A Professor Against Political Correctness

I first encountered Jordan Peterson on a YouTube video when he was part of a Free Speech event on the University of Toronto Campus. At this event protesters called him all sort of names, they unplugged the sound system and created so much white noise so that the speakers could not talk.

I had seen this type of event happen before, but this time something seemed different. I slowly realized that the things Professor Peterson was saying were articulate and well thought out versions of what I had in my mind.

I had to know more about this person. Thanks to the power of the internet I was able to find hours of video on YouTube. The first ones I arrived at were his videos against Bill C-16 that was being discussed in the Canadian Parliament.

Bill C-16

Professor Peterson made three videos where he addressed his issues with this piece of legislation. The series is called Professor against Political Correctness (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). In these videos he talks about the law itself as well as the doctrine and ideas behind the law and those who are pushing for it.

Little did Professor Peterson know that his three videos on an obscure piece of Canadian legislation would attract global attention. He simply thought the law crossed a line that he would not cross, the codification of compelled speech into law.

In his videos he even says that the act of making the videos could be interpreted as illegal under the Ontario human rights commission. He was told he was overreacting at the time but the University of Toronto sent him a letter telling him that he needed to take down the videos and what he was doing was probably illegal, providing justification for his earlier fear.

This stance brought a lot of attention to Professor Peterson, not all of it positive, and started him on the road of speaking tours and a new book, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.

Activist Assault

“This is like neutrally playing a speech by Hitler, or Milo Yiannopoulos.” Said Professor Nathan Rambukkana of Wilfred Laurier University.

The quote was uttered during an interrogation of teaching assistant Lindsey Shepard. She was being reprimanded for playing a video of Jordan Peterson in her university classroom. A video that was played on Canadian TV station TVO, broadcasted to the public and at the time of this writing has been seen close to 1 million times on YouTube.

Before this protesters at McMaster University tried to shut down a talk given by Jordan Peterson by making a lot of noise and using air horns to drown him out. Peterson ignored them and kept on talking, eventually moving the talk outside and giving it there.

More recently a surreal scene took place at a talk at Queens College as protestors interrupted the speech by jumping on stage. Another shouted from the audience, while protestors outside banged on windows and doors. Shouts of ‘lock them in and burn it down’(3:44) could be heard as other protesters attempted to block the door from the outside using trash cans. One protestor, who broke a window, was arrested carrying a garrote.

Along with these protests numerous smears have been made against Peterson in the media. He has been called alt-right, a homophobe, and transphobe to name a few, despite identifying as an English Liberal.

The personification of this assault can best be seen in an interview Peterson did with Cathy Newman on England’s Channel 4. One thing that becomes clear in that interview is that the strawman built up of who Peterson is does not hold up to reality.

Sorting it Out

With all the bad press and protests how do you figure out what Peterson is actually about? Go to the source. He has hundreds of hours of videos on YouTube, from college lectures to personal videos recorded in his home.

You could read his books, Maps of Meaning and 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos or check out his public speaking events.

Jordan Peterson is known to give advice such as ‘clean your room’ imploring people to physically clean their room and in doing so taking control of a small part of their world. Setting it in order so that it is clean, functional, and beautiful. It is a call to set your own life in order before you try to criticize or change the world.

Rule 4 from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is ‘Compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today.’ A call to do something no matter how small to make yourself slightly better than you were the day before. Imagine how much better you would be after a month of doing that every day.

So why has Peterson garnered so much attention? For those who are interested in his ideas he offering them a message of personal responsibility and individuality. For those how see him as alt-right (he is not by the way) they fall into a few different camps. Those who have only heard about him as a transphobe second hand and believe it without checking him out for themselves and those who see him as a threat to their ideological and cultural hegemony.

Yet do not take my word for it, I encourage you to look for yourself. If you are interested in hearing it straight from Jordan Peterson, he has a speaking event at the Keller Auditorium in Portland Oregon on June 25. There will also be a book club conversation about his book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos in Beaverton Oregon on June 23^rd.