Jordan Peterson – The Concordian

Over 60 participants attended the council meeting that voted to bar the controversial Canadian intellectual.

Did you hear that rumour during the winter break that the Arts and Science Federation of Associations (ASFA) was planning on inviting Jordan Peterson to speak at an event?

It caused quite a stir: hundreds of students spoke out in different ways for, and against, the famed and controversial Canadian clinical psychologist being featured at the university.

But the story of Peterson taking the spotlight at ASFA came to a close at the association’s Dec. 16 regular council meeting, when a majority of the council voted against platforming Peterson, in-person or in any medium, forever.

Minutes of the ASFA executive meeting on Nov. 25 reveal that the initial idea, proposed by Student Life Coordinator Natalie Jabbour, was to invite Peterson as a speaker on mental health during the winter semester.

“One of my ideas was to invite Jordan Peterson as a speaker. I know he’s a controversial speaker but I think he has brilliant ideas on psychology. I messaged his manager yesterday,” stated Jabbour at the meeting.

Curiously, Jabbour later told The Concordian she did not intend on organizing an event that featured Peterson, despite contacting his manager. Her intention was solely to discuss her event ideas during the winter semester, which also included suggesting another enterprise called “The School of Life,” an educational company that gives life advice.

Following the meeting, several executives shared news of Jabbour’s proposal through personal messages, emails to the student media, and posts on social media. The news spread like wildfire.

Various posts, hundreds of emails and signatures on a petition were shared online to support both opinions.

However, Peterson is not available for any guest speaking engagements at the moment, according to his public speaking and engagements contact.

Since he is unavailable, Jabbour decided to change the event from being about mental health support for students featuring Peterson, to an event solely about Peterson and freedom of speech.

The new event discussed at the council was called “Diversity of Views in Academics at Concordia University.” Organized by ASFA’s Student Life Committee, the event would have been moderated by a Concordia professor, who would help guide the discussion as students watched, and then critiqued, the subject matter.

It would have showcased Peterson in some format, either through a speech, lecture, or written material.

Before the deciding vote to bar Peterson, the council debated for over three hours whether the association should even consider hosting Peterson. ASFA executives and councillors, several students and alumni, participated in the over-attended meeting to speak on the rumoured event.

Opinions were divided between people who thought Peterson’s rhetoric should be protected by freedom of speech ideals and the need to hear different opinions on campus, versus those that thought the responsible course of action is to ban the speaker, citing his rhetoric as harmful and discriminatory.

This reflected the same debate — and backlash — which the University of Toronto professor became internationally known for in the first place. Back in 2016, he refused to use non-gendered pronouns and spoke out against Canada’s Bill C-16, which was only at it’s proposal stage at the time, to add gender identity and expression to the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code.

He feared that refusing to use someone else’s preferred pronouns would be classified as hate speech under the new amendment, and this would infringe on the freedom of Canadians.

Those who spoke in favour of Peterson at the meeting did not address his controversial statements. Instead, they pointed to the importance of having a civil discussion.

According to an ASFA executive who requested to remain anonymous, while these events would feature Peterson, they weren’t about him, they were about freedom of expression on campus.

They told The Concordian they have noticed an increasingly hostile environment at Concordia, particularly in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, with certain groups of students feeling “disenfranchised.” This individual is “concerned over legitimately not being able to say what’s on their mind.”

According to the source, this has become a widespread issue at the university, manifesting as “hostility towards certain ideas … that’s aimed at censoring and blocking people.”

When asked to provide an example of this hostility, or an even example of the types of ideas being ostracized, the source refused.

The purpose of the events, according to the source, would be to encourage ideas, not censoring or suppressing information over people’s feelings – no “cancelling,” with the hope of improving critical thinking and discourse on campus.

The idea of freedom of speech on campus and fighting against the cancelling of other opinions is not new, and Peterson is largely to thank for that.

A large part of Peterson’s platform was about freedom of speech, the end of political correctness, and the attempt to end or discourage Marxist/radical left ideology on campus.

Several gendered-non-conforming people who spoke at the council meeting said their identity was not up for debate.

