Seattle’s UW Professors Shift To Private Emails To Hide Their Political Campaigning

In a new op-ed Seattle talk radio host Jason Rantz exposes how University of Washington faculty—through the American Association of University Professors (AAUP)—are deliberately trying to keep their political organizing out of public view. The evidence comes from an email circulated by Abraham Flaxman, a UW professor, forwarding AAUP leadership’s warning that:

“Emails that are sent to an employer-issued email address could be accessed by the employer or be subject to records requests from legislators or members of the public, putting our members’ privacy at risk.”

As Rantz points out, this isn’t about privacy in the ordinary sense—it’s about making sure “taxpayers—or the media—[don’t learn] about the ideological activism they push under the guise of academic freedom.”

The AAUP even pushed faculty to update their contact information with personal emails and cell phone numbers for “rapid response work.” That’s not academic discourse—it’s political campaigning. Rantz rightly concludes:

“In other words, they want to be nimble in organizing political activism—just not where anyone can hold them accountable for it.”

This shows the hypocrisy of faculty who constantly talk about “transparency” but recoil the second their activism risks public exposure. As Rantz notes, the irony is that the listserv itself is hosted by UW—so much of this supposed secrecy may not even protect them from records laws.

KTTH 770AM’s Rantz says that the larger point is clear:

“When the AAUP warns its members that ‘messages we send to .edu addresses could be accessed,’ it’s not about protecting sensitive research or academic discourse. It’s about shielding the political machinations of professors who increasingly see themselves less as educators and more as activists.”

Rantz is right to sound the alarm here. If these professors truly believed their activism was principled and defensible, they wouldn’t be trying to hide it from the public that pays their salaries. Instead, they act like political operatives in academic robes, using taxpayer-funded institutions while dodging accountability.