Professor resigns after university muzzles philosophy curriculum

peter bogosian taught philosophy at portland state university for the past decade he just wrote a public letter to the university's provost announcing he's quitting you can read the whole thing on sub stack and you should here's a part of it quote this university has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a social justice factory his only inputs for race gender and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division peter bogosian is the author of how to have impossible conversations it's a great great title of a book almost as good as how i saved the world and he joins us here all right professor explain how this professor ex-professor as of a couple hours ago how did this all go down well the university basically created conditions that didn't allow me to teach what i was hired to do which was critical thinking and and ethics and so i could not retain my current position as is so you're saying that you were doing what you've always done teach critical thinking assign reading materials of famous philosophers and encouraging robust debate and conversation and that was impossible because of what precisely well the university told me i wasn't allowed to render my opinion about protected classes or teach in any way that my opinion about protected classes could be known the university really made it difficult in terms of students were telling me that other professors had told them not to take my class there were flyers around me with campus around campus with a pinocchio nose but this isn't really about necessarily the things that happened to me that's just a piece of the larger picture of the social justice ecosystem that's taken over our university system well describe that ecosystem describe for people who didn't experience that in college i did not experience that at all i was actually a philosophy major for two years until i read kant and i couldn't stand the guy i'm sure you agree and switch to history but what kind of things are professors like yourself experiencing where they're unable to do their jobs they're experiencing anyone who speaks out against the dominant moral orthodoxy particularly with regard to race gender or sexual orientation trans issues for example let me just give you a quick example in ethics one of the issues that we're facing today as a society are trans issues trans bathrooms would be an example of that or trans women in sports trans men in sports and what that means and the trans is a protected class and so i wasn't allowed to speak about protected classes among other things so there was a sensoriousness about the university and there was always always the threat of investigation i was investigated so many times for so many things and the total results of the investigation were nada zilch they found nothing but they weaponized offices of diversity equity and inclusion and even the threat of going to be called in for a theft of your time and if nothing else the investigators are incredibly thorough so they have these mechanisms in place in the university to enforce certain speech codes against professors against dissident professors against anyone who questions or challenges what's morally fashionable so they actually employ little social justice warriors within departments to keep tabs on professors that are deemed controversial they weren't controversial maybe 10 years ago but now because everything's gone nuts are controversial they threaten investigations or they do do they investigate microaggressions is that something that they're looking into you can't even define many times by the way right so it's a small slight usually against race or or gender or some kind of perceived status like ability status one of the things they don't have an office for investigating microaggressions but among the things that i was brought up on charges someone asked me if race was a social construct or a biological category and i said i don't know i'm a philosopher i'm not a biologist and among other things i was brought in upon i was brought on in charge of that i've been accused of of a microaggression when i asked for the evidence for microaggressions i've been accused of microaggressions when i asked by colleagues and by students when i asked for evidence of the policies that were engulfing like trigger warnings why should there be a trigger warning on a syllabus what is the evidence that safe spaces are helpful to students so those things themselves even asking for evidence was a microaggression so you've created a kind of a culture in which even asking questions about things is viewed as a violation it's a it's become a dogma factory that's astounding humility is now a chargeable offense saying i don't know that's not my area of expertise they can they can bring you up on charges of microaggression well i'm sorry to hear that and it looks like it's destroying rational discourse in our universities which is the point of universities to explore to ask questions to understand opposing opinions you can't do that anymore you can't ask questions you just have to go along with the dogma and if you don't you're in trouble right and having conversations is impossible having robust debates about certain topics is impossible and so think about the injustice we're doing to our students when we're creating these large ecosystems that don't allow that they don't allow questioning they don't allow challenging and so students are particularly brittle when they hear the other side of a debate i believe very strongly as john stuart mill did that we have to be taught by people who actually believe things i believe there should be a marxist in an economics department i believe that there should be a friedmanite in an economics department i believe that there should be intellectual diversity and we give students the tools to figure out these issues and ask difficult questions and we're not doing that all right peter just don't ask about the vaccine that's way way way too dangerous thank you jessie i appreciate having me on all right hey sean hannity here hey click here to subscribe to fox news youtube page and catch our hottest interviews and most compelling analysis you will not get it anywhere else

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Keywords: social justice, portland state university, portland, oregon, portland oregon, peter boghossian, peter boghossian fox news, fox news, tucker carlson tonight, jesse watters, education, college, school, university, curriculum, woke learning, woke education, professor resigns, portland professor resigns, teaching, philosophy, ethics, college philosophy, philosophy professor, critical thinking, race

Id: n4nYNlk-eIw

Length: 6min 44sec (404 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 10 2021