Intellectual exploration with Twitter trolls
Peter Boghossian has quit his job at Portland State University and published his resignation letter on Bari Weiss’s Substack.
Peter Boghossian has taught philosophy at Portland State University for the past decade. In the letter below, sent this morning to the university’s provost, he explains why he is resigning.
He’s taught it even though it’s not his field. He has an EdD, a doctorate in education. I’ve never really understood why he gets to teach philosophy at a university without the usual advanced degree.
Anyway, his point is, he’s dedicated to free inquiry and he likes to invite speakers with all kinds of views to his classes so that the students can learn to think and question.
But 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.
There’s probably a lot of truth in that, but Boghossian isn’t just a Socratic asker of provocative questions.
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.
As an aside, it’s funny that he calls Christina Hoff Sommers an “author” when she, unlike him, has an actual PhD in philosophy. Much more centrally, calling Carl Benjamin “popular cultural critic” is highly misleading. Benjamin is better known as Sargon of Akkad, a misogynist Twitter bully. He’s the one who “jokingly” threatened to rape MP Jess Phillips. He’s basically a professional misogynist, and the fact that Boghossian covered that up with “popular cultural critic” tells me he doesn’t believe his own self-advertising.
In short the story isn’t quite as simple as he says.
[sarcasm] Bari Weiss has always placed the value of academic freedom front and centre in both theory and practice. [/sarcasm]
Even otherwise crappy people can be right about some things. But they don’t necessarily help the cause much.
Is “popular cultural critic” Sargon of Akkad supposed to be a critic of popular culture, or a critic of culture who’s very popular? At any rate, a more modest “cultural critic” would have sufficed, because it allows us to charitably assume the professor of philosophy brought him out as target practice.
Speaking of trolling, I just stirred the pot over at Friendly Atheist. He was expressing horror at a group of conservative moms who were vaccine skeptics, Trumpalos, etc,….all normal things which most of us here would agree with. But when the post criticized the conservative moms for doubting that “men” (as self identified) could get pregnant, and completely poo-pooing the erasure of women that is a common subject here, I had to post.
I am of course, a hater who is beyond the pale. I tactlessly questioned if a basement dwelling otherkin should have the right to father puppies if he really identified as a wolf. .
I guess you’re just not friendly enough.
I tried to take a look but I hate having to keep loading disqus comments so I gave up after two clicks.
Re that Friendly Atheist post, it references and approves of commentary by Sara Petersen that criticizes Christian “mommy” bloggers, including:
2. They use “doing your own research” as a thought-stopping technique;
3. They use feminist-sounding language to manipulate (and exclude) women, intentionally or not;
4. They are usually unaware of their own privilege.
All of these I’d say are criticisms that can be leveled at trans ideology advocates, but they are being used in the opposite direction here. I can’t cut and paste it here, but the quoted section from Petersen in item 3 reads to me, roughly, as “they use feminist-sounding language to support the sex-based rights of women, but it’s anti-trans, and it’s a familiar TERF strategy to exclude trans people, and it’s in opposition to the gender-ideological version of womanhood, so it must somehow kinda sorta be against women.”
Sackbut: The post at FA exemplifies my problem with much of the modern lefty skeptic-o-sphere these days. Your points listed above are all decent points, but then they fall right into the same kind of magic thinking and purity policing they (correctly) identify the Christian right as being guilty of. Skepticism is thrown out the window. It is disheartening.
I want to have spotted llama calves, myself. Can I be a llama?
Brian M, just chant Trans llamas are llamas! Then the other llamas have to accept you. Not that I’m having much luck with the otters; they keep saying humans aren’t otters, and invalidating my existence.
In the meantime you could engage in stereotypical otter behaviours like eating raw fish, and cavorting on riverbanks. Unfortunately there’s no equivalent mustelid accessory (like the beloved TiM gold lame purse) that screams “OTTER!” that will help you fit in. If you were a trans sea otter, you could wrap yourself in kelp, but I’m not sure that would really fly (swim?) with the riparian crowd.
Roll to Disbelieve is my favorite in that realm (I stopped reading after she started whining about a Christian Western romance novel being racist)… All her concepts (antiprocess shields, Christianese, Christian love, Happy Pretendy Fun Time Game, etc) directly translate to all the dum trans stuff and “successor ideology” more broadly
…Saying? Kind of gives the game away, doesn’t it? I mean, frankly it sounds like you’re actually trying to convince other trans otters… who are of course otters, after all, so nevermind clearly it’s just that you must be no true otter. No true trans other? Or something. And I’ve confused myself again…
/s ;-)
iknklast, ~Bruce:
You’re both over-complicating this. All you need is otter head-tilt:
https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/15909630/2018/12/GettyImages-1055235274.jpg?w=1280
The short and simple answer is that he applied for the job and convinced the hiring committee to make him an offer; whether this was a gentlemen’s agreement to overlook technical qualifications in this specific case or not, it isn’t really terribly surprising. Firstly, in some cases, an EdD can be a “more advanced” degree than a PhD, as it is often predicated upon getting a B.Ed, itself usually requiring a Bachelor’s degree. Someone who went straight from a Bachelor’s to a PhD in philosophy might wind up with fewer credentials than an EdD, therefore.
Secondly, philosophy is…different, to most other academic specialties. A PhD literally is a “Doctor of Philosophy”, with whatever coming after the initialism being traditionally seen as a specialisation, in the sense that philosophy is the taproot of all inquiry. That may seem a bit old-fashioned, but it is not inconceivable that the pursuit of an EdD equips one with all of the analytical tools required to develop and understand academic philosophy.
Thirdly, what one gets an advanced degree in and what one winds up focusing a career on are usually quite different things, though usually those things are confined to the same “silo”. Though, again, philosophy is sometimes an exception to this. There are many people who’ve turned math or physics or computer science PhD topics into philosophy PhDs (and likely more than those subjects, but these were the ones with which I was most familiar during my sojourns in graduate school), with the implication that while the thesis couldn’t fit the precise rigour of the specialties involved, padding it out with jargon (in the uncharitable interpretation) or coming at it from the angle of philosophy (more charitably) was a good way of engaging with the topic in a less intensely-rigorous way and getting it past the graduation committee. While these kinds of people wind up with PhDs specifically in philosophy, it would not surprise me at all if a decent number of non-philosophy PhDs dabbled in certain kinds of philosophy once they graduated, at least before the last few decades turned academic departments into paper mills.
A PhD is simply the most traditional route to getting an academic job. It isn’t a formal requirement for publishing papers, which are what most academic departments are relentlessly focused on. It is not inconceivable that someone could get hired as a faculty member in certain disciplines (especially “cheap” ones, like math and philosophy) without having attended graduate school at all, much less having gotten an advanced degree.
So it is far from inconceivable that Peter Boghossian, in the course of getting his EdD, engaged in philosophical topics and published philosophical papers enough to convince the hiring committee of a philosophy department that he would be an asset.
Also, in my estimation, Boghossian fits the description of a philosopher. Being able to do philosophy well (or teach it well) does not depend on a PhD. I remember Julian Baggini used to look down his nose at people who didn’t have the (in his view) requisite PhD, calling them “philosophiles” and maybe he still does. I reject that view because it’s unjustified snobbery. Additionally, I have seen so much dishonest, lazy, prejudiced, or just plain unintelligent work done by PhD’s, that I don’t think they fit the description of what a philosopher is or does. I wonder if PSU higher ups know or care how much they have lost, but they probably don’t if the inmates have taken over the asylum as Boghossian describes.
latsot, thanks. That picture started my day perfectly. I may have to make it my wallpaper.
Seth, twiliter, I don’t know about philosophy in general, but I do know accreditation boards are cracking down on credentials lately. I had to go to a great deal of work to demonstrate that I had at least 18 hours of relevant graduate credits to continue teaching Earth Science, because my Environmental Science degree was in Biology…but they will let anyone with a Biology degree teach any class, which is why we had someone with a specialty in Anatomy and Physiology teaching Environmental Science…until my boss discovered (thanks to a little whisper from an otter) that he was a global warming denier.
Everyone who doesn’t have correct credentials is being required to get them, or quit teaching those classes. Some of our faculty retired because they didn’t want to go back to graduate school in their late 60s. If you wouldn’t or couldn’t get the required credentials, it would be thanks for knowing you.
