The Professor Watchlist, which purports to expose faculty who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom,” poses a clear threat to academic freedom. Such lists have been used to harass and intimidate faculty, and have a chilling effect on academic freedom and free speech.

To support those who have been listed, we invite AAUP members and supporters to add your names to an open letter to the creators of the Watchlist. Please add your name to this important fight for academic freedom.

To Turning Point USA, the creators of the Professor Watchlist:

You claim that by creating the watchlist you "fight for free speech and the right for professors to say whatever they wish." But the creation of such a watchlist serves the opposite purpose. Such lists have been used since at least the 1930s to silence free speech, chill academic freedom, and harass faculty members.

The American Association of University Professors has supported academic freedom and opposed those who seek to curtail it for more than a hundred years, and will continue to do so, because the common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition. The type of monitoring of professors in which you are engaged can only inhibit the process through which higher learning occurs and knowledge is advanced.

We support and stand with our colleagues whose academic freedom your list threatens. Therefore, we, the undersigned, ask that you add our names to the list.