Dear Professor Watchlist,

We, the undersigned faculty members at Calvin College, write to request that you add all of our names to the Professor Watchlist website.

We make this request because your site currently lists one of our colleagues, Professor Joe Kuilema. As a teacher and mentor, Professor Kuilema has educated many students who have dedicated themselves to serving people in the community. His own commitment to helping others extends outside the classroom, into the local community and as far away as West Africa, where he has spent years contributing to development work. The knowledge that Professor Kuilema shares with students is thus based not only on insights gained as a scholar but also on his experience with people whose lives are affected by the real-life, structural inequalities in the world. Your organization claims to recognize “the right for professors to say whatever they wish.” Professors like Joe Kuilema don’t say whatever they wish. Instead, we say what we know, based on careful research, the accumulated work of other scholars, and our own direct experience outside the classroom.    

Professor Kuilema is listed on the Professor Watchlist because of his statements about systemic racism in the United States. If an aim of your site is to identify professors who maintain that racism remains a difficult problem in American society, then all of us need to be on the list. Most of us teach about racism in American institutions and structures in our courses. We don’t take pleasure in discussing the realities of institutional racism with our students, but we know that it needs to be discussed. Indeed, our college as a whole — based on our shared Christian convictions — has dedicated itself to the goal of racial reconciliation. While we each have distinct ways of addressing racism and its ongoing effects in our society, we all agree that this goal requires an intentional stand.

As teachers, we expect our students to be demanding of us. They should expect us to present knowledge that is new to them with clear reasoning and strong supporting evidence – just as we expect of them in their assignments. Education is difficult, challenging work, requiring the open exchange of ideas. Putting the names and faces of professors on a watchlist does not advance this work. A watchlist implies that professors are to be held in suspicion. Your organization claims to provide a service by revealing the names of professors who advance a “radical agenda.” We all stand on the agenda that facts do exist, even when they challenge our beliefs, that considering ideas other than our own is necessary to being a mature citizen, and that the truth-seeking inquiries and discoveries made at America’s colleges and universities are a large part of what makes this country great. If that agenda is radical, then please add our names to your list.

We wish to be counted among those you are watching.    

Signed

(in alphabetical order):