This study explores the emerging role of university professors on TikTok, examining their goals, communication styles, and strategies. Historically, the professor’s role has been public, centered on sharing knowledge. The term professor originates from the Latin profitieri, meaning to declare publicly, highlighting the profession’s role in knowledge dissemination. One point of departure for the analysis is Gramsci’s (1971) understanding of the role of the intellectual to maintain or resist capitalist hegemony. TikTok complicates this function, operating within hegemonic capitalism while challenging U.S. internet dominance (Gray, 2021).  The research employs a netnographic approach to examine professor micro-influencers (10K+ followers). Guided by discourse theory (Laclau & Mouffe, 2001), the study explores two questions: What themes and content emerge in the professor’s posts? How do these align with influencer roles and academia’s current state? Thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022) provides an overarching view of dominant themes, complemented by in-depth content analysis. Among 17 creators, five we closely examined, focusing on themes of TikTok’s potential ban, teaching, and research.  Preliminary findings suggest a predominance of humor content, aligned with TikTok trends, particularly slapstick pranks and darkly comedic reflections on life in academia. Here, the creators align with wellknown formats on the app. Professors also positioned themselves as public educators, using their expertise in, for example, AI ethics, linguistics, and gender theory to critique social and political issues, something that is also common in the general TikTok feed. The public availability of this content could be seen as reminiscent of both the original meaning of the word 'professor' and Gramsci’s theory of the organic intellectual. However, professors balance dual roles as researchers and educators while being commodified through the algorithms of TikTok and within academia under neoliberalism, facing pressures from both audit culture and industry expectations (Troiani & Dutson, 2021; Brown, 2017), thereby fulfilling the function of the traditional intellectual. This research contributes to understanding how social media intersects with academia, raising critical questions about the role of professors as digital influencers, the democratization of knowledge, and the implications of blending scholarly authority with influencer culture.