Apparently there’s a new sheriff in town, and its name is Professor Watch List.
In case you hadn’t heard, its a website dedicated to spying on and publicly decrying liberal college professors. Its mission is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote anti-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
Anti-American values? That’s my middle name!
So far they’ve outed about a couple of hundred college professors, a rambling list that is organized by the professors’ first names because maybe . . . they couldn’t manage anything more sophisticated than hitting the Sort button?
From this long and growing list, highlighted for ridicule on the site’s home page are: a white woman, a Latino, a Jew, two blacks, and an Italian American who, gasp, is “an admitted socialist.”
Diversity!
A look at the longer list reveals some odd choices. For example, they’re trying to out federal judge and University of Chicago Senior Lecturer Richard Posner. Never mind that Posner has been a judge for 35 years, is the author of forty (yes, forty!) books, founded a prestigious law journal, and is ranked as the most cited legal scholar of the 20th century. Because, after all, what do credentials matter when you’re running witch hunt?
The best part, though? Posner is generally seen as a darling of the Conservative set!
He was appointed to the bench by Ronald Reagan. He’s a former legal ally of Robert Bork!
True, Posner’s part of what nowadays might be considered the greatly diminished moderate/intellectual wing of the GOP, and has distanced himself from the party’s growing lunacy. As he said in 2012: “I’ve become less conservative since the Republican Party started becoming goofy.”
And how dare anyone not be lockstep with Conservative ideology.
But Posner’s real crime, according to Professor Watch List? He has dared to criticize the ogling hagiography bubbling up around Antonin Scalia after his death
, calling misbegotten and exaggerated celebrations of the former Supreme Court justice “absurd.”
Oh my.
The Professor Watch List also includes people who have dared to speak the truth, like Rodolfo Acuna. He has committed the intellectual crime of teaching people that the United States took a large chunk of Mexico by force during the Mexican-U.S. War of 1848, and that Chicanos in the United States face oppression.
Or famous animal rights activist Peter Singer, who questions the personhood of fetuses and does not equate abortion with murder. Can you imagine?
Or Heather Cox Richardson, whose research I’ve cited in my own academic publications. She had the temerity to point out that some Conservatives might attack the mainstream media because transparency threatens power. Uppity woman!
And of course, what lunatic right wing shit-flinging festival would be complete without an assault on sociologist Francis Fox Piven?
The best they could come up with? Piven wants to expand welfare. Yes, she encouraged poor people to sign up for welfare. That’s a her big crime. What a savage she must be.
But here’s what perturbs me most: How am I not on this list?
Clearly, I’m not doing my job. I thought I was teaching my students the truth about U.S. colonialism. I thought I taught them about the history of racism and sexism. I’m pretty sure I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. But apparently that’s not enough.
Honestly, people, what else do I have to do?
Maybe they need to hear from you, my loyal readers who know firsthand what a jackass I can be. So here’s the website’s tip line where they encourage people to tattle on naughty professors who might not be Conservative ideologues.
I just ratted myself out to them with the following note:
I’m not nearly accomplished enough to be mentioned in the same breath as people like Richard Posner, but gosh, anything I can do to make this esteemed list. Please consider me.
So please go to their website and ask them to add me to their list of dirty, dangerous, and possibly not white professors. Feel free to mention that I’m half-Jewish; maybe that’ll get me over the hump. If we pull together, we can make me bad!