By David Futrelle
Jordan Peterson is mightily miffed. In an angry statement first published on his blog yesterday (and then in Canada’s National Post), the Intellectual Dark Webster accused Cambridge University of “kowtowing to an ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob” after Cambridge’s Divinity School rescinded its offer of a two-month fellowship.
According to Divinity school officials, the short-tempered Canadian Lobsterprof had “requested a visiting fellowship at the Faculty of Divinity, and an initial offer has been rescinded after a further review.” A University spokesperson added that “we expect all our staff and visitors to uphold our [inclusive] principles. There is no place here for anyone who cannot.”
Peterson is so intolerant of so many groups it’s hard to know which particular brand of bigotry bothered the folks at Cambridge most. Was it his transphobic tantrum about using the proper pronouns for trans people? Was it his weird uneasiness about the very presence of women in the workplace, or his advocacy for some form of “enforced monogamy” to ensure that potentially murderous incels can get dates? (Why he’s convinced it would be a good thing for women to date men capable of going on shooting sprees I couldn’t tell you.)
Was it his tendency to threaten critics with lawsuits or literal slap-fights? Was it his contention that entire academic disciplines that he doesn’t like, including “women’s studies, and all the ethnic studies and racial studies … have to go and the faster they go the better.”
Or perhaps, in the wake of the New Zealand massacre, they were troubled by his many weird statements about Islam, including his repeated insistence that Islamophobia isn’t really a thing and is just a term made up by evil leftists and/or “fascists” trying to shut down “debate” on Islam?
Or perhaps they were concerned with Peterson’s marked lack of intolerance towards outright anti-Islam bigots, perhaps best symbolized by the picture (above) of him posing proudly with a fan in New Zealand whose t-shirt announces his hatred bluntly, accusing Muslims of an assortment of crimes including “Pedophilia, Rape, Wife-Beating” and “Praying for Violence.”
Would Peterson have happily stood next to someone wearing a shirt declaring “I’m a Proud Anti-Semite,” blaming Jews for alleged crimes like “hoarding money,” “killing Christ,” or “cucking white men with interracial porn?” Would he have posed with someone wearing a “Proud Racist” shirt attacking blacks for “being lazy” or “raping white women?” No, of course not. But he’s happy to put his arm around someone attacking Muslims in similarly bigoted ways.
I’m guessing the Cambridge Divinity School had issues with all of these things, as they well should have.
Many of Peterson’s fans, naturally, are crying “censorship,” as if Cambridge’s ultimate refusal to give a bigot a paid position were some kind of attack on free speech.
In case you’re worried, that last tweet is not from the official account of the band The Who, but from a fellow who describes himself in his Twitter bio as a
#MRA #mgtow #redpilled activist. rightwing. contrarian. not pc ideas. oppose SJWs. friendly. debater, im a believer in Jesus
Peterson, for his part, didn’t actually claim that he was being censored, which would have been a little weird, given that he devoted much of his angry rant on Cambridge’s disinvitation to bragging about how many books he had sold and how many hits his YouTube videos get.
According to Peterson, videos of some of his recent lectures on Genesis (the book in the Bible, not the prog-rock-turned-terrible-pop band)
have received about 10 million hits (as well as an equal or greater number of downloads). The first lecture alone — on the first sentence of Genesis — has garnered 3.7 million views just on YouTube …
It’s also the case that my books, 12 Rules for Life and Maps of Meaning both rely heavily on Judeo-Christian thinking … The former has now sold 3 million copies (one million in tongues other than English), and will be translated into 50 languages; the latter, a much older book, was recently a New York Times bestseller in audio format.
It’s also rather telling that this man whose speech has been so tyrannically silenced is saying all this in a newspaper with a daily circulation of roughly 140,000.
But if Peterson, unlike many of his fans, doesn’t think Cambridge’s disinvitation is censorship, exactly, he does seem to regard it as a symptom of “the collapse of rationality and reason,” to borrow a phrase from Ian Miles Cheong’s tweet above.
“I think that it is deeply unfortunate that the authorities at the Divinity school in Cambridge decided [to kowtow] to an ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled mob,” Peterson declared.
Given the continued decline of church attendance, the rise in atheistic or agnostic sentiment, the increasing irrelevance of theological education and the collapse in interest in such matters among young people, wiser and more profound decisions might have been made.
Apparently his planned lectures on Exodus were the only thing that might have been able to hold off the atheist hordes that will destroy civilization any day now.
