Peter Boghossian

College Professor Quits Oregon University, Says It’s Nothing More Than ‘A Social Justice Factory’

A professor at Portland State University has demonstrated that once again on campus those who promote tolerance and diversity really don’t want either of those things.

Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State for the past decade, issued an open letter of resignation on Thursday, claiming he had to go after watching the school having “sacrificed ideas for ideology.”

The letter was published on substack.com, under the forum managed by former New York Times editorialist Bari Weiss.

Boghossian noted that his classes often included guest lecturers, everyone from “Flat-Earthers to Christian apologists to global climate skeptics to Occupy Wall Street advocates.”

“I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews, but primarily because I didn’t,”  he wrote. “From those messy and difficult conversations, I’ve seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers; staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances, and even changing their minds.”

“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 former professor added, “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.”

At Portland State, he maintained, the students “are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues.” And the 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.”

The same was true for faculty who challenged new policies or workplace diversity seminars, and used the dreaded books of dead white, European male authors.

Interestingly, Boghossian wrote that he noticed the signs of what drove him to quit early on, and as he probed deeper he understood the issues were “systemic.”

“It became increasingly clear to me that the incidents of illiberalism I had witnessed over the years were not just isolated events, but part of an institution-wide problem,” said Boghossian. “The more I spoke out about these issues, the more retaliation I faced.”

Boghossian revealed that he was one of three professors who gained wide notoriety a few years ago after they published a series of articles to expose how academic research was more valued for all the woke buttons it pushed, rather than actual scholarship.

For instance, he wrote articles published in actual academic journals that argued that “penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change,” and that there was “an epidemic of dog rape at dog parks.”

When the articles were disclosed as hoaxes, students lashed out with harassment, spitting, graffiti and other acts of vandalism against him, and according to Boghossian, the university went after him instead of them.

“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,” Boghossian concluded.

“This isn’t about me. This is about the kind of institutions we want and the values we choose,” he added. “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.”

ICYMI:

Support journalism by clicking here to our GoFundMe or sign up for our free newsletter by clicking here

Android Users, Click Here To Download The Free Press App And Never Miss A Story. It’s Free And Coming To Apple Users Soon

Login To Facebook To Comment
Share This: