Faculty members from the University of Toronto’s Women and Gender Studies Institute (WGSI) have requested a meeting with the university’s vice-provost to demand that action be taken against professor Jordan Peterson, who has stated his intent to create a website ranking university courses and instructors based on “postmodern neo-Marxian” ideologies included in course content.
“We are writing to express our deep concern about a proposed website being built under the direction of Prof. Jordan Peterson for the purpose of identifying and ranking courses and professors that he advocates should be removed from the university,” read the letter, “This website, if launched, presents a serious case of harassment, fostering unsafe work and study conditions for students, faculty, and staff.”
Peterson has spoken about this digital tool since summer of 2017, recently saying that he hopes to have the site ready by January.
“In public online remarks more broadly, Prof. Peterson regularly describes women and gender studies and what he refers to as ‘racial and ethnic group studies’ as pathological, a cancer, and in other strongly denigrating terms,” the letter also reads, “The launch of this website must be put in this context in order to fully understand it as a platform that will generate harassment.”
Peterson stated his goal to establish the website as a way of “moderating the behavior of the universities.”
“It will tell you the degree to which the description is postmodern and then you can decide for yourself whether you want to take that and become a social justice warrior, if that is what you think your education should be about, or if you should avoid that like the plague that it truly is,” Peterson stated in an interview with Julie Patreon, uploaded on July 3rd of this year, “I would like to knock enrolment in the postmodern disciplines down by 75 per cent over the next five years.”
“I think that what needs to happen is that freshman and second-year university students, and students coming into university from high school, need to be educated about the postmodern cult and they need to be encouraged to not take the courses, to just drop the courses, to just stay the hell away from them,” Peterson stated in a video uploaded on July 9th.
In the same video, Peterson expressed an interest in seeing enrolment in the humanities decline at an increased rate.
The university faculty also expressed concern over the “violence-tinged language to describe the courses he hopes to prevent people from taking” in Peterson’s videos.
On November 10th, the U of T Faculty Association released a statement stating that a meeting with the provost office has been requested.
“Instructors of the potentially targeted courses believe that their autonomy as educators may be under threat. The proposed website has created a climate of fear and intimidation,” the statement reads, “The UTFA Executive has taken the unprecedented step of asking that the entire Executive meet with the Provost’s office to express our deep concern about this threat to our members and to the academic mission of the University.”
As of press time, the provost has not released a statement regarding its intent to meet with faculty from WGSI regarding Peterson, or stated any possible plan to address Peterson’s site.
Peterson has frequently spoken out regarding freedom of speech on the university campuses, has voiced his dislike towards censoring lectures for students, and the current feminism movement.
Peterson has also gained national attention last September after refusing to use gender-neutral pronouns in his lectures. Since then, he has taken to uploading videos through YouTube to discuss his views on current social issues and doing guest speeches at public events.
Have the faculty of our universities lost their minds? Has anyone read 1984 ? This is a very disturbing thought from the doubleduckspeaking nanny state. The words of Professor Peterson must scare you immensely.
This is an excellent initiative and long over due.
Has the faculty gone mad ? Has this faculty read 1984 ? Oh Now I get it, they have read 1984 and Brave New World and are using them for the recipe to smother dissent.
The teachers are only defending against an ideologically motivated, intellectually-baseless, attack on their courses, but I’m curious as to how EXACTLY *his* openly expressed attitudes, intentions and the proposed site are NOT a “recipe to smother dissent” in your eyes?
Seriously, it’s willfully-blind, ironic posts like this that demonstrate that the massive, unmitigated, rank, hypocrisy of the far right simply cannot be overstated…
Art is right and Bleus makes no valid arguments. The teachers are not under attack, only their ideas if they choose propaganda as their curriculum. This shouldn’t be an issue if they stick to education which is what they are paid to do.
Wtf are you talking about? The teachers are teaching EXISTING courses that are no more “propagandic” than any other humanities course.
Just because you’re too ideologically warped and uneducated to realise the legitimacy of non-fascist opinions, doesn’t mean that they’re either meritless OR baseless.
Furthermore, your insipid response somehow neglected in its entirety to address my central question, how EXACTLY is this extremist’s proposal not PRECISELY an attempt to silence and eliminate a viewpoint with which he disagrees?
These others didn’t seek to shut HIM down UNTIL he openly announced his intention to declare war on them.
Your entire post bespeaks both an education and an intellect that are significantly limited. I’d suggest, going forward, that you stick to basic subjects where your apparently significant cognitive limitations aren’t so grossly illuminated.
You are absolutely correct these professors have the right to their opinions in their own classrooms and my child should have the CHOICE of whether or not he wants to be told that his ‘cis-gender white male opinions don’t matter’. The indoctronators have every right to teach whatever they want but I have the right not to subject my son to it when I am paying their salaries. If they don’t want to be ‘outed’ as the SJW monsters that they are shifting oppression from one group to another rather that actually ENDING oppression then perhaps they should not BE SJW monsters! They have nothing to fear if they are not using their power and position to push an agenda of hate.
@joelhfx:
Lmao — just in case your egregious intellectual shortcomings weren’t obvious enough, your thoroughly witless, ignorant and intellectually-bankrupt attempt to assert the “antifa” strawman certainly makes it so.
Furthermore, your asinine assertion that his vehement statements as to the ultimate intention to eliminate programs that provide information and education that both he and you obviously fear more than amply demonstrates that it is FAR from being “as soft an approach as one could possibly take” that’s being advocated here.
