When Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA launched its Professor Watchlist in 2016, Kirk characterized it as a net good, shining a light on ideological biases in universities while helping conservative students pick their classes smartly.
Nearly a decade later, the site and its contemporaries continue to worry professors at Michigan State University who say the lists attract threats and harassment to the faculty on them, and create a chilling effect on open classroom discussion.
“People have said the professor is the enemy … Now we’re constructed as that, and it’s shaping our work in ways that are detrimental to us but also our students, even the students who might oppose us ideologically,” said a professor who teaches in MSU’s James Madison College and requested anonymity to speak freely.
As the administration of President Donald Trump lays siege to universities, the lists provide ostensible evidence for one of its most effective arguments — the notion that professors are indoctrinating students in leftist ideology on the taxpayer's dime.
That idea, alongside claims that college administrators have turned a blind eye to antisemitism on campus and engaged in unpopular affirmative action, forms the bedrock of the conservative movement’s mistrust of higher education. It serves to legitimate the administration’s embargoes of federal research money, investigations into universities and restrictive executive orders.
Though the Trump administration’s efforts have succeeded in toppling the leaders of high-profile institutions, the animating force fueling the public’s suspicion of higher education remains rank-and-file faculty. Few practices exemplify this distrust as saliently as the watchlists, created to catalog professors who participate in controversial research, are accused of teaching with a partisan slant or engage in political advocacy.
The Professor Watchlist, arguably the most infamous of these databases, purports to list academics who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom. Nine former and current MSU professors are listed on the site, with most being involved in research or teaching around racial justice, LGBTQ+ rights or reproductive health.
Another organization, the Canary Mission, lists professors and students who it says “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews." Its database includes white nationalists as well as student activists and professors who are critical of Israel, including one MSU professor.
Beyond those searchable databases, a vast ecosystem of social media pages disseminates accounts of “radical” behavior by professors based on published news stories, as well as recordings leaked by students or tips from the public. Two MSU professors faced backlash for their public reactions to the 2024 election — one canceled class to “grieve” the results, while another called Trump supporters “naïve” in an email to students — which were circulated online.
In a statement to The State News, Faculty Senate Chair and chemistry professor Angela Wilson acknowledged that concerns about professors blurring the lines between academic inquiry and personal advocacy occasionally arise, as they do in any profession.
Faculty watchlists, however, bypass the established structures for addressing such concerns, Wilson said. They “can misrepresent context and contribute to a climate of intimidation that can suppress open dialogue, even around noncontroversial or academically standard topics for both faculty and students, impacting the richness of classroom learning.”
Even in STEM fields, some faculty have expressed growing concern that well-intentioned remarks in the classroom could be taken out of context and mischaracterized, Wilson added.
Two MSU professors interviewed by The State News for this story requested to remain anonymous. They observed that their colleagues have been concerned and aware of watchlist-style websites for some time, though both said they haven’t changed their curriculum or censored in the classroom themselves because of the lists.
“I'm really clear in my syllabus that just because I assign something, it doesn't mean I agree with everything in it,” said the James Madison College professor. “I don't think that that's how education works.”
Roughly 47% of faculty members nationwide reported at least occasionally worrying that students, intentionally or unintentionally, might share their ideas or statements out of context, according to a 2024 study by the American Association of Colleges and Universities. 52% of faculty members reported believing their colleagues are more worried about being the subject of online targeted harassment now compared to seven years ago.
Ashley Finley, the vice president of research for the association and one of the lead researchers on the study, said the combination of faculty watchlists, state legislation restricting curricula and worries of class material being shared online contributes to an “invisible battery drain” on faculty members.
They must be “consistently mindful, consistently aware, consistently cautious about who they’re interacting with, what they’re talking about, what’s the environment they’re in,” Finley said.
The other MSU professor said being cognizant of students’ sensibilities to avoid offending them is not necessarily a bad thing; the threats the watchlists can cause, though, are “quite problematic.” They also criticized the watchlist organizations for not giving faculty any way to contest their placement on the list but doubted such an appeal would be taken seriously:
“Even if there was a clear definition” for what merits being on the list, “one can’t defend themselves when there’s no process involved," the professor said, adding, "This is on people’s whims."
Organizations like Turning Point USA or the Young America’s Foundation solicit tips from students, while class materials that get posted online also tend to originate from students. Despite that, the James Madison College professor said the trust between faculty and students hasn’t been eroded.
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Students reporting faculty isn’t the root issue, the professor said. Rather, it's a symptom of a broader cultural acrimony toward academia that paved the way for faculty watchlists and the federal government's pronounced concern for what happens inside campus classrooms.
“Our relationships to our students are really important," the professor said. "And our relationships to students who disagree with us and may be troubled by the things we teach, or who find our particular discourse problematic — our relationship with those students is really important."
