Teaching Politics in a Call-Out and Cancel Culture

Abstract

This article reflects on how political science faculty—or, actually, any faculty—might approach teaching given the possibility of being “called out” or even “canceled.”1 Being called out or canceled is now, for the teacher, a professional hazard. However, more damaging to the system of higher education, we believe, is the risk that this culture creates for students. The risk is not so much that anyone in the classroom actually is called out; rather, it comes from the dissuasive effect that it creates for difficult conversations about politics. We believe it is the professor’s professional responsibility to create a classroom in which faculty and students can engage in controversial conversations with minimal fear. Today, the college classroom is not a safe space. Anything a professor says has the potential of triggering controversy. If those comments come from the liberal side of the aisle, the professor might end up on the Professor Watchlist, the purpose of which “is to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students, promote un-American values, and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom” (Flaherty 2016; for a more recent statement, see Turning Point USA n.d.). If professors voice conservative or simply insufficiently “woke” viewpoints, they risk being called out or even canceled from the left. Professor Watchlist notwithstanding, call-out culture is arguably more “prominent among liberals and progressives” than among conservatives (Friedersdorf 2017). The temptation to call out a professor—that is, the desire to publicly shame and silence the offender—at times has proven irresistible to progressives and conservatives alike, and they tend to use the weapons most readily at their disposal. Conservatives appear to favor websites including Professor Watchlist and Campus Reform (n.d.) as well as their allies in Republican-dominated state governments, who are considering measures to monitor and discipline faculty perceived as promoting progressive causes (Ellis 2021). Progressives seem to prefer their on-campus resources, especially student groups and sympathetic administrators (Comas 2020; Hess 2021). Both sides, of course, use social media platforms to distribute and elevate their accusations; for example, see the recent calling out of political science professors Samuel J. Abrams by progressives andKenMayer by conservatives (Kearns 2018;Moynihan 2019). The threat of being called out and canceled is troubling. One professor who was placed on Professor Watchlist stated that “What we are seeing with this site is a kind of normalizing of prosecuting professors, shaming professors, defaming professors” (Mele 2016). Watchlists essentially are blacklists: they create an invitation for harassment, intimidation, and retaliation, and they can create serious obstacles in the professional life of the named professor (for principles, see American Association of University Professors 2017; for examples, see Kamenetz 2018). Despite the risks, faculty call-outs and cancels are rare. Professor Watchlist contains the names of 300 professors, a minute fraction of the approximately 1.3 million “postsecondary teachers” (US Department of Labor 2020). Between 2000 and 2020, political scientist Jeffrey Adam Sachs (n.d.) documented 84 faculty contracts that were terminated because of political-speech controversies. Because calling and canceling are rare does not mean that we should not be concerned; measles also are rare. Faculty who are subject to being called and canceled face significant pain. Those who are fired lose their livelihood; however, the pain is not limited to financial loss. After being called out—for an editorial published in the New York Times (Abrams 2018)— Abrams (2019) stated that “there was a national media storm in which I was slandered and defamed, my family’s safety was threatened, and my personal property was destroyed on campus.” Mayer (Moynihan 2019) was forced to weather a similar hurricane. Resistance to being called out is also real. Protesting the Professor Watchlist, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) shared an open letter signed by professors asking to be added to the list as a show of solidarity (AAUP 2018). As of June 2019, almost 12,500 professors had signed this letter. Campus Reform and other conservative media are well stocked with stories protesting cancel culture as practiced by progressives (e.g., Carnahan 2021).2 Attempts to call and cancel are not new. As early as the 1920s, the predecessor of the AAUP spoke out against organizations that monitored the political ideology of faculty. Furthermore, in 1985, the AAUP issued the statement, “External monitoring of in-class statements not only presents the prospect that the words uttered will be distorted or taken out of context; it is also likely to have a chilling effect and result in self-censorship.... [It] can only inhibit the process through which higher learning occurs and knowledge is advanced” (Flaherty 2016). Faculty call-outs may make national news but perhaps more concerning are localized call-outs—those that receive