@whoaskedyou:
It’s pretty evident that it’s a paranoid, idiotic fear of either you or your poor offspring being exposed to new information, ideas and opinions that dismantle your extant, backwoods, redneck, ignorance that’s driving your particularly rabid need to insulate yourselves from anything that might undermine your inherently irrational and uninformed opinions.
In the end, you’re both clearly nothing more than benighted and cognitively-derelict ideologues with empty heads, axes to grind and, based on your posts to date, not even a single, intellectually-coherent, argument to make between you.
In the marketplace of ideas, your utterly failed, ignorant and absurd positions have been determined to be anathema socially, intellectually and rationally. A circumstance, which, of course, leaves you only with insipidly attempting to bully your inbred stupidity into the zeitgeist as society at large continues to reject your self-centered, myopic, and anachronistic bigotry.
Wow you sure are good at throwing insults. Too bad you don’t actually have an argument. I can throw insults too but it would be pointless, just like your comment above.
LOL!…and THAT bit of feckless tripe is what’s known as a non-sequitur deflection. Seriously, just because you don’t *understand* legitimate criticism when you see it, that doesn’t at all mean that it’s not both wholly applicable and relevant! 😉
Run along little troll no food for you.
“how EXACTLY is this extremist’s proposal not PRECISELY an attempt to silence and eliminate a viewpoint with which he disagrees?” First, this isn’t an extreme proposal. Look at Antifa to understand what extremism means and this doesn’t compare in the slightest. This is about as soft an approach as one could possibly take to correct what is evidently harming society. From your perspective, it would seem that doing nothing about this is the only thing that wouldn’t be considered extreme. If you understood the reasons why Peterson condemns the current state of the humanities curriculum your opinion might have meaning.
Pot, meet kettle. Fear and intimidation is the tactic used by the SJW’s that these profs often are and that they train. It is rich that they try to use this to shoot Jordan Peterson down.
Peterson must be loving this all these God damn communists and social Justice Warriors freaking out. It doesn’t matter what he does he wins If they fire him it will create a backlash like crazy and he’ll just get hired by a more prestigious University probably in the States. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/9897e60c2cc31370ad549be9162ef5a8cb4f012ed3036f8ac9cb53605c5d59c3.jpg
Peterson plans to make a website that lists the words these classes use. Their words. They feel that this is threatening. It’s pretty much an admission process that they’re full of it.
“you can decide for yourself whether you want to take that” — Giving students information about courses they may wish to select and pay for seems a very positive move. It is my impression that many students want this. Why don’t the professors?
Simply put, there are educators who have a vested interest in pushing their curricula that haven’t a hope in hell of standing up to objective analysis and debate. Therefore, the need to insist on “safe spaces” where they are not exposed to any contrary beliefs.
How I wish there was a Prof. Peterson at Queen’s when I went there. Queen’s law was overrun by this same nonsense and you can see it today in the Law Society of Ontario where they now tell us what to say and what to think and how to express their thoughts as our own. I always thought I was a middle of the road guy but apparently I’m a right winger cause Prof. Peterson makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Throw this fu%$er out on his ear… Who the hell does he think he is “policing” other faculty members. Don’t like UofT courses? Start your own fu%$in school! Pretty sure there’s a place for him south of the border at DRUMPF University.
Nobody is being “policed,” the idea was to use an algorithm to determine course content so that students can decide for themselves whether or not they want to take a class in bullshit. Those classes would still exist, only their content would be more transparent in what narrative they’re pushing. Try understanding things before having a kneejerk reaction.
Hey lil’ buddy, if you’re in college and you need a fu%$in algorithm to help you understand course content, I will PERSONALLY refund you your fu%$in tuition so you can GET THE FU%$ OUT! U of T is one of the worlds leading (top 20) post-secondary institutions, that means we beat out THOUSANDS other universities world wide. Who the fu%$ are you, Prof. Petersen.
Sounds like you need a safe space and a nap, you got triggered pretty hard there.
(yawn). Out on his ear.
Gender studies that can’t tell one gender from another. Creating post-doctoral degrees in willful ignorance.
What a bunch of cowards. This is essentially trying to sensor speech yet again. Under the guise and assumption that people will adopt the marxist / post-modernist tactics of violence against them. No, we intend to ignore you out of existence because you are losers that deserve no attention.
You go Dr Peterson!!!
Neo-Marxists? These professors are not taking on JBP directly. Instead they are trying to invoke the power of The State and The Administration to control, silence and remove JBP.
These professors would most likely invoke the power of The Police, if it would get them anywhere. But our laws don’t regulate thought.
Neo-Marxists? This term is exactly who these professors are.
So, this faith-head wants to create a safe space? Peterson is a conservative hack and a pseuodo-intellectual far-right charlatan shill. The Canadian version of Deepak Chopra.
Apparently student choice is a threat to the academic freedom of intellectually bankrupt professors.
If you’re in college and you need a fu%$in algorithm to help you understand course content, I will PERSONALLY refund you your fu%$in tuition so you can GET THE FU%$ OUT! U of T is one of the worlds leading (top 20) post-secondary institutions, that means we beat out THOUSANDS other universities world wide. Who the fu%$ are you, Prof. Petersen? WHO – THE – FU$@- ARE – YOU?