Portland State University Peter Boghossian
Peter Boghossian is a professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon. Last year, Boghossian took part in an experiment in which he and two other scholars submitted a series of over-the-top spoof articles to academic journals. Boghossiann says that he was trying to make a point about how political activism can take over whole fields of academic studies. But Portland State University says that he may have violated ethical guidelines, and is threatening to fire him.
Here’s what you need to know about Peter Boghossian:
1. One of His Spoof Articles Was About ‘Rape Culture’ in the Dog Park; Anther Article Was a Re-write of Mein Kampf
Boghossian — along with the mathematician James Lindsay, and the medieval-studies independent scholar Helen Pluckrose — was involved in writing and submitting twenty spoof articles to well-respected academic journals. He and his partners focused on so-called “grievance studies” — areas of academia which advocate on behalf of the supposedly powerless against the supposedly powerful. Boghossian said his aim was to write deliberately ridiculous, slightly lunatic articles, just to test how far they could go without being rejected by the academic journals.
As it turned out, seven of their articles were accepted, and at least one of them won high praise in the field. The feminist-geography journal, “Gender, Place, and Culture,” published an essay the trio submitted about “rape culture” among dogs in a dog park. That article argued that “dog parks are rape-condoning spaces and a place of rampant canine rape culture and systemic oppression against ‘the oppressed dog’ through which human attitudes to both problems can be measured.” The dog park article won critical praise in the journal which published it.
The trio also managed to publish a “feminist-oriented revision” of Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf, without tipping anyone off to the fact that the submission was part of an elaborate hoax.
2. Boghossian Says His Hoax Proves that ‘Something Has Gone Wrong’ in Academics
Bohossian and his colleagues, James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose, published a piece about their project in the online journal, Areo. They wrote that, in recent years, certain academic fields “in the humanities” have become less rigorous and more based on promoting “a certain worldview.” The group wrote, “scholarship based less upon finding truth and more upon attending to social grievances has become firmly established, if not fully dominant within these fields, and their scholars increasingly bully students, administrators, and other departments into adhering to their worldview. This worldview is not scientific, and it is not rigorous.”
The group said that they carried out their experiment — writing the spoof articles, and submitting them to well-respected journals — in order to prove their point about the shortcomings of academia. And, they said, they wanted to make it easier for people to speak freely without the pressure to fit into the worldview being pushed by certain academic studies: ” We hope this will give people—especially those who believe in liberalism, progress, modernity, open inquiry, and social justice—a clear reason to look at the identitarian madness coming out of the academic and activist left and say, “No, I will not go along with that. You do not speak for me.”
3. Portland State University Says Boghossian Committed ‘Research Misconduct’ & He Could Lose His Job
Boghossian is not a tenured professor. He is an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University in Oregon. This means that his job is not secure. Now, Portland State University is threatening to sanction Boghossian for failing to get Institutional Review Board approval for his research. The university also says that Boghossian fabricated data for his hoax papers — including the paper on “rape culture” in the dog run.
Boghossian addressed some of these issues in a recent YouTube video; you can also read the complaint letters that the university sent to him here and here.
4. Well-Respected Academics Like Steven Pinker & Richard Dawkins Have Come to Boghossian’s Defense
The evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has been one of the louder voices calling for Boghossian to keep his job. Dawkins, a professor at Oxford University, wrote to Portland State saying, in part, “Do your humourless colleagues who brought this action want Portland State to become the laughing stock of the academic world? Or at least the world of serious scientific scholarship uncontaminated by pretentious charlatans of exactly the kind Dr Boghossian and his colleagues were satirising?” Dawkins analogized Boghossian to George Orwell, writing, “How would you react if you saw the following letter: Dear Mr Orwell, It has come to our notice that your novel, Animal Farm, attributes to pigs the ability to talk, and to walk on their hind legs, chanting ‘Four legs good, two legs better’. This is directly counter to known zoological facts about the Family Suidae, and you are therefore arraigned on a charge of falsifying data…”
The linguist Steven Pinker has also defended Boghossian, as has the Canadian philosophy professor Jordan Peterson. But many of Boghossian’s colleagues at Portland State disagree. A group of PSU professors published an anonymous letter in a school journal, attacking Boghossian for “trolling” and featuring a picture of him with a Pinocchio nose. You can read that letter here.
5. Boghossian Has Taught in Prisons & Hospitals As Well As Schools & Says He Specializes in Problem Solving
Boghossian’s official biography says that he has a “teaching pedigree” that spans 25 years, and that he’s taught ” in prisons, hospitals, public and private schools, seminaries, colleges and universities, Fortune 100 companies, and small businesses.” Boghossian says that his “fundamental objective” is to “teach people how to think through what often seem to be intractable problems. ”
Before coming to Portland State University, Boghossian was a Councilman for the State of Oregon (LSTA) and also served as the Chairman of the Prison Advisory Committee for Columbia River Correctional Institution.