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Far Left progressives---especially professors, are raging over a newly created conservative organization---"Turning Point USA"---and their newly established website.
The organization, made up of high school and college students, are compiling a list of professors and universities that "discriminate against conservative students and advance Leftist propaganda in the classroom," rather than merely educating.
Far Left Slate Magazine calls the watch list "grotesque" and a "stock agency for photos of self-satisfied young white people," and the New York Times says it is "A threat to academic freedom."
The kids are asking whose academic freedom is actually being threatened?
The website doesn't list just any professor---Turning Point USA requires proof.
When you clink the link above you read this: "This watchlist is an aggregated list of pre-existing news stories that were published by a variety of news organizations. While we accept tips for new additions on our website, we only publish profiles on incidents that have already been reported by a credible source."
And this: "TPUSA will continue to fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish; however, students, parents, and alumni deserve to know the specific incidents and names of professors that advance a radical agenda in lecture halls."
This is the list of more than 200 professors and colleges and universities that have been identified so far. They are listed by "professor's name" and by "school name." The list is growing.
In the Northwest, Boise State, Washington State University, Gonzaga, and University of Oregon are listed so far.
It's interesting but not surprising that the far Left Progressive community is overcome with emotion over what they see as an intrusion into their world of taxpayer funded indoctrination.
Rebecca Schuman writes for Slate, "Intentionally or not the Professor Watch List simply by being a self-styled watch list, has aligned itself with the ugly, frightening new political status quo. This is indeed, a turning point in our country, a time of fear unprecedented on this continent since the Second World War. Fear of being placed on a list, targeted as undesirable, and subjected to whatever happens next."
The irony is that she is describing the experience of conservative Christian kids who go into debt to attend these taxpayer funded classes where they are regularly demeaned and diminished because of their beliefs.
The New York Times article by Christopher Mele quotes an associate professor at Kent State who is on the list: "It is a kind of normalizing of prosecuting professors, shaming professors, defaming professors."
The last several decade's public education has actually normalized prosecuting, shaming and defaming students who have not lined up with the far Left Progressive worldview.
Those who do not align themselves with Planned Parenthood's abortion industry goals and the homosexual activist Human Right Campaign's agenda to redefine marriage and family are prosecuted, shamed and defamed. And now sued in a growing number of cases.
Christian students who have attempted to take a stand for their deeply held beliefs have been "bullied" by teachers, professors, and administrators who disagree.
This is true in the public square as well. How many Christians do you know who are currently being sued for noncompliance to the far Left beliefs---Barronell Stutzman, the Stormans family, Aaron and Melissa Klein.... the list is long and growing.
Robert Jensen a professor at University of Texas Austin, is also unhappy about his name being included on the list. He says, "We won't end men's violence against women if we do not address the toxic notions about masculinity in patriarchy...rooted in control, conquest aggression."
He also blames Donald Trump. "It would be easier to dismiss this rather silly project if the United States had not just elected a president who shouts over attempts at rational discourse and reactionary majorities in both houses of Congress," Professor Jensen says, and "even though this group has no formal power over me or my university, the attempt at bullying professors---no matter how weakly supported---may well inhibit professors without my security and privilege."
Jensen is tenured---almost untouchable, at least in his mind.
Professor Julian Pino at Kent State, who is on the list, also says Trump is the cause of all this. He says look at how rapidly the organization was created "to capitalize on the political climate, particularly after the election of Donald J. Trump as president."
Schman, writing in Slate, compares the organization to an angry, violent mob "that watches over us at our country's darkest turning point, poised to inflame the tinder-dry, gasoline soaked pitchforks of a mob that has just stepped boldly into the light."
Her words further describe how she and her colleagues view conservatives and Christians.
Charlie Kirk, TPUSA founder and CEO, defended the new organization on Fox News.
He said, "If the professors are so scared of what's going on in their lecture halls being made public then that is their problem, not ours."
Kirk says, "We're not trying to prevent teachers from saying anything. All we want here is to shine a light on what's going on in our universities, and the response has been incredible."
It is clear, in my opinion, that the professors that are being identified are angry because the "light" is revealing what is actually going on in their formerly "safe space."
The fact that TPUSA is not trying to oppress the professor's free speech, but rather expose how they are using their freedom is particularly troubling for the profs.
They have become accustomed to carrying on their activist activities, indoctrinating rather than educating, without any accountability or consequence.
These full grown men and women are now throwing a tantrum because they are being called to responsibility.
And it's about time.
President Abraham Lincoln said, "Philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."