Dr Jordan Peterson, Censorship and a place for Controversial Ideas in Universities
On Wednesday, Dr Jordan Peterson, an academic from the University of Toronto, had his offer for a ‘visiting fellowship’ at Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity rescinded. The professor of psychology initially announced of this two-month appointment, starting in October, on his YouTube Channel last Monday.
A hugely controversial figure, Dr Peterson, has attracted significant media attention for his forthright views on gender, political correctness, identity politics and climate change. The author of Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief (1999) and the bestselling 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos (2018) first entered into the media’s eye in September 2016 when he released a YouTube video criticising the Canadian government’s Bill C-16, which added ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ as prohibited areas of discrimination to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. According to Peterson this addition can be regarded as a form of ‘compelled speech’, whereby he could be prosecuted under provincial human rights laws for failing to refer to transgender persons at the University of Toronto using their preferred gender pronouns.
Peterson writes that the purpose of the visiting fellowship at Cambridge was to develop his knowledge about biblical matters that would inform a series of lectures on the Exodus stories. The professor regarded the coming tenure in the Faculty as mutually beneficial, benefiting both himself and members of the faculty who might be interested in speaking with him.
On Wednesday, the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge tweeted:
This comes the same week as the New Zealand bookseller, Whitcoulls, removed 12 Rules for Life (2018) from its shelves, following the terrorist attack in Christchurch last Friday.
I’m not supportive of the entire stock of Peterson’s views, ideas and theories. However, I firmly believe that universities, particularly a university as highly ranked, academically revered, and having produced as many great thinkers (some more controversial than Peterson in their time, e.g. Darwin) as Cambridge, should be places where both students and academics are exposed to ideas that challenge and stimulate them intellectually; even if these ideas consist of a ‘skepticism of climate change’, ‘opposition to the feminisation of men’, ‘a denial of the gender pay gap resulting from sexual discrimination’, ‘arguing of the inevitability of hierarchies’ and ‘a belief that patriarchy may be “predicated on competence”’. All controversial ideas, sure, but it is not conducive to the intellectual progression of the individual, nor the development of knowledge, to allow any idea to be regarded as ‘given’; we must always question and ridicule, and as academics we must always be subjected to competing and unfamiliar ideas. It is exposure to unfamiliar and competing ideas that allow for refinement of theory and progression towards the ‘truth’. This is how science works. Certainly, the writing of various essays ‘comparing and contrasting two competing theories or arguments’ was a common part of both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees. It’s a process central to learning and education.
As such, Peterson was correct in asserting that the fellowship is ‘mutually beneficial’. Through unfettered, open discussion, both the ideas of Peterson and others in the Faculty of Divinity can be refined and developed. Exposure either allows for the development of new ideas and knowledge, or it strengthens existing arguments. This is particularly important when this exposure is from a world-renowned scholar described as “the most influential public intellectual in the western world right now”.
On this basis, if the Faculty had initially failed to offer Peterson a visiting fellowship on the grounds that they believe his views and principles were not in accordance with that of the University, the decision is still not justified. However, Peterson’s offer was withdrawn after initially being afforded by the Faculty, which adds further insult-to-injury. The individuals who afforded the offer must have had prior awareness of Peterson’s contentious viewpoints.
According to the Professors blog, also published on Wednesday, the professor postulated (in light of the absence of official reasoning provided by the Faculty of Divinity) that the Faculty presumably decided that “signaling their solidarity to the diversity-inclusive-equity mob trumps” the opportunity for mutual benefit, in learning and intellectual development, resulting from his coming tenure at the University. That is, that the Faculty of Divinity and the University of Cambridge likely succumbed to the pressures from the regressive, hypersensitive minority of far-leftist students and academics at the University, thereby bowing to their frankly perplexing and out-of-place desire to work in an environment where their views and ideas aren’t challenged, questioned or ridiculed. Though this is speculation, it is supported by the fact that the rescindment came two-days following the professors’ public announcement that he had been offered the position, combined with the Faculty’s choice to publicly announce on Twitter of the rescinding of the offer. That is, a public repeal contrasted to the privately afforded original offer of visiting fellowship.
