58 Britain The Economist December 4th 2021
Jordan Peterson and the lobster
T
o understand theculture wars, it is worth considering what
happened between Jordan Peterson and a large red lobster in
Cambridge University on a recent evening. Namely, nothing.
Which doesn’t mean it wasn’t important. On the contrary: how it
came to pass that nothing was allowed to happen between Mr Pe
terson and a student dressed as a lobster matters a lot.
First, the lobster. For those (nonlobsters) who have been living
under a rock for the past five years, a primer. Mr Peterson is a Cana
dian academic who, depending on your viewpoint, is either mon
strous or magnificent, but who is, all agree, a phenomenon. His
book, “12 Rules for Life”, has sold over 5m copies and is an intrigu
ing read. It passes briskly from the biology of lobsters to Eden,
original sin, Buddhism and the suffering soul. It is peppered with
admonitions to “stand up straight with your shoulders back” and
“tell the truth”. The effect is as if St Augustine had been reincarnat
ed as a life coach, with added input from your mum.
For those who like this sort of stuff (mainly young men), it is
wonderful: bracing; inspiring; manly. For critics (of whom there
are many) Mr Peterson is propping up the patriarchy with cod biol
ogy about lobsters. (At one point he uses lobster hierarchies to ex
plain why men should walk tall.) While the sides bickered, Mr Pe
terson became a sensation. He speaks in arenas, appears on talk
shows and news programmes and almost always manages to an
noy. His interviews (one in 2018 with Cathy Newman, a news an
chor for Channel 4, was particularly excruciating) are tense, taut
and watched by millions.
In 2018 Mr Peterson happened to sit opposite Douglas Hedley, a
Cambridge professor of the philosophy of religion, at dinner. Mr
Hedley invited him to take up a visiting fellowship. It seems likely
that neither quite knew what they were getting themselves into:
the invitation was prompted not by lobsters or talk shows but a
shared interest in Jung and Biblical symbolism. What happened
next was a textbook cancellation.
Not many complaints are needed to constitute the quorum of a
controversy today. Earlier this year a podcaster criticised “Brian
Wong, Who was Never, Ever Wrong”, a story by David Walliams, a
comedian turned children’s author, for reinforcing “harmful ste
reotypes” about Chinese people. His publisher, HarperCollins,said it would remove the story from reprints. Mr Walliams’s series
has sold 2m copies, and that book had 6,691 reviews on Amazon,
almost all fivestar. Yet a single complaint ended in censorship.
In Cambridge, problems began when some students com
plained about Mr Peterson. The faculty reneged on the invitation
in an inept Twitter announcement before Mr Peterson had even
been told. The pretext was that he had been photographed next to
someone wearing atshirt reading “I’m a proud Islamophobe”.
When asked to clarify, the divinity faculty remained silent; a press
officer for the university explained that they “don’t wish to be in
terviewed about events that happened nearly three years ago”. The
department is home to students of Thomas Aquinas, original sin
and early Judaism. Perhaps three years ago was just too fresh.
Little of this is surprising. British universities are, as is clear
from the treatment of Kathleen Stock, hardly distinguishing
themselves as bastions of free speech. Ms Stock recently resigned
from a professorship in philosophy at Sussex University after a
years’long campaign of harassment by students and faculty. But
in Cambridge there are signs of a pushback. In 2020 a group of aca
demics led by Arif Ahmed, a philosophy professor, rejected an
amendment to university regulations that would have restricted
their free speech. They forced the university to accept that aca
demics should not have to “respect” everyone’s views, but merely
“tolerate” them. More recently they kicked an attempt to set up an
anonymous onlinereporting tool into the long grass.
Then a handful of academics—including Mr Ahmed and James
Orr, a divinity lecturer—turned their attention to Mr Peterson. Not
because they are diehard fans (they aren’t) but because, as Mr Ah
med says, there had been “a grotesque violation of academic free
dom” and a “stain on our reputation”. Bureaucratic cogs started to
turn. Committees were dealt with, halls booked, security organ
ised and invitations issued. The vote to ensure “tolerance” helped:
now critics had to put up with Mr Peterson. Nonetheless, says Mr
Orr, it took “an awful lot” of time.
The bloody history of the 20th century can lead to a misappre
hension about free speech. It is thought to be lost suddenly, to
stormtroopers in the night. In fact, freedoms are almost always
first removed bureaucratically, with processes made steadily more
onerous, whisper campaigns started by colleagues, a word in the
boss’s ear. Bertrand Russell—another academic kicked out of
Cambridge, in his case for pacifism—wrote that the habit of consi
dering morality and political opinion before offering a person a
post “is the modern form of persecution, and it is likely to become
quite as efficient as the Inquisition ever was”.A timid and tremulous sound
The academics persisted. The cogs turned. And on a cold, clear
Tuesday evening, a talk took place. There were trestle tables and
people ticking off names. Mr Peterson, slender and brittle as a
blade in a sharp blue suit, spoke for over an hour to a satisfied au
dience. The lobster appeared, shouted something about feminism
and scuttled through a side door. No one expired from offence.
The sky did not fall in. Votes of thanks followed. Mr Peterson was
thanked. The audience was thanked. The lobster was thanked.
It was all quite humdrum—and that was the point. When peo
ple think of defending freedom of speech, they also turn to the
dramatic: to Voltaire and defending to the death. But that is rarely
necessary. Speech can be silenced by bureaucracy—or savedbyit:
by cogs turning; by trestle tables and people with lists; byinsisting
on clearly stated rights. And by votes of thanks to lobsters.nBagehot
Anatomy of a cancellation