Jordan Peterson

Jordan Peterson is a highly experienced professor of psychology as well as being a clinical psychologist, having spent more than 20 years as a clinical and teaching phycologist. At the time of writing (5/2019) he is a lecturer at the University of Toronto, Canada.

Peterson specialises in Psychopharmacology, Abnormal Psychology, Neurology, Social Performance, Industrial and Organisational Psychology, as well as Religious Psychology and Creativity along with, more relevantly to his current work, the psychology of Ideology, Personality and Politics.

Peterson's work has been cited in academic papers more than 8,000 times and he has written or been co-author on more than a hundred academic papers and is highly regarded in his field.

Peterson came to prominence in the media over his supposed "refusal" to use gender neutral pronouns. This was something of an inaccurate description and reporting on his stance was particularly poorly covered in general. He did not in fact refuse to use gender neutral pronouns as was widely reported but instead was protesting the fact that with bill C-16, the Canadian government was in fact compelling speech.

This first came to the attention of the media after 27/9/2016 when Peterson released the first in a series of video lectures entitled "Professor against political correctness: Part I: Fear and the Law". In that lecture, he stated that he refused to use gender neutral pronouns on the grounds that his speech was being compelled by law, something that had never before been done in any western government, nor in the entire history of English Common Law and was furthermore something that he was vehemently opposed to. Bill C-16, which proposed to add "gender identity or expression" to the list of prohibited discrimination under the Canadian Human Rights Act, and to similarly expand the definitions of promoting genocide and publicly inciting hatred in the Criminal Code. Bill C-16 did subsequently pass and is now law in Canada, although Professor Peterson has not (yet) been prosecuted for his views but his objections have not gone unpunished. For example In April 2017, Peterson was denied a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) grant for the first time in his career, a development which he interpreted as retaliation for his statements regarding Bill C-16.

As of the date of writing, Peterson has published 2 books. The first, "Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief " in 1999 and his latest book "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos" in 2018. On the back of "12 Rules for Life", he has conducted speaking tours of the US, UK, and Australia, as well as several other western nations, usually to sold out audiences.

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Bill C-16