Open Letter From a Poet to the Alarmist Org Behind the Professor Watchlist

An open letter from Portland-based poet Derek Mong to the right-wing Turning Point USA, organizers of the Professor Watchlist, "a catalogue of instructors who 'advance a radical agenda'" (also known as an easy way to discover faculty you might want to study with) has been published at the Kenyon Review. Mong self-describes as the only poet on the list: "I am the envy of my friends; I owe you an ode," he writes. More:

First, though, let’s talk about form. I really love yours: the list. I know some folks who’d call it McCarthyist. I’ve heard others compare your site to the registry of Muslims that Trump’s surrogates proposed. They’re right, of course, on both counts—didn’t you see Trumbo?; don’t you know that the blacklisted win?—but they miss your obvious literary talents. We watchlisted profs are like the Iliad’s ships sailing toward you. We are epic in number and elbow-patched tweed. One might read your list as Whitmanic: we are “learner[s] with the simplest” and “teacher[s] of the thoughtfullest” (“Song of Myself”). We are a blason, that Elizabethan list of lover’s virtues, which you might address to me like so:

My professor’s lies are nothing, save this one:
Morality is mush in any state not red;
Of privilege white, he speaks with twisted tongue;
For Black Lives Matter, he’d shoot cops dead.
OK, I get that he’s well-read and bright,
Marshals facts, writes books, and spins out similes.
I know that new ideas could lead to new delights,
but still, why won’t he just agree with me?
I love to hear him speak, and yet I know
The Trumpet hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never heard a truth there blow’d
but God, my prof talks class till class is drowned.
and so, by heaven, he lays his bias bare
while I sit here, brooding silent in my chair.

(With apologies to Shakespeare’s 130th sonnet.)

The list, in short, can make for fine poetry. Yours has a poetic flair. I read it as a roll call of renegades from institutions that—in your mind—should offer nothing but platitudes on freedom, faith, and light. I get it now: we’re the fallen angels from Paradise Lost.

But here’s the problem: your Watchlist gives me more street cred than I deserve. I am no Allen Ginsberg or Pablo Neruda. I have marched against wars, but last did so when you were about nine. My crime is so mundane as to be laughable, but in 2016 it somehow ranks. Last fall I campaigned with a student group, the Wabash College Democrats. We hung posters, held phone banks, sent emails, and knocked on doors. We followed college protocol and were—in the great tradition of Wabash, a men’s college since 1832—gentlemen at all times. We were openly pro-Clinton and anti-racist, pro-woman and anti-Trump. We never silenced our opposition. We had no chance to; no organized opposition arose. (If there had, we could have held a public debate, each side learning in kind.) And this, I suspect, explains what happened next.

On November 4, 2016, a conservative online “newspaper” published an article attacking me for campaigning on campus. They printed my email, office number, personal website, and Twitter handle. (Someone at Wabash forwarded this to said “newspaper.” They raised no objections directly to the college or to me. They remain anonymous to this day.) The result? I was trolled on social media. I am “watchlisted” today. The article, which questioned my use of campus resources, was intimidation masquerading as journalism. Its true intent—just like your website—is to threaten and alarm.

Read it all at Kenyon Review.