Boghossian Response

We had a very interesting discussion in class this week after watching the Fox News interview with philosopher Peter Boghossian. Please write a response to the article. What do you think about Boghossian's arguments? How does it affect your ideas about next year? Feel free to see this as a broad assignment - write/explain/argue about whatever the article made you think about.

I am very aware of the discussion going on about the subject of universities in the US falling to this “culture of offence”. Boghossian is one of many teachers and professors that have come out on platforms like FOX News. It seems that people that speak out like him either quit or get fired. This has been going on for a long time now. The first person that I knew that had received backlash for speaking out like Boghossian does or advocating preservation of traditional education was Jordan B. Peterson, who taught classes similar to Boghossian and is well-known. There is a liberal agenda invading schools across the US that are trying to reinvent open-perspective and realistic learning environments, replacing them with pseudo-sciences, safe spaces, CRT, ect. In the FOX interview we watched, Jesse Watters does a rather pathetic job. I understand that the interview had a certain time limit. He jumped on the “microaggressions” line and directed the conversation to that point because it is something that FOX viewers have heard before. It is an oversimplified example of one issue. The bigger picture, which Boghossian writes about in his letter that was published, is that Universities are institutions that are indoctrinating students rather than teaching them.

Norman Doidge, who also studied philosophy and worked at the University of Toronto, described this as the result of cognitive dissonance imposed by the current generation of teachers on university students: the idea that different moral perspectives cannot exist and that any form of judgement is morally wrong. This is why there is less often the type of guests that Boghossian describes at universities. This is why every single person that disagrees with the mainstream way of liberal thinking is automatically a “Nazi”. The part about judgement, is why “acceptance” and “tolerance” are taught, because cultural, religious, ethnic, and gender differences need to be acknowledged and cannot be silenced or oppressed, which is why “microaggressions” and “safe-spaces” are terms. The paradox is that there can be no tolerance or acceptance for anyone that goes against this view. On Jordan B. Peterson’s podcast he had a young woman that escaped from North Korea on. She had attended Columbia University and was appalled at how liberal and identity politics occupied every aspect of her education. She made comparisons between the cultish elements of the ideology there and what North Koreans are taught in school. She, like Boghossian, has been on FOX Business and other platforms to advocate her views.

This type of thinking is damaging as it prepares students to live in a world that does not cater to them and it teaches them to use a system of morality that does not exist and goes against human nature. This condition is the reason that I do not want to start studying in the US. I think that any university that approaches teaching humanities through this philosophy, no matter how distinguished the University is, is a useless institution that has failed to accomplish the purpose for which it was made. So we live in a time when it is possible to go to University and come out less educated and less prepared for life. This should be a matter of concern. From what I have seen and heard from students at these universities themselves, there is a new generation that cannot think for themselves. There are hours of videos of these people being asked to explain their views, and why these practices are justified, or why people like Boghossian are terrible people. They crumble and far apart. There are videos of students crying, barking, screaming, rolling on the floor because someone with different ideas, usually from some conservative outlet, had made it on their campus. Many intelligent and respectable speakers have been banned or protested for speaking at universities and other public places, being labelled as “fascist” or “Nazis” (including Jews).

This is not just a phenomenon occurring in US or Canadian universities. It is happening culturally in the west and to a lesser extent in our school too. I’m concerned about my future. When I eventually go to study in the US, if things are similar to how they seem now in the future I can imagine getting kicked out of one of these universities. Maybe this should make me depressed. I am seeing the fall of a culture and maybe my country itself. But Boghossian’s testimony does not deter me from continuing to pursue education and life with the same integrity and practices, similar to what I gather is his philosophy on learning. If anything, reading his statement made me consider working at a university for the first time. If this has come about because of the teachers and professors and administrators working at these institutions, it can be rectified through the efforts of these same people. Education, the quality of discussion and the practices of universities determine the future of a nation and the world. This must not be abandoned. I think that’s a hill worth dying on.