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Common responses to the return of chillier fall weather include a sudden urge to consume pumpkin spice lattes, wear cozy knit hats, and/or head back to school.
If the crippling tuition fees at accredited educational institutes or simply not wanting to wake up early in the morning to attend class are a barrier to the last one, Canadian psychologist and frequently furious culture warrior Jordan Peterson is now offering an anti-woke “online university” offering instructional videos available on demand for the low, low price of just $499.99 per year. Including access to its social media channel and optional testing! Operators are standing by! No free steak knives are included, which may come as a disappointment to potential pupils who’ve unwisely adopted his all-beef diet.
The new eponymous Peterson Academy offers 18 slickly produced videos on topics ranging from neuroscience to nutrition from a variety of mostly male experts with the promise of three more added each month. The flagship show comes from the great man himself with an eight-hour deep dive into the mind of 19th Century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Presumably without dwelling long on the chapter where his mind melted at age 44 from the syphilis that the lifelong bachelor likely caught in a brothel. Both men have a history of opioid addiction and open bitterness that their towering intellects were under-appreciated in their lifetime so it’s not surprising Peterson found his niche with Nietzsche.
The concept of a plan was first announced nearly a year ago on his daughter Mikhaila’s podcast, where he asked: “What if we could make getting a degree 95 percent less expensive? Because that’s a pretty funny target. It’s like, we’re going to undercut you by 95 percent and offer a better quality experience along the way.”
Math 101 isn’t one of the classes currently taught at Peterson Academy but the average tuition at the University of Toronto — where he resigned from a teaching post in protest over DEI policies and repeated requests to stop being such a jerk — is roughly between five to nine thousand bucks for undergraduates. So the target of 95 percent cheaper obviously wasn’t met — although to be fair the UoT charges several times more for gullible international students. But at least they’ll come out with, you know, an actual degree at the end of it.
Not that his fellow citizens are necessarily the target audience for this for-profit answer to the free Khan Academy. The new school’s mailing address is the same as a small law firm in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where the partners all happen to be women. Wait’ll the manly manosphere hears about THAT! So far they haven’t responded to an email asking about the connection.
The business venture is clearly meant as a fuck you to his former employer, and he admits as much at the end of a promo video, saying: “I think it’s funny because I got canceled at the university so I can try to return the favor.”
Peterson isn’t named as one of the recipients of Russian rubles for undermining western democracy in a scheme recently exposed by the Department of Justice, and is too smart to convincingly play dumb about being paid ungodly sums of money via Tenet Media for cranking out cranky content like professional hatemongers Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, and fellow Canadian Lauren Southern even if he had. But then again all you need to become a patron at his new grift is a working credit card number.
“Russia, if you’re listening.”
He could probably use the extra cash too. Peterson may no longer be a tenured professor but he’s still a licensed therapist. At least for now. The 62-year-old has been a registered clinical psychologist since 1999 but hasn’t practiced in seven years and has been embroiled in a long legal battle with his profession’s governing body, the College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO), after they called for mandatory social media training due to a string of complaints about awful comments from Err Jordan, including attacking trans actor Elliot Page, declaring a plus-sized Sports Illustrated swimsuit model unfuckable, trashing a former patient on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and seeming to suggest one of his critics should commit suicide. That’s kind of a big no-no for therapists. The Supreme Court of Canada — which doesn’t currently include any known traitors, sex pests, or religious fanatics unlike a certain other Supreme Court I could name — dismissed his last shot to get out of it last month and left him on the hook for the college’s legal fees.
And now he’s facing several new complaints to the CPO over a tweet he made more than a year ago about Vice President Kamala Harris, which he broke the news about in a recent column in the rightwing rag the National Post:
Have you ever listened to Harris? If not, I would recommend doing so, painful as it might be, just so you know. For reasons unknown, she talks down to her audiences in a manner that anyone over four with any sense and anyone under with any self-respect would find, to say the least, grating — not to mention demeaning, presumptuous, disrespectful, haughty, and Machiavellian.
Here is the damning tweet in question:
Said he:
Apparently, I can’t say “retarded” and do not even know what to say otherwise any more when talking about children who are slow to learn, which is of course what “retarded” means, because the language police have made everything all eggshells in such situations and purposefully so. I knew perfectly well when I wrote that tweet that I would rub up the wrong way against exactly the sort of people who would threaten my livelihood and the equally power-mad invisible cowardly bureaucrats who enable them — as the members of the college have, yet again.
No, Dr. Peterson, you actually can’t casually throw around the R-word anymore for slow learners and it’s even worse when a supposed joke involves kids. “Children with learning disabilities” is sitting right there! This shouldn’t be late news. (Sorry not sorry to my bilingues homies.) You can’t use the ugly shorthand “tard” anymore either as a noun or suffix with the notable exception of bastard.
If anyone knows this lesson first-hand, it’s this here mommyblog, which nearly got cancel cultured to death back in the ye olde Before Rebecca Even Bought Wonkette Times after a writer named Jack Stuef made the mistake of using the word in a post about Bristol Sarah Palin’s baby son Trig, who has Down syndrome. (The kid is 16 and on Instagram now, they grow up so fast!) It was a ginormous shit storm at the time, and major advertisers departed in understandable droves for not wanting to be associated with an outlet that punched down on a mentally disabled toddler. I’m guessing nobody even thought to try Elon Musk’s bold strategy of telling them to go fuck themselves when he found himself in a similar situation.
There was also some chef’s kiss comedic timing to Peterson’s post as it was published only hours before Harris took the stage for the first — and likely last because yellow is the new orange — presidential debate, where the “devouring mother” whose speaking style he finds so off-putting made a meal out of her cognitively challenged opponent in front of the entire world.
So far Peterson has yet to tweet his verdict on her performance but no doubt thinks someone with a schlong would’ve done a better job.
[National Post / CBC]