It is likely that an EdD would not qualify you for teaching Philosophy, but if he has enough hours in that, he would qualify without the actual degree. We were told years of experience could substitute, but not years of experience teaching, just working in the field (which most philosophers are not doing; they tend to be teaching or working in an unrelated field). I don’t think that came down from the accreditation board but from our college, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t be receiving the same instructions from his school. Which could mean he is being required to leave for lack of credentials, but making it about silencing. Not necessarily, of course, but I think his reasons are a bit weak for leaving a field he almost certainly won’t get another job in, because the market is so much an employers market and most seem to be hiring younger people.
As for convincing a hiring committee you are the most qualified? Even now it isn’t necessarily that difficult if you’ve got connections. Our faculty/staff here are very inbred, and I’ve seen that at most other schools. So who knows why he was hired? It may not have been that he was good at teaching philosophy, but that he was good at BS.
Seth @ 14, thanks, that clarifies, ditto iknklast above. twiliter @ 15, note I didn’t say he’s not a philosopher, I just said I don’t quite understand how he gets to teach it at university level without the specific PhD. I think I get it now, although I’ll probably have forgotten next time I talk about Peter Boghossian.
Boghossian comes off as an attention seeker who has found ways to get it, like quitting in a very public way. Inviting cranks to speak to his students wasn’t about debating the merits of their positions, but to make it a spectacle. Jerry Coyne was an invited guest of Boghossian’s and a good one, but a flat earther is not worth listening to, honestly.
OB @17 Yes, I wasn’t really referring to the academic appointment so much as the definition, but I think ikn @16 and Seth @14 have a better idea about that than I do. For me it’s more about quality than position.
Thanks, Ophelia, for providing that background and detail on B.
So much lately of the complaints about cancel culture and bad behavior focuses on “those crazy lefties” that it feeds into a narrative that conservatives are holding down the fort on free speech, and I know that even many skeptics are willing to read his resignation letter at face value without checking on the details.
Yes, there is too much silencing and no-platforming going on from the left, but it is not a function of being leftist. I don’t know how much good it would be to provide counterexamples but, I don’t think that the Town Halls over Obamacare are so far back in history that we can’t recall how congresspeople were not even allowed to speak over the noise of people with teabag hats shouting them down.
And, then, there’s this:
https://professorwatchlist.org/
Sackbut and Brian, I did comment at the Friendly Atheist post to make the point that men are not referred to as “ejaculating persons,” that women’s oppression is based on sex and that not using the word woman does affect the discussion of women’s rights, and that TERF should not be used as it commonly precedes threats of violence. I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this there but did find it important to show that there is dissent in the skeptical community over trans ideology.
We’ll see how that affects my Discus status.
JA#18 wrote:
Oh, I don’t agree. Not in a science class, no, but as Boghossion writes:
Those are skills which will come in useful whenever we encounter people with various levels of crazy beliefs, which will be various levels of always. There’s also the very large topic of how and why people fall for bad ideas. Boghossion taught a class on “Science & Pseudoscience.” Reading about what motivates people towards pseudoscience is not going to be as memorable as listening to someone explain what motivates them. And — surprise, surprise — it’s not always paradigm textbook.
Sastra #22:
I’m not formally educated in philosophy but I’ve thought the goal of it was to identify errors in reasoning, not to educate us about deceptive rhetoric. So with respect to flat-earthers, the error is now the claim itself. One might as well question gravity, which is the force that’s responsible for spherical celestial bodies. The ancients knew the Earth was spherical as was the Moon and the planets. It’s now a settled matter, and discussing it in philosophy class is beside the point. As for the subject of pseudo-science, I don’t think flat-eartherism even merits bringing in a crank to spout off about it.
Boghossion quitting his job as a teacher and then seeking attention from the media just has me thinking that he wants to be the next Penn and Teller and go on teevee and stage to battle bravely against ignorance. I suggest he take up juggling to better warm up his audience.
If we take at face value B’s accounts of the Title IX investigation (brought by a white male, in which unfounded rumors flew that B engaged in domestic violence), plus the accounts of feces being left at his office door, plus the being called a NAZI, plus the being spit on, plus being screamed at during class for stating that there might actually be differences between men and women, plus being told he micro-aggressed someone because she had not heard of Star Trek, then I think B has a pretty solid place from which to level at least some of his critiques.