Law Professor Included on Conservative Nonprofit’s ‘Watchlist’

Law professor Mark V. Tushnet ’67 landed on a “watchlist” of liberal professors created by the conservative nonprofit organization Turning Point USA last week.

According to the group’s website, the goal of the list is to “expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Turning Point USA aims to instill conservative principles such as support of free markets and limited government in college students.

Tushnet earned his spot on the list in part because of a blog post he wrote in May for the website Balkinization. In the post, he argued that conservative Christians have lost the “culture wars,” and that the victors should take a “hard line” with the losers.

He also wrote that “taking a hard line seemed to work reasonably well in Japan and Germany after 1945,” an argument that Turning Point USA singled out as an issue.

“Mark Tushnet... asked liberals to begin treating Christians and conservatives like Nazis,” the watchlist read.

Tushnet said he was unperturbed by his inclusion on the list.

“It’s not a big deal,” he said. “It comes with the territory.”

However, Tushnet said he has received more hate mail since the publication of the list, as he did after the blog post was published in May. A variety of websites, including the far-right website Breitbart, picked up his remarks.

“The fact that there are people who have these views and are willing to express them is worth paying attention to, but not on a personal level,” Tushnet said.

The list includes around 200 professors.