My Resignation Letter

My University Sacrificed Ideas for Ideology. So Today I Quit. The more I spoke out against the illiberalism that has swallowed Portland State University, the more retaliation I faced.

The letter was originally published on Bari Weiss’ Substack on September 8, 2021

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Peter Boghossian

Philosopher

Dr. Peter Boghossian's main focus is bringing the tools of professional philosophers to people in a wide variety of contexts. Peter has a teaching pedigree spanning more than 25 years and 30 thousand students - in prisons, hospitals, public and private schools, seminaries, universities, Fortune 100 companies, and small businesses. His fundamental objective is to teach people how to think through what often seem to be intractable problems.

Peter's primary research areas are critical thinking and moral reasoning. His doctoral research studies, funded by the State of Oregon and supported by the Oregon Department of Corrections, consisted of using the Socratic method to help prison inmates to increase their critical thinking and moral reasoning abilities and to increase their desistance to criminal behavior.

Author

Peter's publications can be found in The New York Times, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Areo, The American Mind, The Clearing House, Corrections Today, CounterPunch, Education Policy Analysis, Educational Philosophy and Theory, Essays in Philosophy, Federal Probation Journal, Free Inquiry, Informal Logic, Inside Higher Ed, Journal of Correctional Education, Journal of Philosophy of Education, The Los Angeles Times, Motherboard, Quillette, New Discourses, National Review, New Statesman, Offender Programs Report, The Philosophers’ Magazine, Philosophy's Future, The Radical Academy, Radical Pedagogy, Scientific American, Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, The Spectator, Teaching Philosophy, Truthout, and USA Today.

speaker

Media and Events

“Peter is not only an engaging and entertaining speaker. He delivers genuinely practical tools that help people think more clearly and communicate more effectively. Our attendees loved his presentation and Q&A and swarmed him afterward with additional questions. This is what we wanted. And Peter delivered it in spades.” Craig Biddle, TOS-Con 2022

For more information, please download Peter’s Speaker Media KitContact Jamie Black at [email protected] to book an event.

EVENTS

May 2, 2024

Life Changing Secrets of Mastering Difficult Conversations

5:30 - 9:00pm PT

San Francisco, CA

June 27, 2022

Douglas Murray and Peter Boghossian - Full conversation on Woke ideology

June 26, 2022

Douglas Murray and Peter Boghossian - Pushing back against Woke ideology

March 26, 2020

The Way Forward | Peter Boghossian

September 18, 2019

How to Disagree Better | NYT Opinion

February 21, 2019

A Massive Hoax Exposes Social Justice in Academia

February 16, 2019

James Damore at Portland State

October 30, 2018

Joe Rogan - Exposing Social Justice with Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay

June 5, 2015

Richard Dawkins and Peter Boghossian at Portland'5 Centers for the Arts

Articles

author

Books

In our current political climate, it seems impossible to have a reasonable conversation with anyone who has a different opinion. Whether you’re online, in a classroom, an office, a town hall — or just hoping to get through a family dinner with a stubborn relative — dialogue shuts down when perspectives clash. Heated debates often lead to insults and shaming, blocking any possibility of productive discourse. Everyone seems to be on a hair trigger.

In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay guide you through the straightforward, practical, conversational techniques necessary for every successful conversation — whether the issue is climate change, religious faith, gender identity, race, poverty, immigration, or gun control. Boghossian and Lindsay teach the subtle art of instilling doubts and opening minds. They cover everything from learning the fundamentals for good conversations to achieving expert-level techniques to deal with hardliners and extremists. This book is the manual everyone needs to foster a climate of civility, connection, and empathy.

Buy a digital or paper copy on Amazon / in: Mandarin, Polish, German, Romanian, Korean, Czech, Russian and Japanese.

For thousands of years, the faithful have honed proselytizing strategies and talked people into believing the truth of one holy book or another. Indeed, the faithful often view converting others as an obligation of their faith–and are trained from an early age to spread their unique brand of religion. The result is a world broken in large part by unquestioned faith.

As an urgently needed counter to this tried-and-true tradition of religious evangelism, A Manual for Creating Atheists offers the first-ever guide not for talking people into faith–but for talking them out of it. Peter Boghossian draws on the tools he has developed and used for more than twenty years as a philosopher and educator to teach how to engage the faithful in conversations that will help them value reason and rationality, cast doubt on their religious beliefs, mistrust their faith, abandon superstition and irrationality, and ultimately embrace reason.

Buy a digital or paper copy on Amazon / Available in: Polish, Korean, Greek, Persian, and Russian.
TAKING ACTION

Projects

All Things Re-Considered

This five-episode series is a fresh take on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” It analyzes the bias and absurdity of many NPR stories, shares testimonials from former NPR listeners and employees, and offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into the inner workings of NPR. You can even buy All Things Reconsidered merchandise at cost! 

I started National Progress Alliance (NPA),  a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, in 2021. Our mission is to promote free expression and civil discourse through grants, partnerships, and raising public awareness. We’re executing a blueprint to push back illiberalism. The blueprint has a two-fold aim: first, to restore free speech and open inquiry as non-partisan values; and second, to reveal the implications of a far-left ideological takeover. 

Subscribe to my Youtube Channel to receive notifications of our latest productions Conversations with Peter Boghossian and Spectrum Street Epistemology.

Some of our other productions include:

Stop Donating to Your Alma MaterReverse Q&A Hungary & Romania, Reverse Q&A University TourWoke in Plain English, Why Colleges are Becoming Cults with Dr. Lyell Asher, A Deep Dive into Decolonization with Dr. Bruce Gilley, Reporting on Antifa with Nancy Rommelmann, Peter reads Ibram X. Kendi’s Antiracist Baby and Waking up to Woke with Jodi Shaw.

All videos are also on Rumble and Odysee. If you prefer audio only, “Conversations with Peter Boghossian” series is on Apple, Spotify, Amazon  and many other platforms.

If you would like to support our work, please visit our donations page or you can pay via Paypal.

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