Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for ten years and he has just quit in protest.
Peter Boghossian
He fought against Woke ideology. He helped write hoax papers to expose how meaningless peer review is and exposed students to politically incorrect speakers to hone their powers of reasoning. For that he has been subject to extraordinary vilification, inquisitions, and a campaign of disruption. His students were interviewed to find instances of “discrimination” and the investigators even asked them if they knew anything about him “beating his wife and children”, fueling rumors that he was a violent misogynist. He was given no right of reply. It’s character assassination by any means possible. The University did nothing to stop it.
Even petty methods were used to silence and intimidate him. Fire alarms interrupted an interview, bags of faeces were delivered, and speaker wires were pulled out during a live panel discussion. This reminds me of stories of how the Chinese Communist Party targets dissidents overseas with petty disruptions like having minions bang pots and pans in alleys to wake them in the dead of night.
It’s almost like the CCP runs the universities of the West.
My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit.
Bari Weiss
…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.
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.
Fear and silence is the motto of higher education:
The more I spoke out about these issues, the more retaliation I faced.
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.
The investigation found only that there was “insufficient” evidence and recommended he “get coaching”. But the process is the punishment. Who wants that kind of acidic work environment?
The university supports vilification.
… 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.”
Shortly thereafter, swastikas in the bathroom with my name under them began appearing in two bathrooms near the philosophy department. They also occasionally showed up on my office door, in one instance accompanied by bags of feces. Our university remained silent. When it acted, it was against me, not the perpetrators.
The university supports disruption:
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.
Is there any better reason to just cut academic funding from any institution that doesn’t endorse free speech?
Civilizations need civility.
Appalling. We are a people racing in reverse and heading for a cliff. The only ones worried are the few of us who can see.
500
This now seems to be a common theme in all universities of western democracies. Sadly, the name “university” no longer applies to these institutions and they are better defined as “Woke centres of forced indoctrination”. Unfortunately, we all lose because we can only advance with free thought, the challenging of ideas through rational debate and the continuous striving for excellence by encouraging new ideas.
To fix this mess will indeed require a great reset, but not the one these useless lefties are envisaging.
430
The solution is simple. Announce that from twelve months hence all government grants will cease.
Those faculties which have value will have no trouble getting alternative funding. Twelve months would give them all the time they need to get organised.
380
The solution is simple. Announce that from twelve months hence all government grants will cease.
Those faculties which have value will have no trouble getting alternative funding. Twelve months would give them all the time they need to get organised.
Also any idiot disruptive students will be expelled.
That will send a message to the others about what behavior is expected.
20
Seems Peter Ridd need not feel alone.
410
Not being alone isn’t much comfort if you’re all having your lives ruined together.
180
You may have lost your job, but not your dignity. Self respect is the most important thing you can have and if you sell it, you have nothing. So most simply shut up, say nothing, keep their heads low. It is the only way to survive financially against the cancel mob, supported fully by the very left administration. The long march of the failed French Marxist philosophers through the education institutions is continuing. In Universities and businesses and political committees, like a fish, the rot starts at the head.
260
In many ways, his experience was simpler. He was fired. No cancelling, interrupting, hassling. And the university has spent millions justifying this, millions of our money, because he threatened hundreds of millions.
At least at JCU, there is no pretence of right or wrong, of diverging philosophical views which can be highly personal. Peter says they lied. They say Professor Ridd was is not allowed to comment, under his contract.
This poor man was hounded into resigning, something Peter Ridd would not do.
And possibly he is in philosophy, which is whatever you decide it is. Peter Ridd was head of Physics for 30 years, a rigorous discipline which seeks absolute truths, real science in which right and wrong are measurable and theses are right or wrong, even though it was also called Natural Philosophy. Evidence is essential, proof is everything, not opinion. And Ridd is absolutely right and they have been caught telling many lies, faking research and exonerating themselves.
However both cases are about freedom of speech, something which rankles with money hungry business managers who now pass for Vice Chancellors.
350
Not only university education. Ive been observing home schooling material on the lock down. Lots of aboriginal lessons. They go like this: an honorable wise and brave aboriginal helped the white man survive, but the British man was inherently evil and stole his land, then shot the aboriginal in the back. Also meditation lessons I’ve noticed.
330
dont forget the outrage from some teaching organisations when parents wanted to “attend” virtual classes with their children.
On one level, I understand, it may well be disruptive having parents in the “room” with the children, but this did not seem to be even close to the primary concern at the the time, unless I was reading some fake news from those terrible extreme right wing people that I am told to avoid.
