I wish it was just the colleges. I’m withdrawing my son from the once-great private high school that we’d devoted so much time and energy to get him into. They have completely prostrated themselves to this illiberal, intolerant, neoracist orthodoxy and created a hostile learning environment.
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
Mr. Boghossain you show true valor and bravery. Years from now history will be very kind to but for now this virus of wokeness has overcome so many of our institutions.
I spent 18 years in higher ed and would jokingly tell my friends how you could get caught stealing from them and get a slap on the wrist. But violate PC and out the door you go no matter how many years you were with the University.
Sadly higher ed no longer represents freedom to think. Just like NPR no longer represents unbiased reporting or the ACLU standing up for free speech. All of these institutions are gone from their roots.
Bet you a steak dinner the provost got no more than a paragraph into that before chucking it in the wastebin with a triumphant laugh and beginning the search for his black trans lesbian disabled replacement.
I thank the writer for his heartfelt, sincere, letter of resignation. Unfortunately, it is just that kind of reasoned honesty that has no place in the Woke world. I’m sure the recipient is having a good laugh at this poor prof’s well-meaning naïveté. How humiliating!
This is not a war that will be won by reasoned argument, but by fighting fire with fire. Until the enlightened are willing to fight the fascists at the voting booth and the HR dept (and I don’t see a lot of evidence of that here) the Woke nihilists will continue to do what has been working for them so well. The cavalry is assuredly NOT coming—the good guys are going to have to do it themselves
While I was familiar with Dr. Boghossian and some of his work, I was unaware of the workplace harassment he was enduring. While I was not surprised, it still angers me that academic institutions seemed to have so swiftly turned their backs on what are supposedly their core values.
This is really sad. I was a Accounting student back in early 90's at University of Texas, but we had to take Philosophy as a required class. I will tell you that I still remember Professor Baker and what he taught us about critical thinking, forming opinions, Socrates, Plato, ethics, etc. . I can say I never knew what "he" thought of the present day topics he would bring up that we would then write and apply this type of logic to, but just gave us tools to think for ourselves. It was one of THE best classes I took at UT. Sounds like this guy was teaching much in that same vein. Pity they are running these people out of the Universities. Critical thinking, ethics, how to form your own opinion by applying these skills, but still asking questions respectfully and listening to the others point of view...such an important skillset to have. I hope he can find another place to land...we still need these Professors.
What a truly horrific, yet all too common, story. The vast majority of our universities operate exactly like this today. If this doesn't change--and frankly I don't see it happening--we are finished as a nation. Anyone paying $60K+ to send their kid(s) to places like like Portland State needs to have their head examined. What a colossal waste of money.
Peter, this is what true courage looks like. You are willing to sacrifice your career and security to stand against this madness that has infected our institutions of higher learning. Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.
Oh and BTW, thank you for sharing that amazing Penis article! I am still smiling at your elegant hoax. For example, "2.2 Climate Change and the Conceptual Penis: Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification
with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change." Beautiful! I can picture these humorless, self-satisfied, hyper-sensitive, self-described "intellectuals" lapping this up while not even remotely realizing they are swallowing the bait hook, line, and sinker. Well done, sir.
Think of the University System we could have if all the good ones resigned and pooled their resources to develop a "new" type of education system that values critical thinking...
I attended grad school at PSU and wrote a letter of support for Dr. Boghossian when the pitchfork mob were first after him for the Grievance Hoax papers. I am sad to see that PSU is losing a professor who has been a supporter of free speech. I am heartened to know that having faced down this mob for so long, he will have the pluck to find new arenas. Good luck Dr. Boghossian, I send you much support.
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.
A professor leaving Portland State University is like a traveler deciding to disembark from the Titanic before if leaves port. In the future, he will look back and think this was the wisest decision of his life.
The Education Industry deplores free thinkers like this brave soul. Being taught by nuns, Jesuits, and Holy Cross Fathers, the Socratic method was the template for all their instruction. That is a method used for thousand of years. We abandon free thinking at our peril, as did Germany in the 1930's.
And so it begins. Hurrah!! The time is nigh to build new institutions of learning and learned. The time is nigh to starve those old institutions of good fruit and wise sage. Huzzah!
Sadly, this is how “they” take over. Organize with fellow travelers to make life hell for those who would resist their propaganda. As those who resist dwindle away, they can be more radical and destructive. They now openly state their goal “Burn this all down.” At first I thought “they” were socialists or communists out to convert us to their anti-freedom ideology. Now I think “they” just want us to be at each other’s throats so our country, and other Western countries, destroy ourselves from within.
I wish it was just the colleges. I’m withdrawing my son from the once-great private high school that we’d devoted so much time and energy to get him into. They have completely prostrated themselves to this illiberal, intolerant, neoracist orthodoxy and created a hostile learning environment.
So bummed, as a parent of a PSU student. The school is off the rails. Parents at orientation literally heard 10+ minutes of pronoun introductions (of every single tour guide) and zero minutes of "our commitment to excellence in academics, art, and/or athletics".
Peter was a bright spot. Fortunately, my kid is in the Computer Science program which is still excellent, probably because computer code doesn't compile if it is fed gibberish.
Mr. Boghossain you show true valor and bravery. Years from now history will be very kind to but for now this virus of wokeness has overcome so many of our institutions.
I spent 18 years in higher ed and would jokingly tell my friends how you could get caught stealing from them and get a slap on the wrist. But violate PC and out the door you go no matter how many years you were with the University.
Sadly higher ed no longer represents freedom to think. Just like NPR no longer represents unbiased reporting or the ACLU standing up for free speech. All of these institutions are gone from their roots.
