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.”Footnote 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 Reference Flaherty2016; 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 Reference Friedersdorf2017).

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 Reference Ellis2021). Progressives seem to prefer their on-campus resources, especially student groups and sympathetic administrators (Comas Reference Comas2020; Hess Reference Hess2021). 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 and Ken Mayer by conservatives (Kearns Reference Kearns2018; Moynihan Reference Moynihan2019).

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 Reference Mele2016). 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 Reference Kamenetz2018).

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 (Reference Sachsn.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 Reference Abrams2018)—Abrams (Reference Abrams2019) 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 Reference Moynihan2019) 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 Reference Carnahan2021).Footnote 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 Reference Flaherty2016).

Faculty call-outs may make national news but perhaps more concerning are localized call-outs—those that receive no press but that may dominate campus gossip—involving students. Indeed, students have good reason to be concerned; their admission offers may be rescinded based on their social media posts (Levin Reference Levin2020). A majority of college students reported self-censoring in the classroom at some point (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education 2017). As one student stated, “People won’t call you out because your opinion is wrong. People will call you out for literally anything” (Friedersdorf Reference Friedersdorf2017).

As painful as being called out may be for faculty members, at least they are adults who willingly chose to teach and know that teaching is not an easy profession. To the extent that students are afraid to voice their opinions in political science courses, their education is hindered.

It is difficult to ascertain from which direction the biggest risks of being called and canceled arise. It has become conservative dogma that conservatives are especially at risk, although the data do not support this (Sachs Reference Sachs2019). It is true that students skew progressive: in 2018, they were twice as likely to identify as Democrats as Republicans (52% to 25%) (Hart Research Associates 2018, 11). We would not be surprised if conservatives are called out at higher rates but progressives called out in larger numbers. If professors have a special duty to protect unpopular opinions, this duty often may be more necessary regarding minority opinions.

The potential for offensive statements (or statements perceived as offensive) by faculty or students to be circulated outside of the classroom—and the risk that these statements will be met with abuse—undoubtedly has increased over time. Filter bubbles have grown and individuals choose media that confirm their preexisting beliefs and marginalize other points of view (Chamorro-Premuzic Reference Chamorro-Premuzic2014). Social media entice individuals to post and share—and thereby spread and amplify—claims that offense has been given and taken. Moreover, the “classroom” is not merely the physical structure. What professors and students do outside those walls affects the environment in which we meet together in the classroom. Our students know us through our Twitter and other social media accounts.

Given the increase in both ideological “tinder” and call-out “matches,” what is the role of a professor in a political science classroom? Simply by the nature of our discipline, almost everything we teach is touched by ideology; given the current state of our democratic system, we may even have an obligation to infuse (or what some might call “indoctrinate”) our students with democratic values and civic responsibility. What can a faculty member do to create classrooms in which robust discussions are the norm and controversial conversations are acceptable?

We first might ask: Which controversial conversations are not acceptable? The First Amendment does not sufficiently answer this question because it instructs us on which conversations are allowable, not on those that should be welcomed in the classroom. We think of “controversial” as having three relevant meanings. A statement might be controversial because (1) the facts—or the interpretation of the facts—are truly in dispute (e.g., affirmative action and the $15/hour minimum wage); (2) it raises strong emotions (e.g., abortion and immigration); or (3) it is inflammatory, designed to provoke, or rejects the evidence (e.g., “President Biden stole the election” and “All whites are racists”). Conversations that seek to scrutinize evidence—and how the evidence is interpreted—should always be welcomed. Those that involve highly emotional issues should be discussed with great care, empathy, and sensitivity. The most provocative conversations are the most challenging; however, if they can be transformed into questions that seek to analyze and interpret, they are still possible.

Political science professors face two call-and-cancel challenges. The less important challenge, we believe, is how the call-out culture affects what we say and do. The more important challenge is what to do if we are concerned about preventing our students from being silenced by other students through call-outs.

We address the less important challenge first. Yes, faculty can be subject to being called out. Some not only accept this but also embrace it. These are faculty who deliberately push the boundaries, not only of decorum but also of free speech (e.g., Mangan Reference Mangan2018). For these faculty, being called out might be treated as a badge of honor. Although we applaud the courage of professors who are willing to bear public scorn for their political statements, we question whether their highly provocative statements are conducive to thoughtful classroom conversations.

Yet, whereas outspoken professors can face doxing campaigns and death threats, called-out students face the same threats with fewer protections—all during the formative years of their adulthood. This is not a call for instructor self-censorship but rather a call for reflection. In our classroom-related speech, we might usefully ask: Is it the truth? Is it fair to all concerned? Will it build goodwill? Will it be beneficial to all concerned?Footnote ³ We recognize the complex nature of the words “truth,” “fair,” “goodwill,” and “beneficial” and therefore pursue them as an ethical rather than a legalistic goal. As we reflect, we can consider the need for multiple perspectives while not falling victim to the fallacy of false balance, in which we make issues seem less settled than they truly are in our pursuit of appearing unbiased.Footnote ⁴

Given the risk of being called out, how should college professors situate their ideology in the classroom? Should our personal ideologies ever become a part of our teaching? Is it important to teach American values to our college students? If so, what are these values and who defines them? American values (i.e., freedom, justice, equality, democracy, and the pursuit of happiness) mean something different to each of us depending on our ideological, cultural, sexual, or personal points of view. Freedom to do what or freedom from what? What type of justice for whom? Some questions regarding democracy have become increasingly contentious. Does democracy require freedom of speech? How much? Freedom of the press? Even for fake news? These are important questions; however, unless the answers we or our students give are popular in that classroom, they can result in public shaming.

