The Turning Point USA Professor Watchlists’ Ohio State page on Wednesday. Credit: Daniel Bush | Campus Photo Editor
Since its founding in 2012, the nonprofit organization Turning Point USA has established its presence in the political zeitgeist by advocating for conservative politics on college campuses and high schools across the country.
Following the Sept. 10 assassination of Turning Point’s Co-Founder Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University, the organization and conversations of radical politics on college campuses returned to headlines.
As Turning Point continues to grow on college campuses following Kirk’s assassination, the Professor Watchlist, launched back in 2016, has been brought back into the conversation.
Under an icon of a professor under a magnifying glass, the website’s mission is “to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.”
The site lists professors and faculty from over 400 colleges and high schools, gathering information from published articles. According to its about page, the website only publishes “profiles on incidents that have been reported and published via a credible source.”
Many school profiles list only one or two individuals, while others feature several dozen.
Among the hundreds listed on its “featured professors” page are four professors from Ohio State: Hasan Jeffries, Treva Lindsay, Pranav Jani and Scott Leibowitz.
None of these profiles on the website have been updated since 2023.
Three of the four professors, Hasan Jeffries, Treva Lindsay and Scott Leibowitz, did not respond in time for publication.
Jani, an associate professor of English, said he was told by a colleague in 2016 that his name was on the list, but added that he might have already been aware at that time.
“It’s the sort of thing that’s been done throughout history, when you want to silence people, when you want to point the finger at people that you don’t like,” Jani said.
Jani is outspoken in the work that he does as an activist, as former president and board member for the American Association of University Professors chapter at Ohio State and member of Ohio State’s Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine. He also served as the faculty advisor for the student organization Students for Justice in Palestine since 2010.
Given his involvement in political activism, he is no stranger to strong opposition. Jani is also on the Canary Mission watchlist, which publishes the personal information of students, professors and other organizations that “promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews,” according to their website.
“They try to turn us into examples to make everyone else silent, to say, ‘Hey, we’re going after this person who might have some more prominence, and so you better watch out if you’re thinking about speaking up,’” Jani said.
Jani said that one of the main goals of lists like Turning Point’s is to create a chilling effect, and that it “[tries] to turn us into examples to make everyone else silent.”
Although Ohio State has an active student-led Turning Point chapter, Faculty Advisor Meredith Paulicivic said in an email that she was not permitted to speak on behalf of Turning Point per its bylaws. Student leaders of the organization did not respond to requests for comment by the time of publication.
Ohio State supports the rights of those in the community to exercise their freedom of speech and expression, Chris Booker, a university spokesperson, said.
“The university encourages everyone to participate in public discourse and exercise their democratic rights by voting, advocacy and civic engagement,” Booker said.
Ohio State also has a statement on freedom of expression, which states that the university “supports the rights of its students, faculty, staff, volunteers, visitors, community partners and program participants to exercise their freedom of speech and expression.”
Jani said that over the course of his more than 30-year career, the last 22 of which have been at Ohio State, he has been the target of harassment, violent messages and has received email messages containing threats of violence against himself and his family and calls for him to lose his job.
“I’m sure that being on the Professor Watchlist has contributed to that over the years. But, I can’t say particularly [whether] it was Professor Watchlist or Canary Mission or some other source that led to [a] particular kind of verbal violence and things like that,” Jani said.
Other professors on Turning Points’ list have been subjected to threats and even acts of violence, such as Arizona State University Professor David Boyles, who was harassed and assaulted by two Turning Point employees in 2023, or Rutgers University Professor Mark Bray, who temporarily relocated to Europe with his family in October after threats against him and his family were amplified by a petition started by Rutgers’ Turning Point student chapter called terminate his employment.
Jani said that escalating pressure to restrict free speech represented by the watchlist will require a concerted pushback with support from universities across the country to protect the principles of free speech and academic freedom, without weaponizing those principles for a political agenda.
“If we do have pushback, then this will be a moment where people you know said, ‘You know, enough is enough,’ and we’re actually going to go back and defend our basic freedoms by speaking out,” Jani said.
