BY HANK REICHMAN
Readers of this blog are undoubtedly well aware of the nefarious “Professor Watchlist,” sponsored by the right-wing Turning Point, USA. The list is but the latest in a long string of blacklisting efforts aimed at silencing faculty members. It debuted shortly after the 2016 election, claiming to identify professors who promote “leftist propaganda in the classroom,” discriminate against conservative students, and “advance a radical agenda in lecture halls.” Shortly after its founding, the AAUP circulated a letter, ultimately signed by over 1,000 faculty members, which demanded, in solidarity with those on the list, that the signatories names be added to it.
It turns out, however, that right-wing political groups around the world have taken a cue from Turning Point. Dutch political scientist Alexandre Afonso recently documented some of their blacklisting efforts in a Twitter thread.
According to Afonso, in the Netherlands the Forum for Democracy party, which recently became the country’s largest party, has established a hotline for reporting left-wing teachers who try to “indoctrinate” students. A lecturer at the Free University of Amsterdam was informed by a student that there was a discussion on the student WhatsApp group about reporting him to the “left indoctrination” line set up by the party, and that he “should be careful.” In Switzerland, the rightist Swiss Peoples Party (SVP) set up a similar website. In Germany the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) created a comparable portal. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi–sometimes called Trump before Trump–charged that “left-wing teachers were destroying family values.”
In Hungary, “Supporters of the far-right government are targeting writers, artists, movie makers, researchers of the academy, and all and sundry who are viewed as not being loyal to the regime,” according to the website Hungarian Spectrum. One Hungarian student complained that professors in her department opted to join the protest against abolishing gender studies. The department head responded and was swiftly charged in the media with “violating the basic spirit of the university, the freedom of opinion,” by the pro-government site 888.hu. One of the regular associates of the site called on students who are “tired of the unasked-for left-wing political opinions … to write to us and we will publish it.” Another associate continued the attack, calling attention to the faculty’s “rants of left-wing political opinions.” She suggested that the university should conduct an ethical inquiry into this particular case.
The site’s editor-in-chief, Gabor Fodor, coined a new term: “university me-too,” which doesn’t mean sexual but ideological violation. “You get violated because you’re vulnerable. Your professor violates you with his political opinions while you’re defenseless,” he claimed. “A university shouldn’t be a place of frustrated and vindictive professors’ cheap politicking.” According to Fodor, Hungarian “universities are the last hotbeds of the politically weakened left,” a situation that should come to an end. Keep reporting these left-liberal political activists, he urged.
As if Brexit weren’t enough, Turning Point itself has now arrived in the United Kingdom. And in Canada the Conservative Ontario provincial government of Doug Ford, fresh from imposing “free speech” policies, has now established a “snitch line” for parents to call and anonymously report teachers who do not adhere to the government’s repeal of a sex-ed curriculum.
In Brazil, a member of parliament from right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro’s party called on students to send her videos of instructors “indoctrinating” them into leftist ideologies. Last summer Bolsonaro himself shared one such video via Twitter:
“Professor” militante de esquerda grita com aluno em sala de aula, ofende, mente, e aos berros, ameaça tirar pontos de quem tocar no nome BOLSONARO. pic.twitter.com/FHG16d3tpu
— Jair M. Bolsonaro (@jairbolsonaro) July 30, 2018
Of course, blacklists are not the only threats to academic freedom posed by authoritarian governments. In Emilia Romagna, a region in northeast Italy, leaders of the far-Right Liga party called on the University of Bologna to ban a book on their party. In the Czech Republic the President has the power to veto academic appointments and has been doing so to block critics. One professor said he thought his appointment had been blocked because of his support for the president’s opponent in 2013. He charged that the goal was to undermine “the position of intellectuals in this society.”
In Germany, the AfD sought to compel the renowned WZB Social Science Center in Berlin to abstain from making statements that the party viewed as contravening personality rights. The statements stemmed from a WZB study investigating the “Parliamentary Practice of the AfD in German State Parliaments.” However, in a victory for academic freedom, the Berlin Regional Court on April 9 dismissed the claim filed by the AfD fraction in the Thuringian state parliament.
Professor Afonso has the right idea about these efforts:
My humble opinion: First, if you believe in free speech, whatever your political beliefs, I don’t think a climate where anything you say may be “reported” or shared with mobs of anonymous Twitter users is conducive to it.
It is quite symptomatic that all the replies saying this is a good thing come from anonymous accounts.
Second, you really don’t understand how education works if you think teachers can “indoctrinate” students into anything. I really wish I could indoctrinate students into reading my syllabus or doing my readings.
Third, students are aware that teachers have political opinions. This doesn’t mean that students shouldn’t voice opinions that they think the teacher will disagree with.
I tell students that I strongly prefer (and give higher grades to) an argument that I disagree with but is coherently argued, backed with facts and original than something that slavishly reproduces what I said in class, or that I would agree with but is unclear and lazy.
Fourth, I think that some advocates of “free speech” confuse the freedom to voice certain opinions and the right to have these opinions unchallenged.
I am an admitted Marxist but I see no “blacklisting” of professors involved on the Professor Watchlist site. I happen to know a few of the people listed there and they probably see it as a badge of honor that they would be described as radical. Most state their ideological opinions — in print and in the classroom — openly and honestly.
It is when profs deny their students or alternative voices (like invited speakers) the Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom that they proudly claim that their names deserve to be placed on a list of this sort — to alert potential students of what to expect in their classrooms.
So far, my name has not appeared — and I doubt that it will — because i value and encourage the free exchange of ideas in my classes.