Postmodern neo-Marxist cult classes
That item about Jordan Peterson’s plan to create a List of courses he considers “neo-Marxist” blah blah got my attention. As It Happens reported last week:
Psychology professor Jordan Peterson’s stated plan to build a website aimed at reducing enrolment in university classes he calls “indoctrination cults” has drawn the ire of his University of Toronto colleagues, who say it will make them the target of harassment.
“As a science professor, I’m not specifically targeted, but I still believe this website is morally wrong,” U of T physics professor A.W. Peet told As It Happens host Carol Off. “A number of students and faculty members who I’m in correspondence with are concerned about his plans.”
Peterson, who rose to fame in right-wing circles after his outspoken refusal to use gender-neutral pronouns, says he wants to use artificial intelligence to scour university curriculums for what he “calls post-modern neo-Marxist course content.”
“We’re going to start with a website in the next month and a half that will be designed to help students and parents identify post-modern content in courses so that they can avoid them,” he told CTV’s Your Morning in August.
“I’m hoping that over about a five-year period a concerted effort could be made to knock the enrolment down in postmodern neo-Marxist cult classes by 75 per cent across the West. So our plan initially is to cut off the supply to the people that are running the indoctrination cults.”
Grandiose much?
In a speech posted to his YouTube page on July 9, Peterson elaborates on what type of courses he aims to target with the website.
“Women’s studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies groups, man, those things have to go and the faster they go the better,” he said. “It would have been better if they had never been part of the university to begin with as far as I can tell.”
“Sociology, that’s corrupt. Anthropology, that’s corrupt. English literature, that’s corrupt. Maybe the worse offenders are the faculties of education.”
That’s not scholarship or dissent (or dissenting scholarship), it’s bullying.
Dr. Peterson has gained a high profile over the past 18 months for his criticism of what he believes is the dominance of Marxism, socialism and postmodernist ideas among university professors and students.
In the United States, a political advocacy group runs a website called Professor Watchlist that seeks to advance right-wing and libertarian ideas on college campuses. A professor in California who was identified on Professor Watchlist as having a “radical agenda” went into hiding after she received death threats, according to media reports.
Right-wing and libertarian ideas can be extremely “radical.” Radicalism is not confined to the left.
Dr. Peterson seems to suggest universities should teach a limited set of disciplines. Social sciences, law and humanities have all been infected by postmodernism, he says, as well as women’s studies and ethnic and racial studies.
Just a little bit sweeping?
So psychology is now become a natural science, with no cultural input, no history or bias whatsoever? Good to be clear.
There’s a Simpsons reference for everything. Here, I think it’s Jasper’s stint as a substitute teacher:
“Lookin’ out the window? That’s a paddlin’. Staring at my sandals? That’s a paddlin’….”
No, wait. The dude in the last post frustrated about not being able to settle fights by punching people is a psych prof? Meaning he supposedly has taken some classes in psychology?
Seems maybe he should take a few classes in anger management.
His comment that the people he criticizes should be punched in the nose is rather telling. That’s where he gives the game away.
If he criticized these courses for being sloppy, monotonous, overly orthodox, and just plain dull and useless, I could agree with him. If he wanted to bring back teachers who are more like Northrop Frye or Marshal McLuhan, people who loved their subject matter and brought unique views to it, I would be good with that. If he condemned post-modernist Marxists for trying to squeeze everything into the same ideological box, even when it kills it, I might cheer.
But he just wants to stick it all into another dull ideological box. And if it doesn’t fit, he wants to ban it.
Agree with the spirit, cazz — but in principle I don’t see a philosophical problem with settling a fight using punches; once it has escalated that far. Not the recommended method for settling disputes, though. It can land one in jail.
Mark @ 4 – Exactly, B&W started out needling and mocking courses (and books) of that kind, but it didn’t dismiss entire disciplines with a wave of the hand.
He has a Ph D. in clinical psychology and “[H]e laments that his own socialization prevents him from taking a swing at a lady. Referring to a woman who accused him of being a Nazi, he said, “I’m defenceless against that kind of female insanity because the techniques that I would use against a man who was employing those tactics are forbidden to me.”’
I’m assuming the woman wasn’t throwing punches at him when she called him a Nazi, so the implication is he’d swing first in a fight/argument/dispute.
I have worked in a large mental institution. I’ve seen plenty of patient “take downs” done by force by staff. Taking the first swing at any one displaying any kind of “insantiy” is not proper technique in a “Code Orange”, nor is it when someone calls you a Nazi.
Of course, they might do things differently in Canada.
But don’t you dare call them loons! ;-)