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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: 2) by VLM on Tuesday December 20 2016, @05:32PM
There's two problems with the people listed
1) Their opinions are kooky and not worth $30K/yr tuition in an era of internet and usenet where insane ramblings disconnected from all reality but amusing to think about are free and easy to find. Or more like, hard to avoid.
2) They got on the list for punishing critical thinking and dissent from their own views specifically committed against students to the right of Marx.
Maybe I'll try an analogy that should make sense to more left wing thinking people using their terms. They love talking about nazis, so I will too. Some nazis had really weird beliefs about the hollow earth under Antarctica and so forth. But lefties would see the problems with hollow earth theory are that it distracts from more significant areas of anti-nazi criticism such as ovening the Jews, the hollow earth is not important and more or less off topic and is useless in the sense of angels dancing on the head of a pin anyway. The hollow earth is not why nazis are declared problematic. The other problem with hollow earth theory is most lefties want to punish nazis for something other than very weird geological theories, like, say, ovening Jews, or killing all the commies they could find, things like that. They don't want to kill them right back for supporting hollow earth theory, they want to kill them for killing Jews, an eye for an eye until we're all blind etc.
I think I made a pretty fair analogy above. Or at least it would be hard to improve without changing all out of recognition.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 20 2016, @06:59PM
1) Their opinions are kooky and not worth $30K/yr tuition in an era of internet and usenet where insane ramblings disconnected from all reality but amusing to think about are free and easy to find. Or more like, hard to avoid.
VLM, I gots a final solution for you! Just do not attend University! Worked for the Buzz! And what do you need that bit of sheepskin for anyway? Obviously college is not for you, if you think that you are paying for the "opinions" of the professors. I am sure you have your own opinions already, and that they are just as much opinions as any other opinions, so why pay money to change them for some other opinions you also do not understand? Cite: see above about the abyss.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday December 20 2016, @09:05PM
> 1) Their opinions are kooky and not worth $30K/yr tuition
whoa whoa whoa, what happened to all the free market stuff we all love to hear so much about? Surely if some people are prepared to pay 30k/yr, then those people are atomatically worth 30k/yr, right? Something something invisible hand something something market forces.
> 2) They got on the list for punishing critical thinking and dissent from their own views specifically committed against students to the right of Marx.
Citation needed. Only one of the ones listed threatened to punish students, as far as the watchlist website or a google search can tell me, and that was not for "holding opinions to the right of Marx" but for using words that she herself found objectionable.
I'm not sure I follow your analogy - you're saying that "lefties" are idiots for thinking that the hollow earth stuff was worse than the holocaust stuff?