Accordingly, we see a duty to protect students from being called out for what they opine in our classroom. To fulfill this duty, we must create an environment in which students can make politically controversial comments, even when doing so creates discomfort and tension. We can do this in at least three ways.

First, we can create safe(r) spaces through how we speak about politics—for example, in reiterating such core political principles as disagreement is inevitable, self-interest is pervasive, political actors nonetheless typically believe that the angels are on their side, and so forth. We also can create safe(r) spaces by working with our students to assess the salience of political topics of discussion. By signaling through our speech and classroom discussions that no issue, on its face, is unimportant, we can create room for both conservative and liberal students to guide the discourse to issues that are salient to them. We can ensure that we welcome not only multiple views on one issue but also that multiple issues can be brought into discussion, even when those issues may be more important to one side of the political spectrum than the other. We do this not only to create dialogue but also to develop critical-thinking and persuasive-communication skills.

Second, our words alone are not enough: students can assess our actions. As much as we might strive for neutrality or balance, we should not be confident that we will achieve it. This does not mean that we merely should play the devil’s advocate—indeed, in voicing unpopular opinions, we should not claim to be the devil. Instead, we should invite into our classroom points of view with which we disagree—whether in person, in print, or digitally. Among our guest speakers have been spokespersons for the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the Marijuana Policy Project; White House staffers from both the Obama and Trump administrations; and representatives from Americans for Tax Reform and from Planned Parenthood. Invitations must be contingent on the willingness of invitees to answer challenging questions from students. We can and should be selective in our invitations to ensure that speakers will present credible information and that they do not represent views that dehumanize segments of our student population. However, we must present diverse material because wisdom is not confined to one end of the political spectrum.

Third, we can insulate ourselves and our classrooms from call-outs by engaging in old-fashioned coalition building. We should not seek only to be fair to those with whom we disagree but also to be genuinely open to working with them. Liberal professors can seek an invitation to a meeting of College Republicans or Turning Point USA. Even if you personally support abortion rights, visit the campus Students for Life club with an open mind—not to be persuaded by them, of course, but to recognize that their members are political actors with their own hopes and dreams for a more perfect union. An unwillingness to meet political opponents on their own turf would belie any professor’s proclamations of treating all views fairly.

The authors have taught at distinctly different institutions, with contrasting cultural norms within and outside of the university. Texas Tech University is a large public university in the red heart of Republican-dominated Texas, although the campus is located within a small liberal bubble (Bloch et al. Reference Bloch, Buchanan, Katz and Quealy2018). Georgetown University is a much smaller private school located in one of the deepest blue areas of the country. Georgetown students tend to be “establishment”: highly affluent, with highly educated parents, and internationalist. Texas Tech students come from families that are more representative of the American public.

Given Georgetown’s historical legacy of slavery and its current elitism, Rom has been concerned about appearing insufficiently “woke” in his classroom presentations and feels trepidation when inviting the NRA to speak. For Mitchell, teaching at a conservative campus for six years was a challenge. She felt obligated to challenge the political views of her students. She taught about the politics of climate change, acknowledging that the politics are contentious but that the change is real. She had her students analyze the Second Amendment to help them understand how it can be (and has been) interpreted in differing ways at different points in time. She wondered whether this was evidence that she was doing exactly as the Professor Watchlist warned. Was she trying to indoctrinate her students by devaluing their conservative views? These specific concerns were relieved when she moved to California, where she teaches part time at a local community college. Now, the tables have turned and she finds herself challenging her more liberal student population to grapple with conservative realities that they might not have considered, such as the possible negative consequences of a sudden minimum-wage increase. She asks her students to ponder whether—as Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black would have said—“No law means no law” with respect to free press or free speech.

Both authors agree that their role as political science professors is not only to teach their students the facts and concepts on which they will base their political opinions and actions but also to challenge beliefs that are sincerely held. Moreover, we want to create a classroom environment in which our students can challenge, and be challenged, without being called or canceled. Will the suggestions we make actually work? We hope so, but we have no proof. However, unless we continually seek ways to allow controversial conversations to emerge, they probably will not.

As professors, we also must remain vigilant. We too are biased in many ways, explicitly and implicitly. Sometimes we may have said things that perhaps we should have been called out for (but, we hope, not canceled for). Self-censoring is not entirely negative. Whenever we are tempted to say, “I probably should not say this, but…,” we probably should not. If we want to preserve the ability to have difficult conversations in the classroom, we must model the ability to engage in them. If we do not hold ourselves accountable, then state legislators or university administrators will.