Photo: “Dr. Jordan Peterson delivering a lecture at the University of Toronto in 2017” by Adam Jacobs is licensed under CC BY 2.0
By Daniel Mootz
Professors have always paved the way for discussion—for debate, doubt, and dialogics. It is what makes them invaluable to the learning process. They assert, assess, and ascribe to reason and reflection, at least until that reason or reflection is challenged, or until they become complicit in the knowledge-power nexus they have agreed to expose. Such is the case of the privileged contrarians, the exiled academics who have sloppily formed the vestiges of an “Intellectual Dark Web;” a neoliberal enclave of “public intellectuals” determined to reduce the progress of pedagogy to the sterile hierarchy of pedanticism.
The term “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW) was first used by Eric Weinstein, brother of Bret Weinstein, in 2017. Bret, a former biology professor at The Evergreen State College (TESC), received national attention when he opposed the Day of Absence, a social awareness holiday created by faculty of color in the early 1970’s. The two-day event was based on a play by the same name, written by Douglas Turner Ward in 1965. According to Chloe Marina Manchester of the Cooper Point Journal (CPJ), a follow-up Day of Presence was added in 1992 to “bring the Evergreen community back together to honor unity and difference as a whole campus.”
A series of administrative developments at the college, as well as the introduction of some experimental initiatives, helped transform, or invert, the idea of the event following the 2016 election. Social unrest in Olympia, and the merger of activist groups on campus precipitated a newer, more effective, design for this unique day of advocacy.
The protests on campus were the result of an infantilizing and inconsiderate approach by Mr. Weinstein, to dismantle the objectives of student groups such as the First Peoples Multicultural Advising Services (now the First Peoples, Trans, and Queer Support Services) and their allies. This was done beneath the banner of free speech, a democratic concept that has long invoked peaceable assembly and the right to organize against injustice. However, as of late, the idea has been reconstrued to optimize the position of a vitriolic and self-serving status quo.
For the past decade, this small, yet influential faction of self-styled iconoclasts have vehemently opposed political correctness, social justice theory, and postmodernism in academia and professional settings. While the sordid platformism of IDW personalities is somewhat nascent, their rebuke of contemporary modes of thought—their distaste for the panoply of pluralism —dates back to the early 2010s, and even the mid-aughts.
For example, in 2014, Jordan B. Peterson, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, made a name for himself, while publicly opposing trans-rights legislation, and the codification of non-binary pronouns. Here is a man who refuses to honor his students’ preferred gender-identity, who rails against women’s rights in the workplace, and who defies social activism on the basis of personal hygiene. He supports enforced monogamy and thinks equity means equal outcome, which, assuredly, it does not—it is deeper than that. By and large, students and scholars repudiate Peterson’s views in due to their grandiose, esoteric simplicity. Michael Eric Dyson, a Professor of Sociology at Georgetown University, may have said it best when, in a 2018 debate with Peterson, he called the visibly seething YouTube sensation an “angry white man.”
Similarly, Sam Harris, a “New Atheist” and IDW apologist, has long opposed Islam on the basis of what he perceives to be a causal link between belief and behavior. He fails, however, to reconcile the long history of destruction, deceit, and dehumanism levied against our Muslim neighbors, pointing instead to their combative, however legitimate, disdain for Western imperial incursion. His insatiable concern is rooted in scientific jargon, yet he conveniently neglects the social science of generational trauma and the inherited psychology of the oppressed.
Understandably, race is a delicate issue for these outspoken philosophers of “deep (or anti-) equity.” They are triggered easily, and through their frailty they find common ground amongst like minds, regaling in a caveat of internet charlatanism and classic liberal cultism. Bret Weinstein, a faux progressive, has become a mouthpiece for structural conformism. He’s made a name for himself by repelling student activism through a complicated sport of holier-than-thou lecturing as well as a slew of complex paradoxes associated with identity politics. Bret’s appearance on Fox News occurred around the same time Jordan Peterson was championing binary patriarchalism and Sam Harris was scapegoating Islamic ontology. Their informal alliance could not be more expected. This outfit of reactionaries kicked off a massive uptick in conservative, white-male grievances aimed, ironically, at so-called “grievance studies,” or “oppression studies,” which now exist in a number of historically marginalized fields throughout education.
One of the mainstays embedded in IDW discourse is the question of the evolutionary relevance of religion. In 2018, Weinstein, Peterson, and Harris debated the usefulness of the conceptual belief in God. The conversation, while popular on YouTube, serves only to demarcate the loose theological divide of “act as if it were true” vs. “religion has evolutionary benefits, ad hoc.” Interestingly, Weinstein moves toward the latter view. He argues that religion has historically benefited social evolution, although it is now less necessary and more toxic than, say, biology. But what he seems to forget is that the evolutionary “right” of free speech, surreptitiously employed by those in power to demean and undermine minorities, has mustered a sort of religiosity of its own. As an example, when Weinstein was confronted by student activists imploring him to reconsider his stance on the Day of Absence, he responded with a trenchant “thou shalt not silence me” ambrosia. The resulting mayhem brought about by his appearance on Fox News invited a significant contingent of alt-right hooligans, as well as a squad of riot police, to campus on May Day. This threat of violent Western chauvinism spurred a mass exodus of students from Evergreen, disenchanted by the administration’s lack of action. It also dissuaded an unprecedented number of new students from enrolling.
Without a doubt, Bret’s affront to the Evergreen community quashed what little chance there was to cultivate a new model for campus safety, resilience, and respect. Weinstein, and the imaginative wing of the IDW, continue to deride postmodern, social justice activism in higher education, despite proclaiming that religion may have evolutionary benefits for humanity. Given the history and founding principles of Evergreen, how is this not hypocritical, and how can anyone call themselves progressive when they are unwilling to participate in, or even just observe, contemporary forms of grassroots empowerment?
One cannot claim to be an expert, without also proving their ability to be flexible. A teacher has no reason to teach if they are unwilling to learn from their students. The filter-bubble emanating from the IDW is a consequence of 20th century academia with its back against a wall. The price paid is in actual violence threatened by disturbed ideologues against truly progressive outlets for growth.
Another argument consistently alluded to by IDW proponents is the supposed coup by leftists in higher education. This strange, conspiratorial fixation fails to factor in a sound understanding of history, which, like a wave, must rise before falling. Yet some water never settles, and while the vociferous charge of “academic Marxism” makes zero sense (Marxism is based on the perpetual inquiry of power, which is exceedingly academic), to actually deny a budding form of intellectual praxis is, at bottom, a rejection of the slow, collective methodology and drive to create a bright future. The defense these antagonists like to use is that the conversation (on reparations for slavery, for example) is the right one to be having, but that somehow their negative, outside contributions to the dialogue are especially helpful, or that, in their great and unmatched wisdom, they’re somehow beyond reinforcing the desperate ideology of vertical dominion politics.
The alternative to this kind of rhetoric is clear. It is what all institutions increasingly crave; a social and scientific consciousness, undivided by the mistakes of science, unphased by the measures of multiculturalism.
There is a particular trait evoked in a kind of playful teasing that actively counters intuition. It is not deprecative, as such, but is imperfect, from the heart. It is the recognized life of inner mastery, which allows for a certain agency of repose. It is a check, a balance, a limit on self-longing. There is, decidedly, a lack of this exhibited by those who fall under the moniker of the IDW. Their lucrative, “free reach” populism, set on debasing the truest forms of free speech, and on dictating the parameters of cultural relativism, can only be countered through utmost vigilance, in media and beyond.
