This isn’t Rate My Professor: Explosion in watchlists brings new threats to academics
Matthew Boedy's low rating on Rate My Professor, a longstanding anonymous website used by students, didn't have immediate consequences for him. He chalked it up to being a demanding professor and harsh grader.
Then he got listed on Turning Point USA's Professor Watchlist.
Instead of student comments on his teaching style, the watchlist posting led to hate mail, his wedding photo plastered to the website and even a records request of his emails from a conservative news outlet.
"If you want to say Rate My Professor nationalized professor critiques, what Turning Point did was weaponize it, was politicize it," said Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia, who has studied Charlie Kirk and his organization, Turning Point USA.
Websites placing professors, or even students, into the public eye have only spread over the years.
The Professor Watchlist was created by Kirk — who was killed on Sept. 10 during an event on the campus of Utah Valley University — to "expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom," according to its website .
Kirk had a strong following — including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and many college-aged students — who mourned his death as a leader.
While Boedy worries that his office location is public, and it could result in more serious harassment, he recognizes that in the years on the list, he hasn't had the worst of it. Other professors on the list have had death threats or even a detective shadowing them around their campus for protection, according to previous MassLive reporting .
Growing scrutiny
Beyond Kirk's Professor Watchlist, the organization also has a School Board Watchlist. There is also a watchlist of professors and others who are believed to be anti-Israel or antisemitic through the pro-Israel organization Canary Mission and conservative "watchdog" news organizations like Campus Reform that write only about higher education.
Recently, Indiana's Attorney General created a website called "Eyes on Education" for people to report what students are being taught in K-12 and higher education.
The academics who spoke with MassLive point to the watchlists as something separate from Rate My Professor and more dangerous to academic freedom. On the other hand, Philip Wohltorf, the vice president of the university's student Republican group, describes both websites as equally important, especially when higher education feels like it is a liberal bubble, he said.
The proliferation of websites over the past few years comes at a time when higher education is under federal scrutiny by the Trump administration.
The federal government has gone after institutions like Harvard University in the name of combating campus antisemitism, cutting billions of dollars in funding, after the institution said it wouldn't institute an overhaul of Harvard's leadership structure, admissions and hiring.
While antisemitism has been part of what the Trump administration says it is trying to address, the federal government has also attempted to change the long-held criticism that higher education is too liberal.
Most recently, the Trump administration offered nine universities , including MIT, preferential access to federal funding if they signed onto a "compact" aligning with administrative priorities, such as creating a better environment for conservatives.
That would include ending departments that "purposefully punish, belittle and even spark violence against conservative ideas," according to the compact.
What informed these websites?
In 1999, what is now called Rate My Professor was published online. The website even had a now-removed chili pepper ranking system for how "hot" a professor was.
Some found the public platform helpful, informing students of what to expect from a professor. But to others, it raised concerns about how a negative review might impact future employment.
"If Rate My Professor is some sort of joke to some people, Turning Point is not a joke. They have really altered the landscape," Boedy said.
Rate My Professor and Kirk's Professor Watchlist aren't the first groups to create lists of professors.
Watchlists of different sorts can be traced back to even President Richard Nixon, when he created an "enemies list" to compile political opponents, such as professors and others. And in 2006, conservative writer and activist David Horowitz wrote a book naming the 101 "most dangerous academics in America," who he believed held anti-American and left-wing views.
However, academics said the difference now is that the work of Kirk's watchlist and other sites has only grown to be accessible online and by social media, changing and influencing what happens on college campuses.
While the websites are protected under free speech, Kirk's Professor Watchlist toes the line from free speech to harassment campaigns, according to Sean Stevens, the chief research advisor at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a nonpartisan free speech group based in Washington, D.C.
The sites have a clear ideological mission where only certain professors who go against stated beliefs are placed on them, he said.
Despite his apprehensions, he said watchlists are often born from legitimate concerns, such as not enough conservative academics and concerns about rising tuition prices and return on investment.
A photo of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk is seen on a large screen during a memorial for Kirk, Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025, at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. (AP Photo/John Locher)AP
How much of an influence do these websites have?
One of the most powerful organizations in Boedy's mind is Turning Point USA.
"Some of these profiles are extensive because they're watching you. That's what they want you to believe. And therefore they control the online mob," Boedy said.
If someone joins a watchlist, it can often come with a slew of death threats, media attention and other consequences, professors previously told MassLive .
Kirk's Professor Watchlist suggests that academics on the list are trying to indoctrinate students, when that isn't being mentioned by students, Boedy said.
"The Professor Watchlist implies that those comments somehow are the driver for anything I do in the classroom because I'm trying to indoctrinate kids. But I think even with the stupid negative comments about grading [on Rate My Professor], there [are] no negative comments about politics at all, which shows the absurdity of the watchlist," Boedy said.
Part of Turning Point's influence as an organization is its social media presence and online buzz, which raises the scale of influence, according to Brian Soucek, a professor of law at the University of California, Davis.
That online presence isn't just able to provoke outrage online but also attract the attention of politicians and donors to schools to get involved or comment on it, he said. For instance, nearly one hundred professors who commented on Kirk's assassination have been targeted for firing through social media campaigns and commentary from state and federal officials, according to Stevens from FIRE.
While Rate My Professor had negative impacts on certain academics, Soucek said there is "a big difference in scale between getting a couple angry emails versus waking up and finding that your name has been on Twitter and there's suddenly 100 voicemails on your phone and you may have to even change some of your accounts," he said.
"I think people saw it as effective that they could actually affect people's ability to do their work if they were sufficiently disruptive," he said.
What feels more concerning is the inclusion of students on the Canary Mission watchlist for academics who are deemed antisemitic or anti-Israel, according to Jeremy Young, senior advisor for strategic initiatives at the American Association of Colleges and Universities.
"I think we have to understand that students are students. They are at an institution to learn. They are not fully formed entities. And while they are adults and legally responsible for their actions, it's not productive to single out individual students as though they were the governor of a state," Young said.
While he thinks that the public should have a role in shaping higher education and knowing what is happening on a college campus, he said it shouldn't fuel a movement to exclude certain fields of study or opinions from academia.
Boston University campus building on April 1, 2025.(MassLive/Juliet Schulman-Hall)
What the websites mean to conservative students
In the wake of the assassination of Kirk, college Republicans at Boston University have felt either more scared to express their political beliefs or obligated to speak out, according to Philip Wohltorf, the vice president of the university's student Republican group.
Kirk's Professor Watchlist is "justified" to show conservative students that there are professors who may treat you differently or give you poor grades because they disagree with your political opinions, Wohltorf said. And, by the same token, Rate My Professor provides an avenue into how a professor might be in the classroom.
"Institutions, universities should be a marketplace of different ideas where you challenge one another," he said.
Wohltorf hasn't used the watchlist and likely won't be moving forward, due to there only being a handful of professors from Boston University on the list. However, that doesn't mean it isn't crucial for other students, especially when higher education has become left-wing institutions that don't value viewpoints outside of their own, he said.
"At the end of the day, again, the institutions were made to serve America. I think lots of those institutions fail to serve America right now. And you need to get those institutions back. And that's what the conservative movement is working on," he said.
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