Peterson Academy?

I occasionally tune in to Joe Rogan's podcast, when he has someone interesting on. Yesterday, I noticed he had recently talked to Jordan Peterson, so I was curious. I listened to most of it, and their talk was interesting. Some of the things I remember (I didn't take any notes) were:

- a long screed by Joe which struck me like a sort-of cranky "get off my lawn" moment, but it clarified something for me. While I didn't necessarily disagree with a number of the points Joe was making, it occurred to me that when you have a complaint or an observation, you need to attribute it to someone. If you instead rail against how "They" are ruining society or education or whatever, you can be more easily dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. As a counter-example, Eric Weinstein had a podcast conversation recently with Nicole Shanahan (RFK Jr's running-mate) in which they discussed some of the problems with the way America does science and the crisis in academia. Weinstein made a remark about how, as much as the US has made a lot of mistakes and overstepped egregiously in our post-WWII foreign policy, we should still be able to stand for the flag at a ball game as an affirmation of the ideal of America we're trying to live up to. This was an interesting discussion in its own right (dealing with how Weinstein believes we have gradually throughout our national history been getting closer to the words of the founding documents), but its relevance for this point was that Weinstein didn't say "They". He said, "specifically under the Dulles brothers"; which I think made all the difference.

- Jordan Peterson went on for a half hour or more (it seemed like a long time!) about religion, which is not something I'm that interested in. He apparently has a new book. The thing that surprised me was that this time he did not seem entirely unhinged. I'm not comfortable with the intense way he seems to believe, but he managed to talk about several biblical stories (Abraham, Cain and Abel) from a psychological perspective. Peterson channelled C.G. Jung at some points, and he seems to have learned Jung's trick of avoiding truth claims about the stories and treating them as archetypes. This made the discussion more interesting for me, especially when he compared these stories with other "wisdom literature" such as the Dao.

- Apparently the main reason for Peterson's appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience last week was to announce a new business he has launched, called Peterson Academy. It has created 8-hour video courses (about 20, so far) from a number of big names and is apparently going to try to become an alternative to a four-year bachelor's degree. Peterson is aiming at big-name universities, it seems, and at the costs of attending them. He claimed students would be able to get an equivalent education in his program at one twentieth the price.

Peterson made a lot of points I agree with, in his spiel about his new venture. Obviously the cost of an elite, Ivy League degree is ridiculously high. But how big is that market and are young people really going there for the classes? Peterson acknowledged that students often find the person they will marry at their undergraduate institution and claimed a part of his new Academy would be a gated social media app that would encourage students to interact with the right kind of people, free from trolls and bots. This might help them create a network of like-minded people, which of course has its own plusses and minuses.

Peterson also said the elite old universities hobble their faculty with political correctness and the threat of cancellation if they aren't woke enough, in addition to not paying professors that well and treating them with disrespect. He claimed the Oxford and Cambridge professors that have visited his studio in Miami to record their lectures were impressed and delighted with how well they were treated. There was an implication that in addition to being shown some deference, the professors were paid more generously than they would be at their institutions, although this was a bit vague. Peterson compared the way his contributors were paid with a good book contract, which I'm not sure is the same as a tenured full-professor salary at a big university.

In addition to not paying or treating faculty well, Peterson chided the big old universities for being woefully behind the times (stuck in the 19th century!) in terms of the "production values" of their video offerings. I agree that there are plenty of instructors who aren't that good at making high-quality video content. Nor do most universities (or even professors) use "style sheets" to create a uniform user experience for their "brand". However, while I think we should take advantage of the tools and opportunities to connect with learners in new ways that technology provides, I'm skeptical about the trap of imagining that the elegance of the form is more important than the value of the content.

One of the points Peterson made that I completely agree with (and which may be the key to success if he follows through on it) is a focus on Lifelong Learners of any and all ages, who will take courses because the topics interest them. He claimed to be "in discussion" with a number of accreditation agencies about getting Peterson Academy validated as a degree-granting institution. This would certainly improve his chances of attracting students, although Peterson also said he was wary of making accommodations to a system that is owned by the very academic establishment he's trying to disrupt. He made some noises about going directly to employers to assure them that PA "graduates" had the equivalent of a college education, and he focused on the "woke" ideologies he would be able to guarantee his students had avoided. While I understand why Peterson would say this, it seemed to me a bit of a misstep if he's planning his institution for the long run.

Some of the courses do sound interesting to me, and I wouldn't mind watching some of the videos. I also feel a bit of a professional urge to check in on what these instructors are saying. Peterson was proud of the fact that he has told them all they are welcome to talk about whatever they want, and bragged that one of the courses featured a very positive treatment of Winston Churchill that he said you'd be unlikely to see in a woke university. There might be some value in a new revisionism that swings the pendulum back a bit from the excesses to which some teaching has gone. But I'm a bit concerned this will just create another filter bubble. I was listening to a Douglas Murray audiobook earlier this week in which he rattled off a laundry list of achievements of the West, that he said white people could be proud of. A number of them were claims that Westerners had "invented" things like capitalism or "government by the people, for the people" or the ideas of personal liberty and individual rights. I was reminded immediately of Graeber and Wengrow's story of the Enlightenment being catalyzed by a critique of European culture by the Wendat (Huron) Indians in their early contacts with the French.

What struck me about this discrepancy was that it seemed plausible to me that someone in the "Graeber camp" might be predisposed to imagine that Kandiaronk the Wendat was a brilliant proponent of the ideas that became the Enlightenment. This led me to imagine it might be equally easy for someone who might be attracted to a Peterson Academy (or a Hillsdale?) might be similarly predisposed to slide over certain sets of assumptions that are really the heart of the particular world-view of these institutions. I'm not sure there's an antidote to this, other than perhaps for institutions to be up-front about their foundational assumptions and for learners to recognize them going in. And maybe to occasionally dip into content coming from folks with different perspectives. It will be interesting to see if Peterson Academy courses will be available a la carte or only as part of an annual plan.