place a new one appears. It's like watching ideas flow through the Borg mind, except in this case the Borg mind is controlled by a few rich guys and their spin doctors. But whatever the term, it is always an attempt to externalize the self-loathing of the right and pin it on the left like a target, kind of like how repressed gays in denial are drawn to gay-hate organisations.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday December 21 2016, @02:36PM
Yeah I'd say that's not far from actual practice, having spent spans of time on Madison Avenue, and also in the presence of the power elites. The power elites are really bad at crafting those, by the way. They're quite tone deaf. They rely on the Madison Avenue guys to compose their messages for them.
Washington DC delenda est.