I know many a conservative student is cringing at the class they know is going to actively demonize them and their ideas. Situations like this can be avoided with very little help from ratemyprofessors.com. Ratemyprofessors.com doesn’t have any direct way to analyze professors based on their politics.
Turning Point USA has taken the initiative and launched the Professor Watchlist. Professorwatchlist.org is a website which names professors who are actively aggressive toward conservative students and conservative ideology.
Now, let me address my fellow conservatives.
Here’s what I like about the website;
Conservative and moderate students, like all students, are going to college to learn how to do a specific job. Unless politics are a specific part of the job, there’s no real need to discuss it in a classroom built for the sake of learning a specific skill in a specific context. Since students can’t control whether or not professors will try to indoctrinate them in class, they can at least be aware of who the professors are and avoid them.
For professors who want to stay moderate or neutral, this can be a useful tool to find out what their peers are doing and avoid doing them.
This creates accountability in the college world. The consequences may be almost insignificant, but they exist.
Here’s what I don’t like about the website. You’ll notice that this section is much longer;
What have we, as conservatives, been accusing liberals of doing for a long time now? Among those many accusations, one is creating and living inside echo chambers. We rightfully laugh at the existence of campus safe spaces. We are rightfully outraged when we hear testimonies of conservative students who find themselves in these echo chambers who can’t challenge the narrative lest their grade, social standing, and personal safety be compromised.
Yet, here we are doing the same thing. Sure, right now it’s just blacklisting liberal professors, but what will it turn into? Elevating conservative professors? Then we unintentionally create two entirely different planets of people who have nothing in common and can’t work together. I’d like to think that, as conservatives, we're smart enough to avoid something like that.
Keep in mind, we are the social champions of free speech. It would be hypocritical of us as conservatives to do the childish thing of blocking our ears to what we don’t want to hear. Liberals have the safe spaces. We don’t. Lets keep it that way.
I’m not saying we should shut down the website. It serves a very real demand for many students. I am saying that in a polarized culture, we as conservatives ought to be the ones still listening to the other side. Not in the Cenk Uygur strawman style, but in an intellectual and thoughtful way so that we can better respond to the emotional and intellectual barriers that keep our liberal friends liberal.
