A Response to Jordan Peterson

The distinguished psychologist is wrong about the politics of the university.

The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is perhaps the most famous academic dissident in the world, having made his reputation opposing the ideological corruption of the universities. And yet, when considering practical reforms, he is stricken with doubt.

In a recent episode of his podcast, Peterson hailed me as a “very effective counter-propagandist” against academic corruption and, in particular, for my successful campaign to oust Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay. But alongside this praise, Peterson expressed concern, even opposition, to my work as a trustee at New College of Florida, where I have helped abolish DEI, terminate the gender-studies program, and establish a new classical liberal arts curriculum.

“The DeSantis administration, along with Rufo, are making moves to implement a certain degree of political control over the content of at least one university in Florida. And that would mean that there would be one new conservative university compared to 99 percent of the radical leftist universities,” Peterson said. “And the danger is that the political starts to explicitly permeate the educational. And you could say the leftists walked right into that because of their insistence that the ideological permeates the educational. But it still doesn’t look to me like that excuses the potential for an equivalent error on the more conservative side.”

I will respond to these objections in three parts.

First, Peterson implies that “political control” over universities is illegitimate. It is not. New College of Florida is a public university, and public universities are the creation of the state—that is, they belong to and should reflect the values of the public. In Florida, voters elect their representatives, who, in turn, charter, fund, and govern the public universities. The takeover of New College was, in this manner, an expression of the democratic will, moving the public university in line with the wishes of the public.

It was always this way. When Thomas Jefferson wrote the charter for the University of Virginia, one of the first public universities in the United States, he explicitly stated that the university should promote the virtues of the broader society and that the ultimate authority rested with the legislature. The university’s leadership, he insisted, “should at all times conform to such laws as the legislature may from time to time think proper to enact for their government, and the said University should, in all things, and at all times be subject to the controul of the legislature.”

As Jefferson might remind Peterson, the alternative to “political control” of the universities is not enlightened self-government but bureaucratic rule. The laissez-faire attitude of legislators, who, in recent decades, ceded control of the public universities to unelected administrators and faculty departments, created the precise problem we are now trying to resolve. It is not a betrayal of classical liberal values to insist that political leaders, rather than permanent bureaucrats, govern public institutions—it is, rather, a restoration of those values.

Second, Peterson is concerned that creating a “new conservative university,” as he characterizes New College of Florida, could represent “an equivalent error on the more conservative side” to that made by “radical leftist universities.” No: The equivalent error would be to propose that conservatives rule all of the universities, systemically exclude progressives from faculty positions, and use academia as a vehicle for political activism. We have done nothing of the sort. We have, instead, created a balanced faculty, fostered debate, and revived classical liberal principles at the state’s smallest university—not an equivalence in degree or in kind.

I would interrogate Peterson’s position a step further. Does he believe that the status quo of left-wing domination is somehow more legitimate than our reforms? Does he think that Florida voters, who elected Governor DeSantis in a landslide and whose taxes bankroll public universities, should be denied a public education system that represents their values? Why should they be compelled to subsidize DEI and gender studies rather than the classical liberal arts?

Third, Peterson warns that the ideological should not permeate the educational. On this, I would agree, but with a twist: America’s public universities are too ideological, but insufficiently political. In other words, we should absolutely reject the status quo of activist pseudo-scholarship and cheap left-wing partisanship, but we should remember—and embrace—the fact that public universities are inherently political institutions, with a duty to promote citizenship, cultivate virtue, and pursue the public good. It is not by accident that Aristotle’s theory of education appears in the final book of the Politics.

Jefferson concurred. The imperative of the public university, he insisted, is to educate the young, and, in particular, the leadership class, into the political regime. He envisioned America’s universities as a place “[t]o form the statesmen, legislators, and judges on whom public prosperity and individual happiness are so much to depend.” And he saw clearly that this would require strong leadership, able to maintain the republican character and transmit political knowledge from one generation to the next.

This brings me to my final point: prudence. Peterson is intimately familiar with the crisis of the academy. Yet, he hesitates to embrace even the most modest reform. He apparently prefers the posture of the critic and, as a result and perhaps inadvertently, defends the status quo. This is regrettable. The prudent line of action, consistent with the principles of classical liberalism—not to be mistaken for non-interventionism—is to support reforms that restore public trust, rebalance the faculty, and reorient the universities toward truth, rather than power.

The universities are in a grave state of disrepair. The time for action is now. Anything less is an abdication.

This article was originally published in City Journal.