An interesting website that was trending on various social medias recently has to do with, “expos[ing] and document[ing] college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom,” as per their About Page. It’s called the Professor Watchlist, and they have been recently compiling a list of professors across the nation who allegedly profess radically liberal beliefs and suppress conservative beliefs. Each allegation is backed up with a source from various legitimate and illegitimate online news sources. Most sources are conservative forums and news sites.

Historically, censorship has been applied to a wide range of political and moral beliefs, e.g., racism (KKK), communism (Red Scare), and religion (atheism). But now that populism has taken over the political scene, censorship is being used by conservatives who claim their voice isn’t being heard by the political elites. Though First Amendment rights should be equally applied to all, many questions come into play.

Which censorship is OK? Should we censor potentially derogatory and harmful beliefs like radical Islam or the KKK? What if the voice of a movement is being censored against the majority of the people, like as the Watchlist claims? What about censorship in schools, e.g., with books? Should nothing be censored?internet-surveillance

Let’s say you have a professor speaking out against the Trump presidency. He sources to backup his assertions and lectures against the president’s actions. Do we draw the line when that professor is actively suppressing students’ voice? What if the situation is flipped and the professor is a high-ranking member of the KKK and suppressing students’ voices who speak out against racism? Then is censoring the professor ok?

At what point do professors become activists?

George Yancy, a Professor of Philosophy at Emory University, found out he was on the list and wrote an article to the New York Times. Comparing this sort of censorship and radical naming to Mccarthyism, CointelPro and Newspeak (from George Orwell’s 1984), the_black_bar_of_censorship__hajo_1mentioning how censorship of the people is largely about “disloyalty to the American republic.” In other words, the government spying on and actively suppressing people who speak out against their actions is nothing new. The Nazis used censorship as much as the US Government to control their political message, albeit the former was certainly more destructive than the latter.

Other professors have spoken about their naming in other publications as well.

The very fact that this site is generating so much buzz online means that it’s message is being heard and could potentially be working. So far, there are 3 Metropolitan State University of Denver professors named. My point being that the message isn’t just echoing around the cloud online – it’s happening right here at home.

This reminds me of Pastor Martin Niemöller’s provocative anti-Nazi poem/speech from WWII. The most famous part goes like this:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did
not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did
not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did
not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one
left to speak for me.

Of course most who read this will likely not agree with the mission of the Professor Watchlist, but perhaps the dialogue should not be such an echo-chamber on either side of the coin. After all, discourse is the enemy of oppression.