Resolution on the Watchlist

Background

The Executive Committee of the New Brunswick Faculty Council recently adopted a resolution that calls on President Barchi to assume a very public leadership role in condemning the hate-based acts of intimidation and violence targeting students on college campuses, triggered by recent political events in the United States.

In the past few days a more general and more dangerous political attack has been launched against higher education by an organization called Turning Point USA. This organization has created a website called the Professor Watchlist, whose “mission... is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” The managers of this website go on to ask for help to “identify, and expose more professors who have demonstrated liberal bias in the classroom.” So far about 160 faculty members, including four from Rutgers, are on this Watchlist.

Such political attacks on higher education have a long history, but they may be more dangerous now than ever before. It is therefore critically important that universities speak out as forcefully as possible against such fundamental attacks on academic freedom and indeed on independent thought.

Resolution

The New Brunswick Faculty Council calls on President Barchi to assume a very public leadership role in condemning Watchlist and all other such attempts to harass and intimidate faculty members.

We further call on the President to pledge that his administration will guarantee that any Rutgers faculty members identified on such lists will suffer no negative consequences within the university as a result.