200
yep seen the same Philip as well as the stolen children ect
but l took it further with more research getting a better idea of the real story
the teacher was pretty mad at the extra knowledge shown in front of the class asking in future to only use the material given as that is what they would be tested on, l dont think he likes me very much LOL
but my young teenage kids will be free thinkers and sceptics
200
we also had to do a report on the Anzacs for Anzac day but the provided info was horrible so we did more research getting better info that the teacher was not impressed about, LOL going off script and learning more than they want you to know, the young need to be taught how to think not what to think
rewriting history is not on
its like this sky news report where Education Minister Alan Tudge has slammed the draft of the national curriculum, which suggests students should be encouraged to contest the importance of ANZAC Day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vHi8WiGHEQ
150
I was at school in the 80s to early 90s. The teachers I remember well, are those who encouraged me to find out more information, or who told me how/where to look for it if they didn’t have the answers. Not every teacher was like this, but I had a light scattering of them, and I still appreciate it, because I certainly have not given up on being inquisitive and learning new things.
120
one more teacher home school lockdown cancel culture carry on that l had a laugh at
the teacher was indoctrinating the kids telling them about BCE (before common error) and ACE (after common error)
my son came back with dont you mean BC (before Christ) and AC (after Christ)?
the teacher told the class “there is no such thing”
my son came back again with “well you wont be going to heaven” LOL
the teacher did not get it apparently just looking stupid and shaking his head, the class roared
l had a good laugh at this when told about it by my son
so what l would like to know is “what divides AC from BC (ACE from BCE)?
its not that hard really
the answer is Christs birth
the woke progressives rewriting history is not a good thing for anyone
91
thats very good Marksman, I had a god laugh at that.
20
Lots of aboriginal lessons. They go like this: an honorable wise and brave aboriginal helped the white man survive, but the British man was inherently evil and stole his land, then shot the aboriginal in the back.
I remember a few years ago when our youngest boy had an assignment to do on ‘the stolen generation.’
I always now regret not writing the assignment for him.
10
The peer review hoax was exposed as such, hence peer review works.
Jo has yet to submit any climate science papers for review out of fear of ridicule.
148
Our business here is leading, not following.
280
Ivan, your masters are calling, comrade.
230
Obviously you have never been involved in anything to do with peer review. On paper, it’s a great concept, in practice, it’s just as flawed as any other human endeavour, if not more so.
310
No-one here has yet to submit anything scientific that proves warming by atmospheric CO2.
Probably out of fear of ridicule. 😉
310
Exactly. Why write papers to rebut things which are not proven anyway. No one has even proven the 50% increase in CO2 is man made. And papers as old as 1958 prove that it is not. This Royal Society peer revued paper measures man made CO2 accurately as 2.03% +/- 0.15% at a time when it was expected to be 14%. And no one has proven it wrong as it is a statement of fact. Fossil fuel CO2 is devoid of the C14 tracer.
Modern fossil fuel CO2 is under 4% and the other 46% comes from the direct solar heating of the ocean surface and well known ocean oscillations because the oceans store 99% of the heat and 98% of the CO2. Heat the ocean surface and CO2 comes out. It’s so simple and established text book science. There is also no explanation for CO2 directly heating the oceans. The Infrared logic doesn’t work.
280
Peer Revue… sounds more entertaining than all the peer reviews I’ve seen!
70
Peer review has worked just fine in all disciplines. While you are pretending to be Galileo, the scientific community moves on.
030
You are obviously not a scientist.
240
Gallileo was 400 years ago. You need to update your knowledge.
Plus he was imprisoned for his views and still did not recant. How does that peer review work again?
150
Ivan, a published peer review paper found that MOST peer review papers were wrong.
180
Journal peer review failed.. The paper was accepted.
You do know that peer review is just for acceptance into a journal, don’t you?
Its absolutely nothing to do with scientific accuracy.
120
Peer review failed in this case, it was accepted 11 May 2017
Yet even the author knew it was a hoax paper, what does that say about peer review !
… And boy, did that paper trigger the woke into their usual tantrums and vilification.
180
For those not in the know about how bad academics can be even if only office politics.
I had a falling out with a big name in a field not at all important in saving the world. I tried to get a paper published in the most prestigious paper in that scientific field of study. He ridiculed my paper but everything was easily rebutted. For example, he claimed that I hadn’t considered something. I pointed out that there was a whole section on it with its own heading.
Despite looking like a goose and the other two reviewers liking it, the editor was his friend and gave him another go as a fourth independent reviewer. It was now illegible because I wrote things like “has been” instead of “had been”.
I gave up and got it published in a minor journal.
I complained about it to a fellow young scientist a few years later. He told me that the editor had a bad reputation. She stalled a paper being published by a very well respected academic for 6 months so that her friend could do similar research and publish a paper first on a novel method of polymerisation.
Nothing to do with climate science, although the goose is connected to the geese who started it.
120
A ‘university’ they name themselves?
Portland State, agitprop for the children of woke and no manners, no sense of being nor wit. Kids imbued with filth ridden dogma but starved of education and thus, when life’s hard realities inevitably come to knock, what then?
As the left sows, so shall they reap.
230
Portland has always been dominated by communists. Nothing has changed.
150
That is also a fact. What is also disappointing is the almost total lack of support for Prof. Boghossian, to me that smacks of intimidation across the whole campus. Yes Portland has long held a reputation as being pro left. But academic tyranny, all decent Americans should sit up and take proper notice and because the end: not just in Portland – a communist United States is only just around the corner.
30
“when life’s hard realities inevitably come to knock, what then?”
They go into lockdown until a vaccine rescues them.
80
this is story well worth watching about the experiences of a North Korean woman escaping to finally going to college in America-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yqa-SdJtT4
sorry about youtube, but it is well worth watching and I found it so interesting to see that perspective that I watched the whole thing when somebody here posted it before. thanks for that, whomever that was, it was well worth the time.
110
“I speak out because I know the price of silence.”
IMHO, l agree, very well worth the time to watch
70
l think this is what was posted up about Yeonmi Park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvJKf2Mmr7s&t=120s
l’m not the one who originally posted it
40
A most revealing history – and what a remarkable girl.
She needs to be sent in to sort out the Taliban ….
Hmmm…. I think that there might be some beardless Taliban in fairly short order!
10
It will be interesting to see which regular posters support this sort of vilification.
130
Cut academic funding? We can’t even get our government to cut funding where it would so logical and simple to do – the ABC. Keep dreaming. The education institutions have been completely taken over by the left and there is nothing we can do about it apart form home schooling. Face reality, it’s yet another battle in a long series of battles that has been won by the woke left, or whatever you want to call them. We just have to live with it as best we can, just like the virus. The dark forces of evil are gathering strength so be awake and be strong in your faith, assuming you have one. Otherwise, enjoy while the music lasts.
120
If for no other reason, this is why I detest the Left – Labor, Unions, Greens, Marxists, communists, BLM, the whole lot of them. The list is eternal.
It’s not like they have a viewpoint because all they do is follow the leader and chant the latest mantra to the exclusion of all else. They can’t be reasoned with, because they have lost the power of reason. Mindless minions who can’t think for themselves, living in echo chambers with other mindless minions where they never hear any counter argument.
The one defining characteristic of them all is that they are all bullies.
180
You forgot one large group – fake conservative like PM Morrison. They have allowed much of what see today happen without any resistance at all, and in most cases with at least some encouragement, including a push for the CAGW agenda through emissions reduction targets, decay of our education systems though Marxist leaning teachers and administrators, leftist propaganda machines like the ABC, etc., etc.. The buck stops with the leader of the nation but he is only put their by the party the people elect. If we ever fall under a communist rule or something like it then we have no where to point the finger at but at the voting people who keep electing the same old parties expecting a better result but only seeing it getting worse and worse. Given that will not change due to a variety of reasons, including apathy, ignorance and stupidity, I see no way out of the death spiral we are currently experiencing. Enjoy the ride.
130
Morrison was the preferred PM chosen by Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull broke all convention to hang on just so he could stop Peter Dutton from becoming PM.
Even so, Morrison has been a good centre of the road manager and a great disappointment to both sides, but a capable manager as we saw with doing the impossible and stopping the boat invasion of Australia. Now he is balancing up the carbon targets which we can easily reach despite the extreme posturing of the opposition. He is quite prepared to say no firmly to the UN when they demand we keep all our coal in the ground.
You cannot run the country from opposition and he has stood up to China in a strong way which Labor would certainly never have done. Remember too that the young Nationals have also caved into the Greens, even though the Greens hate farmers and farming and mining. So on balance Morrison seems a strong, steady leader and a conviction politician, despite the ridicule of his Christian beliefts.
So he has been a surprise to both sides of politics and seems to be a good operator with lots of help from competent ministers. And addressing the urgent need to shore up our defences by forming alliances with the India and Indonesia against a rampant China which has so obviously done us a lot of harm as was intended. Dutton’s approach to share missile technology with the US is very significant.
At present we really need a strong leader, not Albanese and Shorten who between them could not get a job done. And neither of them has had a real and demanding job before politics, unlike Morrison.
150
And I really hope he cancels the appalling $250,000,000,000 French submarine contract which will take decades to deliver slow, useless, friendly, non threatening diesel submarines when we do not even make diesel in Australia. How can you defend our sea lanes when you need diesel to run your defences? Apart from being the slowest, most detectable and silliest submarines on the planet and as Tony Abbott said honestly, worse that what we already have. The new world of robotic missile and torpedo drones will make submarines obsolete anyway.
140
The submarine contract might be justified if they decide to have the nuclear version built. Maybe they have been thinking all along that they might be able to do that in the future?