You see, it matters whether people around the world understand these ancient stories. It deeply matters. We are becoming unmoored, because we no longer share the structure these stories undergird. This is psychologically destabilizing. It’s producing a pathological and desperate nihilism that is increasingly common and, at the same time, a pronounced proclivity for the ideological certainty that mimics but cannot replace true religious belief.
No, he’s not talking about the “ideological certainty” of the Lobsterboys who think he’s pretty much the next best thing to Jesus; he’s talking about the people who aren’t part of his cult.
I believe that those at the Faculty of Divinity who rescinded their offer to me — and handled the rescindment in a manner that could hardly have been more narcissistic or self-congratulatory — don’t give a damn about the perilous decline of Christianity. I think that it is no bloody wonder that the faith is declining (and with it, the values of the West, as it fragments) with cowards and mountebanks of the sort who manifested themselves in this action.
Kind of a bold move to suggest that someone taking away a temporary academic gig you were kind of looking forward to is a sign of the impending collapse of Western Civilization, but hey. the dude does get a lot of hits on YouTube!
I wish them the continued decline in relevance over the next few decades that they deeply and profoundly and diligently work toward and deserve.
I believe this is just Petersonspeak for “fuck y’all motherfuckers.”
Alas, for poor Jordan Peterson — and possibly for Reason and Truth and Civilization itself — the good professor is also facing an attack from a New Zealand bookstore chain that has decided, in the wake of the Christchurch killings, to remove his books from their shelves.
As far as I know, Peterson hasn’t yet responded to this egregious assault on … the convenience of New Zealanders who will have to get the book from other bookstores or maybe online. But some of his fans are already crying foul for him.
Huh. Is that Lady Liberty wearing a ball gag, and pasties on her possibly augmented breasts? This Free Speech Fundamentalist dude doesn’t seem to be so much interested in free speech as he is in freejacking, at is were, and I don’t mean the 1992 sci-fi-racecar thriller starring Emilio Estevez and Mick Jagger.
And what flag is that on the pasties, anyway?
The culture war is weird.
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Translation:
Those snotty theologians on the faculty of divinity hurt my feelings when they took back their invitation. They don’t care that church attendance is way down. And it’s no surprise that it is (or that the West is going to hell in a handbasket), given that the theologians are weaklings and fakers.
Unspoken:
I eat only beef, salt, and water. But I dream of pasta primavera, crusty loaves of fresh bread, and salad. Salad! Also, I dream that I’m at the breakfast table eating Weetabix, the organic kind. What does this mean!
I would like it to be known that anyone who doesn’t hire me is also participating in the downfall of civilisation. Why should Peterson have all the fun?
Where did Peterson get the idea that feminists don’t criticize Islam? Of course, “criticize” can mean “thoughtful examination and discussion” of something, and he may not recognize that when it happens.
> Ariblester
I looked on Google, and indeed, it looks like a delicious meat pie !
But in France, pastry is almost exclusively sugary food . Does pastry in england and america include any dish with paste in it (like pie or non-sugar danish pastry) ? For example, is focaccia considered a pastry ?
I’m no chef, but my understanding is that a pastry is a baked good made from flour and shortening (with or without filling, sweet or savory) that has a flaky texture. So a focaccia, being fluffy in texture (and probably not made with shortening), is not a pastry, but a croissant (flaky, made using butter or margarine) is a pastry.
> Ariblester
Thanks for the explanation. Indeed, it seems that the word pastry include more things than our word “pâtisserie”. “Viennoiseries”, “Feuilletés” and “Tourtes” seem to be included.
Well, i will go to bed less ignorant this evening, but also definitively hungrier (damn it).
I stop derailing the topic, let us get back to Peterson.
You’re very welcome. ?
Neutral Good,
It’s not that they think private spaces are public, it’s that they think all spaces, public and private, belong to them. They think they have a right to dominate everywhere they go. To a certain type of person, the term “free speech” is not about free speech at all, it’s a way to fight for the preservation of privilege while still maintaining plausible deniability. This is why you’ll never see any of these guys object when say, the police try to prevent activists from filming them engaging in brutality. Or any other actual free speech issue.
“The authorities”. That’s what this is about, isn’t it?
Do you remember that article titled “I was Jordan Peterson’s strongest supporter. Now I think he’s dangerous”? It opened with the relevation that Peterson wanted to buy a church, where he would deliver sermons every Sunday.
His grift, if that’s what it is, has been very successful for him so far, but he still craves the aura of religious authority.
