On Wednesday morning, Peter Boghossian announced on Bari Weiss's substack that he has resigned from his position of Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University.
Boghossian is well-known in conservative circles for his part in the Grievance Studies hoax papers which exposed the lack of academic credibility there is in Critical Race Theory, Gender Theory, and other grievance studies. The plan was put into action with the help of James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose. Boghossian explains some of it in the letter but if you are unaware of the affair you can listen to it described on the Joe Rogan Show here [warning: Rogan = language].
Boghossian is not a conservative. He's a liberal atheist. However, Boghossian has been critical of academia and his own University for years. He has been outspoken in the world of social justice and CRT, being an opponent of the Left's use of social justice to justify policies based on so-called "equity."
In his resignation, Boghossian drops some straight fire about the state of the university and how it has devolved as it has followed the postmodernist way of critical theorists.
I never once believed — nor do I now — that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion. Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought; to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching.
But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible. It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division.
In the second paragraph, Boghossian absolutely nails what the problem is with universities. They are only concerned with producing more woke social justice warriors, not with producing leaders and free thinkers. They only want more people to feel they're oppressed, instead of empowering them through education.
He goes on:
Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues. Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university's truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.
I noticed signs of the illiberalism that has now fully swallowed the academy quite early during my time at Portland State. I witnessed students refusing to engage with different points of view. Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male.
At first, I didn't realize how systemic this was and I believed I could question this new culture. So I began asking questions. What is the evidence that trigger warnings and safe spaces contribute to student learning? Why should racial consciousness be the lens through which we view our role as educators? How did we decide that "cultural appropriation" is immoral?
Unlike my colleagues, I asked these questions out loud and in public.
I decided to study the new values that were engulfing Portland State and so many other educational institutions — values that sound wonderful, like diversity, equity, and inclusion, but might actually be just the opposite. The more I read the primary source material produced by critical theorists, the more I suspected that their conclusions reflected the postulates of an ideology, not insights based on evidence.
He then gives the hilarious and disturbing details of the grievance studies affair, where he confirms that the entire academic basis for the grievance studies is fraudulent – based only on a preferred outcome and not on any serious scientific inquiry.
What did Boghossian get for exposing this?
Lots and lots of pain and abuse from students and coworkers, with no defense from the university.
Meanwhile, ideological intolerance continued to grow at Portland State. In March 2018, a tenured professor disrupted a public discussion I was holding with author Christina Hoff Sommers and evolutionary biologists Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying. In June 2018, someone triggered the fire alarm during my conversation with popular cultural critic Carl Benjamin. In October 2018, an activist pulled out the speaker wires to interrupt a panel with former Google engineer James Damore. The university did nothing to stop or address this behavior. No one was punished or disciplined.
For me, the years that followed were marked by continued harassment. I'd find flyers around campus of me with a Pinocchio nose. I was spit on and threatened by passersby while walking to class. I was informed by students that my colleagues were telling them to avoid my classes. And, of course, I was subjected to more investigation.
I wish I could say that what I am describing hasn't taken a personal toll. But it has taken exactly the toll it was intended to: an increasingly intolerable working life and without the protection of tenure.
For speaking the truth and challenging the social justice narrative at Portland State, Peter Boghossian has received nothing but derision and persecution from his institution. Years of this abuse have led Boghossian to this moment.
Here is how he finished his resignation letter:
Portland State University has failed in fulfilling this duty. In doing so it has failed not only its students but the public that supports it. While I am grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Portland State for over a decade, it has become clear to me that this institution is no place for people who intend to think freely and explore ideas.
This is not the outcome I wanted. But I feel morally obligated to make this choice. For ten years, I have taught my students the importance of living by your principles. One of mine is to defend our system of liberal education from those who seek to destroy it. Who would I be if I didn't?
This is just one example of the sad state of the universities in this country. They have allowed the radical left wokies to completely take over their institutions and effectively run the schools. Anyone who opposes the new woke orthodoxy? They are to be harassed and run out of town.
It's good to see a man like Boghossian with integrity stand against the woke monster. We just need a few thousand more like him.
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