Bet you a steak dinner the provost got no more than a paragraph into that before chucking it in the wastebin with a triumphant laugh and beginning the search for his black trans lesbian disabled replacement.
I thank the writer for his heartfelt, sincere, letter of resignation. Unfortunately, it is just that kind of reasoned honesty that has no place in the Woke world. I’m sure the recipient is having a good laugh at this poor prof’s well-meaning naïveté. How humiliating!
This is not a war that will be won by reasoned argument, but by fighting fire with fire. Until the enlightened are willing to fight the fascists at the voting booth and the HR dept (and I don’t see a lot of evidence of that here) the Woke nihilists will continue to do what has been working for them so well. The cavalry is assuredly NOT coming—the good guys are going to have to do it themselves
While I was familiar with Dr. Boghossian and some of his work, I was unaware of the workplace harassment he was enduring. While I was not surprised, it still angers me that academic institutions seemed to have so swiftly turned their backs on what are supposedly their core values.
This is really sad. I was a Accounting student back in early 90's at University of Texas, but we had to take Philosophy as a required class. I will tell you that I still remember Professor Baker and what he taught us about critical thinking, forming opinions, Socrates, Plato, ethics, etc. . I can say I never knew what "he" thought of the present day topics he would bring up that we would then write and apply this type of logic to, but just gave us tools to think for ourselves. It was one of THE best classes I took at UT. Sounds like this guy was teaching much in that same vein. Pity they are running these people out of the Universities. Critical thinking, ethics, how to form your own opinion by applying these skills, but still asking questions respectfully and listening to the others point of view...such an important skillset to have. I hope he can find another place to land...we still need these Professors.
What a truly horrific, yet all too common, story. The vast majority of our universities operate exactly like this today. If this doesn't change--and frankly I don't see it happening--we are finished as a nation. Anyone paying $60K+ to send their kid(s) to places like like Portland State needs to have their head examined. What a colossal waste of money.
Peter, this is what true courage looks like. You are willing to sacrifice your career and security to stand against this madness that has infected our institutions of higher learning. Thank you. Sincerely, thank you.
Oh and BTW, thank you for sharing that amazing Penis article! I am still smiling at your elegant hoax. For example, "2.2 Climate Change and the Conceptual Penis: Nowhere are the consequences of hypermasculine machismo braggadocio isomorphic identification
with the conceptual penis more problematic than concerning the issue of climate change." Beautiful! I can picture these humorless, self-satisfied, hyper-sensitive, self-described "intellectuals" lapping this up while not even remotely realizing they are swallowing the bait hook, line, and sinker. Well done, sir.
Think of the University System we could have if all the good ones resigned and pooled their resources to develop a "new" type of education system that values critical thinking...
I attended grad school at PSU and wrote a letter of support for Dr. Boghossian when the pitchfork mob were first after him for the Grievance Hoax papers. I am sad to see that PSU is losing a professor who has been a supporter of free speech. I am heartened to know that having faced down this mob for so long, he will have the pluck to find new arenas. Good luck Dr. Boghossian, I send you much support.
Peter, I thought of you and your brave, principled, and eloquent statement this morning as I took a long bike ride, and what came to mind, curiously, was the recent CNN rebroadcast of "9/11," a documentary by the Naudet brothers. They and their crew happened to tag along with the NY firefighters who were first inside the Twin Towers: brave men, all. Even as the handful of fire chiefs established a command post in the lobby and sent their men up the stairs, people were starting to jump from the burning building, a hundred stories above. We never saw their bodies hit the ground, but we heard, and cringed in disbelief and horror, at the astonishingly loud explosions: the sound of bodies disintegrating. Each explosion was a person who, confronted with the licking flames and the slow voiding of all possible means of escape, finally chose how to die. It's a terrible choice. So is the choice made by those fire chiefs to send their men up the stairs, and the choice made by those firemen to actually make the long trip into god knows what future. I view the choice you made--or at least this was my thought while cycling--as essentially a combination of those terrible choices. You did your damndest, as long as you could, to come to the rescue, to think things through, to make the long trek required to save people, and thought systems, that needed saving. You ended up on the roof of a burning building, in increasing pain, with all routes of escape having finally been cut off. The choice to jump is a nervy choice. I mean those words more literally than metaphorically, and I'm thinking of Albert Murray's memorable statement in "Stomping the Blues," something about how what must be avoided at all costs is "a failure of nerve." Murry was a fan of Hemingway and was channeling the grace-under-pressure ethos. Regardless: I see the opposite of a failure of nerve here. I see a principled choice made under great pressure, as an absolute last resort. It's inspiring. You tried as hard as you could to warn people that the building was burning, to smell the smoke, to make that long walk with you up the stairs. You'll land on your feet like the cat you are. Keep making trouble.
A professor leaving Portland State University is like a traveler deciding to disembark from the Titanic before if leaves port. In the future, he will look back and think this was the wisest decision of his life.
The Education Industry deplores free thinkers like this brave soul. Being taught by nuns, Jesuits, and Holy Cross Fathers, the Socratic method was the template for all their instruction. That is a method used for thousand of years. We abandon free thinking at our peril, as did Germany in the 1930's.
And so it begins. Hurrah!! The time is nigh to build new institutions of learning and learned. The time is nigh to starve those old institutions of good fruit and wise sage. Huzzah!
Sadly, this is how “they” take over. Organize with fellow travelers to make life hell for those who would resist their propaganda. As those who resist dwindle away, they can be more radical and destructive. They now openly state their goal “Burn this all down.” At first I thought “they” were socialists or communists out to convert us to their anti-freedom ideology. Now I think “they” just want us to be at each other’s throats so our country, and other Western countries, destroy ourselves from within.