A two month visiting fellowship at a school of divinity isn’t of much value academically, I suspect. What can you achieve in two months? But it gives him an imprimatur of religious authority, and perhaps allows him to take his grift to the next level.
@ WWTH,
Very true. This is why they come into online forums and spew their opinions all over, expecting everyone present to shut up and listen. Yikes, some of the trolls on here (like all the David K Mellor stuff in the old threads…) I’ve found they also pull this kind of stunt offline; I can’t even remember how many very very awkward conversations I’ve had in cafes, which began with some random dude sitting next to me and aggressively saying “so I just wanna ask you something…”. It’s like these folks have no conception of privacy, of conversations/threads not being all about them, or of other people having valid opinions.
@Moggie:
It’s not the fact it’s a two-month fellowship at a faculty of theology. It’s the fact that it’s a two-month fellowship at Cambridge. It’s Old World authority, and I suspect Peterson still has some of the deep-seated Canadian need to get some tangible sign of approval from the mother country. At least, he’s old enough for that to still be plausible.
Anyhow, he’s basically on permanent sabbatical from the U of T right now, which they’re happy to extend because no one really wants him back but they can’t fire him. I imagine he’s happy to stay away as well; after all, when the guy who got you your job writes a long article for a major newspaper apologizing for having done so, and other people with offices in the same corridor are plastering their walls with LGBT-support signs and the like specifically because his office in on the same corridor (or at least so I’ve heard), things must get a little uncomfortable.
*grabs popcorn, waits for the lobsterboys*
Ok, now he has basically ripped his face off and shows that he is just a preacher who dodged the sexual abuse of organized religion by going into psychology. And why is he railing against Islam? I’ve seen Imams using his books to make their points.
Well, can’t wait for his minion… erm… FREE THINKING INDIVIDUALS to show up and use the same 4 recycled lines at us, while stinking of smug.
@Moggie
Think you nailed it.
@Cat Mara
He needs more practice.
@cornychips:
Popcorn or no, plenty of melted butter will be needed for sure ?.
OT (though tangentially-related): Both NZ and Australia are blocking sites that host the Christchurch massacre video, including the repellent 4chan and 8chan. Good. Expect piteous whining from the FREEZE PEACH peanut gallery.
(h/t to the Pharyngula blog)
“ill-informed, ignorant and ideologically-addled” is a decent summary of Peterson.
@WWTH, Bookworm,
I am pretty sure it goes like: “I don’t like what these SJWs are saying about thing! They are saying that the thing I like is a bad thing!” [thinking] “If I show that they’re a hypocrite, they’ll be discredited. What thing do they care about?” [searching … searching …] “Human rights and free speech! They’re hurting free speech!”
To these people, ethics aren’t guides for personal behaviour, they’re things you use to get people to do what you want. They’re tools to manipulate others by making them feel guilty or discrediting them publicly. I think that’s how it goes, anyways.
Bookworm, also, gotta say, it’s awful that doods would just flat up swagger into an aggressive conversation with you like that. I know it’s common and I’ve resolved to intervene if I see it happen around me. I wish it wasn’t needed, but these jerks are crawling out of the woodwork something fierce.
Were feminists the ones saying Malala Yousafzai deserved to be shot? When they say “feminists don’t criticize islam” what they mean is “feminists won’t join our racist crusade against brown people using islam as a proxy”.
My girlfriend is currently in (a very theologically liberal) seminary, and I am pretty sure they are more interested in training folks to be effective pastors than preventing the fall of western civilization. That that they are pro-civilzational-collapse, it’s just not their area of focus.
@Bookworm in hijab:
So I just wanna ask you something… :p In a non-aggressive tone, however: Would it be considered rude/overstepping the mark/otherwise awkward to compliment someone on their hijab? This isn’t a situation that’s actually come up, but I often see women (or photos of women) wearing hijabs in really interesting patterns, and it occurred to me that if I were talking to a woman wearing a scarf of a similar fabric, there’s a good chance I’d say something like “By the way, love the scarf” at some point in the conversation (assuming it was clear I wasn’t hitting on them or anything), and I wondered if that could carry over or not. Though I’d probably phrase it differently, as “love the hijab” would have really weird implications.
Sort of OT: Thinking about overconfident entitled white men, am I the only one who thinks Beto O’Rourke is basically Mark Zuckerberg’s long-lost twin?
Of course it’s never censorship when they call for other viewpoints to be, not just silenced, but eradicated altogether.
For these guys, freedom of speech isn’t an absolute right. It’s a marker of privilege. It’s extremely important to them who has it, and who doesn’t, because it signifies who’s winning the culture wars.
“…in the way I tell them to.”
It doesn’t seem to have occurred to Peterson and his followers that Cambridge University may have rejected him for other reasons besides not being a good fit for their inclusive environment. He doesn’t have the intellectual chops for the position. Peterson’s interpretation of scripture is Jungian and postmodernist (in the sense that authority is placed on the reader – or rather, himself -instead of the author). He shoves God and Jesus out of the way and presents the Bible as a sort of bloodless self-help manual. According to Peterson, it’s nothing more than a bunch of moral fables we’ve told each other for thousands of years. His version of Christianity offers redemption without sacrifice, divinity without God. Christian theology is a lot more complicated than that. Chucking centuries of scholarly wisdom out the window won’t fly at a place as steeped in tradition as Cambridge. It ain’t Oral Roberts University.
He’s welcome to interpret the Bible any way he wants, but he’s not entitled to validation by mainstream theologians. It’s so irritating when people mistake ignorance for iconoclasm and rejection for censorship.
If it matters that people understand the ancient stories, perhaps he should take his own advice and reflect on Galatians 3:28 and Colossians 3:11.
My question is: “Why the hell was this offer extended in the first place”? Is academia really that effin’ clueless?
*sigh* Of course it is.
But this is what these assclowns do: they try to work the refs by screaming persecution after anybody with more authority than them says “No thanks.” It’s more than just obnoxious; if it’s allowed to work, it’s just another step into legitimizing the more toxic ideas these assclowns have.
They need a firm smackdown. 99% of what Peterson has is just dime-store pablum and 1950s Red Scare bullshit, but that 1% toxic crap–while it’s definitely the harmful stuff–should be the last thing mentioned.
Really, Cambridge’s rescinding announcement should have read “We’ve reviewed Jordan Peterson’s baffling work and find it more pathetic than anything else, so we will be rescinding our invitation to have this dopey schlub hanging around our hallowed halls.”
@VictoriousParasol
There’s an obnoxious two-step these clowns do. See, their xenophobia requires Islam to be a threat of apocalyptic proportions, so if you’re just sitting down and pointing out that the Qur’an isn’t exactly the most progressive document out there and like any religious text has myriad interpretations, both good and bad, you’re not “taking the threat seriously.” But at the same time, they’re more than happy to use the theocratic misogyny of Muslim states as a cudgel against Western feminists, saying “You’re not really suffering, crybullies! You’re not wearing burqas!”
They actually envy the misogyny that Muslim theocracies get away with; they just don’t like that they have a different God/skin colour.
Reffing from porn is a common thing in pervy art circles. I do it. Granted, I do try to compensate for the unusual shape of implants when drawing characters that don’t have them… or just try to find a model with natural breasts.
I’m still puzzling through the dreadful proportions.
Oh, and Jordy-kins, it’s possible to know the stories of ancient myth but just not believe they’re divinely inspired. We do it with Greek and Roman myth, some of us just do it with Jewish and Christian myth too. The ones that aren’t heinous like Joshua and Jericho are actually pretty stupid, like Abraham and Isaac.
@WWTH
You absolutely nailed it. Every time a true Free Speech issues comes up, such as the arrest of Stephen Downs at a mall for wearing a shirt advocating peace, they will somehow find a reason to defend such a blatant violation:
“No, you see, he was wearing that shirt in a mall. A mall is private property, and it doesn’t matter that it was a cop, not the owner, who asked him to leave. He refused to leave or take his shirt off, so his arrest was lawful.”
I would also like to add that it goes a bit further, because what they actually want is to weaponize Freeze Peach against anyone that doesn’t conform to the hierarchies they so want to impose.
“Freeze Peach” is double speak for: “I want to aggressively spread Nazi propaganda, dehumanize women and vulnerable groups, with the obvious intent to create a climate of hostility against the aforementioned, so that it can translate into legislative action which will return women to the condition of property, and kick off genocide against POC.”
Incidentally, the Cheeto-In-Chief was threatening to take away funding from universities that refuse to host Nazi shitbags such as Milo Yiannopolous.
@NeutralGood: because for them it was always like that before,
There are no shops in New Zealand which carry my books. This is clearly a tragedy. You see, it matters whether people around the world understand the history of the European Northern Observatory. It deeply matters.
/sarcasm i can’t keep going.
But serously, according to google 129,864,880 books have been printed and no bookshop can carry them all.