Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Peter Boghossian has quit at “ideas go to die here” Portland U

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This is what we know:

Early in the 2016-17 academic year, a former student complained about me and the university initiated a Title IX investigation. (Title IX investigations are a part of federal law designed to protect “people from discrimination based on sex in education programs or activities that receive federal financial assistance.”) My accuser, a white male, made a slew of baseless accusations against me, which university confidentiality rules unfortunately prohibit me from discussing further. What I can share is that students of mine who were interviewed during the process told me the Title IX investigator asked them if they knew anything about me beating my wife and children. This horrifying accusation soon became a widespread rumor.

With Title IX investigations there is no due process, so I didn’t have access to the particular accusations, the ability to confront my accuser, and I had no opportunity to defend myself. Finally, the results of the investigation were revealed in December 2017. Here are the last two sentences of the report: “Global Diversity & Inclusion finds there is insufficient evidence that Boghossian violated PSU’s Prohibited Discrimination & Harassment policy. GDI recommends Boghossian receive coaching.”

Not only was there no apology for the false accusations, but the investigator also told me that in the future I was not allowed to render my opinion about “protected classes” or teach in such a way that my opinion about protected classes could be known — a bizarre conclusion to absurd charges. Universities can enforce ideological conformity just through the threat of these investigations.

I eventually became convinced that corrupted bodies of scholarship were responsible for justifying radical departures from the traditional role of liberal arts schools and basic civility on campus. There was an urgent need to demonstrate that morally fashionable papers — no matter how absurd — could be published. I believed then that if I exposed the theoretical flaws of this body of literature, I could help the university community avoid building edifices on such shaky ground.

So, in 2017, I co-published an intentionally garbled peer-reviewed paper that took aim at the new orthodoxy. Its title: “The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct.” This example of pseudo-scholarship, which was published in Cogent Social Sciences, argued that penises were products of the human mind and responsible for climate change. Immediately thereafter, I revealed the article as a hoax designed to shed light on the flaws of the peer-review and academic publishing systems.

Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department …

Bari Weiss, “My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.” at Substack (September 8, 2021)

Would any readers who pay taxes in the state of Oregon like to write in and explain what they pay taxes for? Is this how you think your tax money should be spent?

Readers may remember Peter Boghossian for the hilarious takedowns of Woke peer-reviewed papers. The Portlanders were trying to find some way to fix him good for that but he may have preempted it. Stay tuned.

Comments
Orthodoxy has always been the norm in universities. The modern climate is harsher and nastier than the default, but the result is always the same. The climate was equally nasty in the '60s for a different type of unorthodox thought. Theory and free thought are opposites.polistra
September 9, 2021
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Ironically, in a lot of cases, a college degree at this point may create an education gap by creating ideologues who have no real-world experience, common sense, or critical thinking skillszweston
September 9, 2021
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Intelligent young men are abandoning the university system. In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man. Toxic masculinity is blamed for pretty much everything on campus and colleges now dominated by women, creating ‘education gap’.
A college enrollment consultant named Jennifer Delahunty said that colleges should do something to help the young men, get more into college. "If you care about our society one, and two, if you care about women you have to care about the boys too. If you've equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society and it makes it better for women." So -- yeah. We must come to the aid of men for the sake of women. And this is what someone says who basically cares about men, in comparison to other people in the university system. -- Matt Walsh
Silver Asiatic
September 9, 2021
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We are now past the point of poking the bear. The bear reveled itself and it is freaking huge. Either obey it, or firmly refuse to obey it (and then be ready to earn income somewhere else), but do not poke it hoping it will allow itself to be mocked. It will not.Eugene
September 8, 2021
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