Tuesday, September 16, 2025

Charlie Kirk’s Watch List Made Some Professors’ Lives a ‘Living Hell’ [ chronicle.com ]

The flava:
For Tobin Miller Shearer, a professor of history at the University of Montana who had received death threats after being placed on a Turning Point USA target list, news of Charlie Kirk’s murder on a college campus in Utah prompted a flood of emotions. “I cried for our nation, for what this will mean for his family, for all the harm he did in his life, for all of us,” he said. “It was a horrible moment in all of its complexity.”

After those threats, Shearer moved his class on the history of white supremacy to a secret location, with a campus police officer on guard. “I did not want any threats on my life to ripple out and affect my students,” said Shearer, who heads Montana’s program in African American studies.

Shearer was one of hundreds of professors whose lives had unexpectedly intersected with Kirk’s when their names ended up on Turning Point USA’s Professor Watchlist.

Kirk created the watch list in 2016 as a signature product of his new nonprofit. Its mission, it says, is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” It’s based on published news stories about “radical” behavior by professors, but also informed by recordings leaked by students and tips from the public.

The publicly searchable database has grown to more than 300 professors, who are grouped into categories including diversity, equity, and inclusion, climate alarmist, feminism, abortion, terror supporter, racial ideology, and LGBTQ.

The Chronicle spoke to more than a dozen professors who, like Shearer, ended up on a list that exposed many of them to doxxing and threats. As the examples below show, Kirk’s death conjured up mixed emotions ranging from empathy for his family to contempt for his ideas. It also elicited frustration over how the country is mourning his death. . . .   

The article:

1 comment: