This year, U of A faculty member Frank Gonzalez has experienced something unprecedented in his young academic career — fear for his job.
Gonzalez researches race, ethnicity and political psychology in his role as an associate professor in the School of Government and Public Policy. That kind of work is disfavored by the Trump administration as it tries to change American universities, including by offering the University of Arizona a "compact" that would control some of its academic content.
Frank Gonzalez, associate professor in the University of Arizona's School of Government and Public Policy.
"That was the first time that my wife and I talked about, like, 'OK, What's Plan B if I lose my job?'," Gonzalez said. "And I know a lot of other professors had that same conversation."
For decades the most recognized political pressure in American universities like the U of A has been from the left. Cultural "political correctness" increasingly dictated the acceptable views on many campuses, especially on racial and gender issues.
Now, though, a new political correctness is taking hold. It stems from orders by the Trump administration to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, to limit discussions of gender to the male-female sex binary, and to favor "patriotic" teaching.
I interviewed eight members of the U of A faculty for this column — four of them on the record, four on background — and some believe that both forms of political correctness are coexisting uneasily now on campuses. The difference is that the new, right-wing pressure comes from the government, rather than through the culturally enforced campus norms.
Together, they have the potential to narrow the lane of acceptable expression on campus, between the cultural norms of the left, handed down from previous years, and today's governmental dictates from the right, sometimes enforced by supporters in the public.
"Fear of right-wing ideological pressure has always been the main concern," said Gonzalez, who joined the U of A faculty in 2017. "We're very conscious of the fact that we're perceived and often labeled as lefty indoctrinators."
Professor watchlist
The fear of that sort of targeting is not abstract. A graduate student instructing a class on gender at the University of Oklahoma was placed on leave Nov. 30 after giving no points to a student who argued for traditional gender roles in a paper citing her Christian beliefs.
"Please note that I am not deducting points because you have certain beliefs, but instead I am deducting points for you posting a reaction paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive," instructor Mel Curth wrote.
The student, junior Samantha Fulnecky, contacted the campus chapter of Turning Point USA and protested her treatment as religious discrimination. Turning Point called for the instructor to be fired, and the university put her on administrative leave.
Some University of Oklahoma students protested the instructor's suspension, arguing that the student simply hadn't followed the assignment.
It's not Turning Point USA's first effort at targeting individual professors or instructors. For years, the group has maintained a "Professor Watchlist" that aims "to expose and document college professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom."
Among the alleged infractions that landed 18 U of A professors on the list:
• Joking in an interview, not in class, that Donald Trump should kill himself over his climate policies
• Signing a joint letter protesting Israel's treatment of Palestinians in the Gaza war
• Being a transgender professor who researches transgender health.
In other words, it's not a list of professors who have discriminated against students. It's a list of faculty whose views Turning Point disagrees with.
Left wing dominates
This right-wing backlash didn't come from nowhere, though.
As several faculty members described the situation to me, left-wing political positions came gradually to dominate many courses of study, especially in the social sciences. While professors instigated some of this politicization, it also came from students, especially graduate students, whose touchstone was the treatment of "marginalized" populations.
As one politically progressive faculty member explained it, these graduate students "are extremely dogmatic about leftist discourse and ideology. You have to say things in the exact right way and in the most radical of ways."
In some areas of study, the effort to advance knowledge and pursue truth has been gradually supplanted by a political project of redressing social wrongs.
Saura Masconale is the associate director of the University of Arizona's Center for the Philosophy of Freedom.
Saura Mascalone, associate director of the U of A's Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, likened the expansion of politics into the nooks and crannies of universities to the emergence of environment, social and governance, or ESG, practices in the corporate world.
"At some point, the boundary between these different domains was removed," said Mascalone, who is also a professor in the Department of Political Economy and Moral Science.
"At the peak of DEI, there was pressure," she said. "It was this remedial view. You would have certain boxes to check. Checking those boxes was seen to be a remedy against injustices perpetrated in the past."
Pres. Trump has issued executive orders banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs in universities, likening them to affirmative action in hiring. His administration has also used keyword searches to end federal grants on topics that include words such as "gender," "diversity," and even "women."
Good DEI, bad DEI
Leila Hudson, the chair of the faculty senate, told me she has seen both "good DEI" and "bad DEI" in her long career at the UA. The good DEI was characterized, in part, by the centers at the university supporting different racial or cultural groups in an effort to help those students succeed at the university.
Leila Hudson, chair of the faculty senate, speaks during a University of Arizona faculty senate meeting in Old Main in Tucson, Ariz. on May 5, 2025.
Most of them were closed in May due to Trump's executive orders.
"I still see the residue of what I call bad DEI," she said. " The bad DEI is not the part where you attempt to make every student feel comfortable, welcome and supported on campus. The bad DEI is where by invoking certain pieties and orthodoxies in a self-serving manner, one can advance one's career."
The elimination of the good programs represents an ideological imposition by the government on the universities. Like other Trump efforts on campuses, these amount to a right-wing political correctness that comes closer to the original meaning of that term, Hudson argued.
The term "politically correct" emerged in the Soviet Union to describe people who followed the Communist Party's line. By the time it entered academia in the 1970s and 1980s, it carried a sardonic meaning, mocking people who parroted the progressive line. Then, critics held up political correctness, and later "woke," as what's wrong with universities.
The Trump edicts seek to impose a new right-wing political correctness on academia that more closely mimics the original Soviet meaning than anything that the university has imposed, Hudson argues. A Palestinian-American, Hudson would not even discuss issues stemming from the Gaza war, out of caution. The Trump administration has alleged campus protests of Israel's actions in Gaza are evidence of antisemitism, and used that as leverage to force change in universities.
"I don't think it (the university) ever fell fully into the caricature that the right made it out to be," she said. "But suddenly, when there are threats of having your funding cut off, or, you know, your business model permanently destroyed by using certain forbidden words, that's where you really do see the dynamics behind political correctness."
'Listening to each other more'
The good news is that the university rejected the terms offered by the Trump administration to sign onto their compact, and they did so in part on the basis of preserving free speech and academic freedom.
“The university maintains its commitment to academic freedom which undergirds the right of faculty to teach free from unreasonable or arbitrary restrictions, to conduct research, and to address matters of institutional policy and governance,” Pres. Suresh Garimella wrote to the Trump administration in response to the proposed compact. “The university shall not restrict academic freedom in scholarship and teaching or individual speech by students and employees acting in their personal capacities.”
Ted McLoof
In the university's response, Garimella cited the work of the Freedom Center as well as the Discourse Series, forums on different themes held each academic year. Ted McLoof, a senior lecturer and teaching professor in the English Department, started that series in 2018.
"Discourse did not seem like it had a very promising future," McLoof said. "We mainly just tried to make sure we were listening to each other more, but also trying to dismantle the sort of binary left-right thinking of every single issue in the country."
He noted that academic freedom is not necessarily hampered by left and right political forces but also by the commercial pressure of the university treating students as consumers. That means there may be pressure not to make students feel uncomfortable.
"I think we get a little bit more pressure to to just kind of cave, instead of to do what I think students are supposed to be doing, which is being challenged," he said.
A difficult balance
For U of A faculty, protecting themselves from government or campus crackdowns is a tough balance to strike while still challenging students. That's especially true in the era of ever-present cameras.
"You have to assume that you're being recorded at all times, and that you never say anything that you wouldn't be comfortable seeing on the front page of the newspaper," Hudson said. "That poses a challenge sometimes, but it's a useful challenge so that you don't you don't teach in an unthoughtful way."
Gonzalez, the professor of government and public policy, said knowing the material on dicey topics like race and gender in politics helps him. He feels comfortable, he said, pressing hot buttons and bringing up controversial topics. Still, people who aren't as familiar with those subjects can feel like they're walking on eggshells.
Nevertheless, he said, he worries about being put on a "watch list" and he knows he won't get a federal grant anytime soon considering his area of research.
"I've given up on the possibility of getting a grant while this stuff is the policy of the government," he said.
During this Trump term, keeping your job while teaching about and researching sensitive social issues is challenge enough.
