Liberal professor ‘watchlist’ is the new McCarthyism
Anthea Butler is one of the targets.
Click here for reuse options!A religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, a black woman who teaches a class about the religious right in America and has a fiery liberal persona on social media…
…she’s gotten used to the call-outs by angry conservative “eggs” on Twitter, to the emails that call her an “n-word” who doesn’t belong on an Ivy League campus, and to the calls to her department chair from people posing as Penn alums, demanding that this professor with an expansive Afro who calls herself “dangerous” in her online profile be fired ASAP.
But when a fellow professor contacted her a few weeks ago and told her she’d been placed on a brand new nationwide “professor watch list” intended to help conservatives identify faculty liberals, Butler felt like rising McCarthyism on America’s campuses just surged to a new high water mark…
It hasn’t escaped the attention of Butler and others that a list targeting liberal profs came out at the same time that Donald Trump – who campaigned in an often-bullying style against so-called elites like the media and the academic community – is ascending to the presidency…
But there is also something new and frightening about an era of emboldened white nationalists and others on the fringe far-right and their ability to use the Internet, social media and other technologies to bully and try to silence voices they don’t agree with. Since Trump’s election victory on November 8, there’s been a surge in reported “hate crimes” on college campuses as well as high schools in middle schools, from swastikas on bathroom stalls to racist texts, with growing concern over physical violence. Conservatives have countered that the minority of students who support Trump or right-leaning causes are the ones being harassed.
The watch list, created and promulgated by a nationwide youth-oriented conservative group called Turning Point USA, feels like dousing that smoldering flame with kerosene. What’s more, what purpose could the list serve beyond intimidating liberal-leaning academics from speaking freely? A motive that seems absurd considering that the No. 1 right-wing complaint about college campuses has been so-called “speech codes” and “political correctness” they claim (occasionally with justification) can assault the 1st Amendment.
Copyright 2016 Liberaland
14 responses to Liberal professor ‘watchlist’ is the new McCarthyism
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Buford2k11 December 24th, 2016 at 08:36
and on the flip side…The Koch boys have been installing their “choice professors” in many economics departments around the nation…they black mail the colleges, to accept their “puppets”…so, we have a two pronged attack on OUR PUBLIC EDUCATION, by the wealthy, the powerful and the corrupt…
Suzanne McFly December 24th, 2016 at 09:05
Didn’t President Obama have this list erased? I may be wrong, tis the season of no time and too much chaos, but I thought I read somewhere he did that.
StoneyCurtisll December 24th, 2016 at 09:31
Ya know who else hated intellectuals and elitist?
This guy..
http://www.highlandernews.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/ops.trump_.vt_-1024×768.jpg
fedupmd December 24th, 2016 at 09:41
Progressives/liberals DO HATE IT when they have to take their own medicine.
bpollen December 24th, 2016 at 10:19
Can you say “troll?”
Probably not.
fedupmd December 24th, 2016 at 12:46
Can you say “loser”?
Sure you can.
arc99 December 24th, 2016 at 12:52
I say loser all the time whenever talking about the right wing idiots who think losing the popular vote by 3million is some kind of mandate.
fedupmd December 24th, 2016 at 12:58
2.9 million all from one state (California). You’re going to be “mandated”up one side and down the other for the next 4 years, so get use to it.
arc99 December 24th, 2016 at 13:22
I am already used to ignorant right wingers lying. Nothing new….
Meanwhile Dear Leader Trump packs his cabinet with the very Goldman Sachs execs he was going to chase out of town with Hillary.
Trump worshiping suckers actually believed that con man…
oldfart December 24th, 2016 at 13:23
Mandate my ass…you funny.
That is what you get for cutting math class in high school…
or your red state school could only afford to teach you how to count on twenty digits.
Either way your commentary here provides me a good reminder of what happens when your two operating brain cells collide.
That, and an endless source of amusement, carry on…both of you.
arc99 December 24th, 2016 at 13:34
all from one state (California)? thanks for the very clear demonstration you have no clue what you are talking about
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/new-york
New York Results
Hillary Clinton Democrat 4,547,218
Donald J. Trump Republican 2,814,346
bpollen December 25th, 2016 at 11:45
Can you say “loser”?
Sure you can.
Why, yes, I can!
As a matter of fact, I read your post and said to myself “Loser!”
It’s almost as if you’re clairvoyant-like!
robert December 24th, 2016 at 10:14
A brand new professor watch list
Who ever said we don’t admire the KGB
amersham1046 December 24th, 2016 at 22:08
Putin is giving Trump a couple pointers