31
Now how do you do that? They had the entire submarine redesigned for diesel. It’s not like these things have swappable engines.
What we are building are really slow Green submarines of peace. That’s what you get when you compromise with the Greens in South Australia. We could spend the money more wisely on a thousand different weapons. I really fail to see how a few submarines will defend the largest coastline in the world, nearly the circumference of the planet at our latitude. That’s one submarine patrolling every 5,000km. Slowly. And this at ten times the price of commercially available submarines and perhaps much more.
110
Madness!
Rutgers University Freezes Accounts of Several Non-Vaccinated StudentsSome Rutgers students say they cannot enroll in online-only classes because they did not get the COVID vaccine.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/rutgers-university-freezes-accounts-several-non-vaccinated-students/5755319
According to Rutgers University, more than 98 percent of undergrads have complied with its mandate that students upload their coronavirus vaccine card in order to return to dorms and classes this fall. But the few students who chose not to get the vaccine are now finding themselves locked out of fall classes, even classes they had planned to take online only.
100
My local Federal Member, ScoMo, has lost my vote. Why? Three major reasons…The ABC, Climate Change, and the Brereton Report. WRT to the first two reasons, the woke brigade is winning. ScoMo has lost the plot. He stands for NOTHING, dithers around important policies, and has let the ABC do what it wants (ie: socialist takeover of Australia). He is a WIMP.
110
‘Democrats Refuse To Drink Water As It’s Also Prescribed To Horses’
‘DERBY, KY—Democratic leaders are moving swiftly to counter rapidly growing misinformation that has led countless right-wing nut jobs into ingesting something that has been prescribed for horses for millennia: water.’
‘To counter the rampant misinformation propagated by pro-water extremists, Democrats now refuse to drink water and urge other progressively minded Americans to follow suit. ‘
https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-refuse-to-drink-water-as-its-also-prescribed-to-horses
70
A list of just some of the medicines common to humans and horses.
https://joannenova.com.au/2021/09/the-media-bonfire-over-imaginary-hordes-of-ivermectin-casualties/#comment-2465751
80
The sceptical-critical part of me says that there’s probably more to the Peter Boghossian story, but who knows? I don’t think universities (or any other institutions) hold Title IX inquiries lightly.
Another consider is that battles among faculty staff can sometimes be the most bitter – because there is so little at stake. Student politics is even less consequential. And academics of all stripes can be vehemently intolerant of other points of view or positions.
I wonder whether he was a lone-wolf pot-stirrer in a sea of lefties, or did he have colleagues making up a faction? Did anyone publicly come to his aid during these disputes?
Anyway, what goes around comes around … during my lifetime it has almost always been the lefties in universities who were vilified and isolated … right back to Ming Menzies and his anti-communist fear-mongering, and of course McCarthyism in America.
But overall – it all sounds pretty pathetic.
02
What an empty response. So it’s OK to send people bags of faeces etc and for the university to do nothing?
If people are not free to speak at uni’s without intimidation what are universities for?
50
We need to cut funding to the ABC.
Yep. The people died because the designers didn’t spend the money to protect people from a plane loaded with fuel smashing into it.
70
Peter Boghossian has come up with the age old question “Why bother?” and it’s the question that all socialist regimes fail on. Leave them to their own devices. Let them create the new dark age that they crave for. We, however, need to be independent, self organised and networked, isolated and secure. And further the question needs to be asked “What will the world be like in 30, 40, 50 years time?!!!”.
90
Yesterday I watched a small clip of an ethics professor in an Ontario, Canada university talking about how the universitys mandatory vaccination campaign violated all the stuff she taught her students on. At the end she broke down.
We are fighting a mass evil, it will be beyond 1984 if we don’t stand up immediately. There is no justification for any of the restrictions, bans and mandates being imposed. There are plenty of “useful idiots” amongst the universities and bureaucrats, but just who is behind this race to the bottom?
Keep posting on this Jo.
110
Great to see Mark Morano educate another clueless DEM about extreme weather events.
He easily refutes the Biden donkey’s nonsense about the latest Hurricane etc.
The DATA and evidence WINS every time.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/09/09/marc-morano-demolishes-biden-campaigners-extreme-weather-claims-on-tv/
50
I agree, but that would be almost all of them.
80
“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.”
I love this.
90
Perhaps we need Home Universities, an extension of home schooling? That would bypass all the indoctrination.
30
Jo’s correct! Cut the fuel supply $$$$, watch them screem. 😁
30
You get one guess as to the location of that Monoversity! The US Pacific Northwest has a large concentration of inventive minds from grunge music to technology pioneers. It also has a large concentration of thought police, antifa activists and serial killers.
Recent ‘education’ suggests the toxic second category is infecting the US, to the detriment of the free thinking which produced the first category!
10