Peterson became aware of the rescindment from a colleague and friend and had, at the time of writing, yet to receive official reasoning behind the decision.
As such, Peterson wrote that the Faculty made a “serious error of judgement” in choosing to rescind the offer, arguing that they “handled publicizing the rescindment in a manner that could hardly have been more narcissistic, self-congratulatory and devious”.
Furthermore, an academic from the University of Cambridge appeared to mock Peterson’s placement on Twitter:
and,
If the decision to rescind the fellowship did result from an outcry from students and staff, a possibility that must be entertained, it is not an isolated event. In 2015, public intellectual and feminist writer Germain Greer was initially refused a platform at Cardiff University as a result of her “transphobic views”. Likewise, the gay-rights activist, Peter Tatchell, was the target of the censoring-mob, when Fran Cowling, NUS’s LGBT+ student officer refused to share a platform with Tatchell at Canterbury Christchurch University because of his ‘transphobic’ and ‘racist’ views. These are just a couple of examples from an extensive list of cases where outcry from a minority of students has led to attempts (some successful, some not) to ‘no-platform’ speakers from university events. However, the repealing of Peterson’s offer can be regarded as a more extreme and worrying curtailing of free speech, both in terms of it’s impact and the reach of this pernicious endemic; the movement away from ‘no-platforming’ of guest lecturers, to the censorship of dissenting opinion of world-renowned academics that would be conducive to progressive and in-depth discussion.
What is the answer? Foremost, we must immobilise against this nocuous endemic using the most formidable tools at our disposal: the reasoned voice and unfettered, open-dialogue. We must not succumb to these chokers of progression; the repressive, unenlightened adversaries of liberalism. Those hell-bent on rendering the bloody, hard-won conflicts of our forbearers, for freedom-of-expression and freedom-of-voice, wholly redundant. The denouement must not be swollen by a song of fear and censorship, and we must defend this universal pillar for all of humanity, to avoid all costs. When they scream, our voices must only get louder.
We must uphold the debate and relish in argument. Universities must not succumb to the continuous clatter from those masquerading under the illusion, the self-deception, of ‘tolerance’ and ‘good-intention’. We owe it to our grandparents and our great-grandparents, and we owe it to our children, and to our grandchildren, and to our great-grandchildren. We owe it to those who sacrificed their very existence for the advancement towards empirical truth and the fuelling of moral and intellectual progression in defiance of censorship and repression, from Galileo to Darwin. We must work to ensure that all universities, including Cambridge, remain places of open-discussion and debate, where students and academics can tackle conflicting, controversial, and sometimes offensive, ideas. The likelihood of a minority of students feeling ‘upset’ or ‘threatened’ is not grounds for censorship, nor a legitimate reason for rescinding a fellowship, if that is what has occurred here. It is healthy, both intellectually and to our mental wellbeing, to be subjected to conflicting and offensive ideas. The ‘fragility of the student’ postulation is a farce; we’re much stronger than the misinformed minority of students and academics would have you believe.
Note: This is not an endorsement of Peterson’s ideas. It is just a discussion about about freedom of speech.
Update (25/03/19): A statement from the University’s vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope, released today, ascertains that the decision to rescind the offer was made prior to public-outcry, when the "Faculty became aware of a photograph of Professor Peterson posing with his arm around a man wearing a T-shirt that clearly bore the slogan “I’m a proud Islamophobe””. This same reason has been cited as a possibility for removal of 12 Rules for Life from the bookshelves at Whitcoulls in New Zealand. If this reasoning for rescindment is to be believed, though clearly a monumental PR-mistake on Peterson’s behalf, it is debatable as to whether this photograph implies endorsement. I’m unaware of any Islamophobic views of Peterson’s. Furthermore, whether this supposed casual endorsement justifies the rescinding of a fellowship is a debate for another time. However, it is necessary to consider the likelihood that on this occasion outcry from a minority of students and academics played little or no part in the decision to rescind Peterson’s offer, contrary to what Peterson, myself and various other media outlets believed a possibility.