The sphere of academia has lost one of the few remaining reality-based, brilliant minds it has left. However, it seems the university system’s loss is the world’s gain.
Author and professor Dr. Jordan Peterson has resigned his position as a full tenured professor from the University of Toronto (U of T). Peterson made his resignation public on Wednesday in an opinion piece for Canadian outlet, National Post.
While Peterson did note that he remains a “professor emeritus,” which is a professor who is retired but retains the honorary title of the position held before retirement or resignation, he also wrote that his resignation doesn’t mean he will stop teaching.
“There were many reasons [to resign], including the fact that I can now teach many more people and with less interference online,” Peterson wrote.
In the op-ed, Peterson listed his reasons for stepping down, most of which seems to focus on what he calls “DIE,” or “Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity.”
Here are some of Peterson’s other reasons for resigning, as he wrote:
First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers. This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE).[…]
[Universities are] out to produce a generation of researchers utterly unqualified for the job. And we’ve seen what that means already in the horrible grievance studies “disciplines.” That, combined with the death of objective testing, has compromised the universities so badly that it can hardly be overstated.[…]
Furthermore, the accrediting boards for graduate clinical psychology training programs in Canada are now planning to refuse to accredit university clinical programs unless they have a “social justice” orientation. That, combined with some recent legislative changes in Canada, claiming to outlaw so-called “conversion therapy” (but really making it exceedingly risky for clinicians to do anything ever but agree always and about everything with their clients) have likely doomed the practice of clinical psychology, which always depended entirely on trust and privacy.
Peterson also wrote about how Russian President Vladimir Putin even recognizes how the woke, social justice movement is reminiscent, and perhaps “even worse,” than that of the former Soviet Union.
“This, from the head of the former totalitarian enterprise, against whom we fought a five decades’ long Cold War, risking the entire planet (in a very real manner),” Peterson wrote, not siding with Putin, but understanding that even someone like him can recognize the situation. “This, from the head of a country riven in a literally genocidal manner by ideas that Putin himself attributes to the progressives in the West, to the generally accepting audience of his once-burned (once (!)) twice-shy listeners.”
Peterson concluded his piece by practically pleading with people to “stop” falling for the “DIE” movement, instead calling on people to base hiring on “talent and excellence.”
Musicians, artists, writers: stop bending your sacred and meritorious art to the demands of the propagandists before you fatally betray the spirit of your own intuition. Stop censoring your thought. Stop saying you will hire for your orchestral and theatrical productions for any reason other than talent and excellence. That’s all you have. That’s all any of us have.
He who sows the wind will reap the whirlwind. And the wind is rising.
While the university system is losing a giant, the rest of us will most likely be gaining one with more frequency.
For those that would like to read Dr. Peterson's article, click the "National Post" link above. Peterson also published a video on YouTube of him reading the article, so if you'd like to hear his words in his voice, watch below: