Raw Story Covers AIM’s Higher Education Investigations
July 30, 2026
Red flags fly after conservative harassment network targeting teachers exposed: ‘Chilling’
By Matthew Chapman | July 30, 2026
A shadowy network of conservative activist groups, backed by Koch-linked dark money, is deploying hidden cameras and mass public-records requests to hunt down and destroy the careers of college professors and administrators — and it’s working.
An investigation from Columbia’s Tow Center found that right-wing groups including Accuracy in Media, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project, and the “pink-slime” news network Metric Media have flooded universities nationwide with Freedom of Information Act requests demanding syllabuses, emails and course materials containing words like “diversity,” “queer” and “Indigenous.” Metric Media alone filed more than 9,000 FOIA requests across all 50 states in a single year, disguising the campaign as accountability journalism through sites masquerading as local news outlets.
The effort appears to tie into the Heritage Foundation’s infamous “Project 2025” manifesto for reshaping the government in a right-wing image, which condemned higher education as an “establishment captured by woke ‘diversicrats.’”
Metric Media co-founder Brian Timpone defended the tactics bluntly, insisting, “Parents should know what they are paying professors to teach their children.”
According to the report, Accuracy in Media’s undercover hidden-camera videos alone cost at least three university employees their jobs, while a secretly filmed lecture at Texas A&M cost senior lecturer Melissa McCoul her position after a student challenged her class on gender identity, citing President Donald Trump’s executive order asserting there are only two genders. McCoul, two staffers, and the university’s own president all lost their jobs over the fallout. She’s since sued for wrongful termination.