Many described the harassment they’ve received over their choice of pronouns and lifestyle, and pointed out that rhetoric like Peterson’s had only helped to inflame the discrimination they’ve faced.

In a statement to the The Concordian, ASFA Communications Coordinator Carmen Levy-Milne said showcasing Peterson’s views would contradict the organization’s anti-discrimination regulations.

“It is morally inappropriate to suggest that a speaker who is openly sexist, islamophobic, homophobic, anti-Semitic, racist, and transphobic speak at our university … The suggestion to openly platform a speaker contradicts our Policy against Harassment, Discrimination, and Violence,” said Levy-Milne.

The motion to bar Peterson from being featured at the association followed this reasoning.

Proposed by Payton Mitchell, ASFA’s Mobilization Coordinator, the motion outlines that “Allowing Jordan Peterson to have this space would mean ASFA is directly facilitating an environment in which stochastic terrorism may be fostered here at Concordia.”

Peterson may no longer be platformed at ASFA or any of its member associations.

Peterson’s media representative at Penguin Random House Canada told The Concordian they had no comment.

Graphic by Taylor Reddam

The professor’s conceptions of gender highlight a refusal to acknowledge modernity

It’s an exciting time, folks. Progressive culture is alive and well, and it’s propelling us toward a more realistic and less discriminatory definition of gender every day. This definition is one that recognizes the ways Western society enforces arbitrary gender stereotypes through socialization. It also recognizes and seeks to end the unjust limitation of individual opportunity on the basis of gender identity. This is currently the dominant way gender is taught in post-secondary institutions in relevant fields. But there is a psychology professor at the University of Toronto who has taken to publicly lamenting the declining popularity of the traditional understanding of gender—and his name is Jordan Peterson.

His online lecture videos are often geared directly toward young men—a demographic that represents over 90 per cent of his following, according to Peterson himself. The reason for this is likely the content of his claims like: “Feminism that says Western culture is an evil and corrupt patriarchy [is to blame for] alienating young men.” Peterson’s videos operate on the logic that progressive conceptions of gender are wrongfully oppressing men. He fights to preserve the gender ideals that one might find in a TV commercial from 1950s America.

Peterson’s understanding of the world is so rooted in a binary understanding of gender that it makes sense he would be reluctant to question it. Almost every one of his videos are laced with big, generalizing claims about the inherent personality differences between men and women, and he states in a lecture that he has been studying the topic for over 25 years. If Peterson acknowledges the large role socialization plays in gender identity, as well as the legitimacy of non-binary genders, he risks invalidating 25 years of his own research.

He argues society doesn’t value traditional masculinity as much as it did in the past (and he’s right). He may also be right in proposing that this shift has caused his young male supporters’ troubles. But he is wrong in suggesting that progressive attitudes towards gender—rather than toxic men—need to change.

Peterson refuses to recognize the existence of rape culture or the whole idea of toxic masculinity as a culture-wide problem. He said in a recent video: “You don’t want to confuse the actions of some of the men with all of the men” in response to the #MeToo movement. However, what Peterson doesn’t realize is that this is the exact type of logic that enforces the very alienation of young men he is concerned about. If they dig their heels in and refuse to adjust to society’s changing values, then they’re bound only for ostracization.

Some of the traits that we associate with “traditional” masculinity are courage, independence, assertiveness and leadership (I put traditional in quotations, because as sociologist Raewyn Connell points out, definitions of masculinity have varied dramatically in various cultures throughout the course of history). The thing is, there are a ton of women in my life who have all of these traits, and as progressive culture encourages a more fluid definition of gender, that number will only increase. Don’t get me wrong, there is a long way to go, but people are finding it increasingly easy to act according to their feelings rather than in accordance with societal constraints.

“Traditional” men are finding that their place in society is diminishing, and they are faced with the option of either confronting the toxic behaviour they’ve been instilled with since the beginning stages of their socialization, or becoming bitter about it. There is comfort in Peterson’s lectures for those who become bitter, as he reassures them that society is at fault for progressing away from traditional masculinity.

It’s hard work to acknowledge privilege and confront toxic masculine values, but the social move that questions those things is not going anywhere. You get to decide if you want to be part of the positive change or cling on to archaic understandings of gender. The future is non-binary.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth