"[About what to do to counter hypocrisy in academia:] The first order of business, if a stream is being polluted, you have to stop the pollution at the source. The wrong way to think about it is Lets clean up the stream. The right way to think about it is Lets stop polluting the stream. You have to stop donating to your alma mater. First order of business. [...] This should be the easiest ask on planet Earth. [...] Give it to anybody, but dont give it to university. Because when you give it to your university, youre supporting an indoctrination mill, youre supporting an institution whose very values are antithetical to Western liberal democracy, so you have to stop."
Peter Gregory Boghossian is an American philosopher and college professor. He was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University for ten years, and his areas of academic focus include atheism, critical thinking, pedagogy, scientific skepticism, and the Socratic method. He is the author of A Manual for Creating Atheists, and of How to Have Impossible Conversations: A Very Practic
"When your conversation partner is getting angry, the single best thing you can do in most circumstances is to stop whatever else youre doing and listen. Its very difficult to remain angry with someone who is patiently and earnestly listening, and if you break the cycle of frustrating dialogue early by switching to listening and learning, you can halt a great deal of your partners mounting anger before it starts."
"The thrust of our message must be that there are things we dont know and its okay not to know— even in death. Not claiming to know something you dont know isnt a character flaw, it is a virtue."
"Inquiry and wonder must replace dogmatism and certainty. The long-term goal is to create conditions that turn the dispositions of inquiring and wondering into culturally trumpeted values."
"To argue that people need faith is to abandon hope, and to condescend and accuse the faithful of being incapable of understanding the importance of reason and rationality. There are better and worse ways to come to terms with death, to find strength during times of crisis, to make meaning and purpose in our lives, to interpret our sense of awe and wonder, and to contribute to human well-being— and the faithful are completely capable of understanding and achieving this."
"What it means to hold a belief based on evidence is, by definition, that one is open to the possibility that evidence might be discovered that would change ones mind. If no evidence would change ones mind, then one is not forming ones beliefs on the basis of evidence."
"Dont complain, apologize, or mumble in the defense of reason. [...] Tell people exactly what you think and why you think it."