Academia Takes Another Hit, And Doesn't Notice

For John, BLUF:  Wokeness is destroying the institutions of higher learning.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Jordan Peterson resigns from his tenured position at University of Toronto

From The National Post by Mr John Sexton, 20 January 2022, 7:20 PM ET.

Here is the lede plus one:

Yesterday, Jordan Peterson announced he had recently become a professor emeritus a bit sooner than he’d planned.  His explanation for the decision was published by the National Post:

I had envisioned teaching and researching at the U of T, full time, until they had to haul my skeleton out of my office.  I loved my job.  And my students, undergraduates and graduates alike, were positively predisposed toward me.  But that career path was not meant to be…

First, my qualified and supremely trained heterosexual white male graduate students (and I’ve had many others, by the way) face a negligible chance of being offered university research positions, despite stellar scientific dossiers.  This is partly because of Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity mandates (my preferred acronym: DIE).  These have been imposed universally in academia, despite the fact that university hiring committees had already done everything reasonable for all the years of my career, and then some, to ensure that no qualified “minority” candidates were ever overlooked.  My students are also partly unacceptable precisely because they are my students.  I am academic persona non grata, because of my unacceptable philosophical positions.

Professor Jordan B Peterson is the author of 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, a valuable read.  He has be cited several times in this blog.

It is embarrasing, and alarming, that China is sending its second tier students to US, and I assume Canadian, institutions of higher learning.  Why?  Because our schools are focused on woke issues, and not excellence in academic pursuits.

We need to admit the sins of the past, and that some in the present have not lived up to our national ideals, both here and in Canada, and then move on, together.  We are not doing that and it is impeding progress on all fronts, to our detriment.  If we wish our future to be dictated to by the CCP, to do it the way the CCP thinks it should be done, all we have to do is keep doing what we are doing.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff