Jordan Bernt Peterson was born on 12 June 1962 and is a Canadian psychologist, author, and media commentator.
70 Facts About Jordan Peterson
2.
Jordan Peterson began to receive widespread attention in the late 2010s for his views on cultural and political issues, often described as conservative.
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In 2016, Jordan Peterson released a series of YouTube videos criticizing the Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, passed by the Parliament of Canada to introduce "gender identity and expression" as prohibited grounds for discrimination.
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Jordan Peterson claimed that the bill would make the use of certain gender pronouns, "compelled speech", and related this argument to a general critique of political correctness and identity politics.
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Jordan Peterson received significant media coverage, attracting both support and criticism.
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In 2022, Jordan Peterson signed a content distribution deal with the conservative media company The Daily Wire and became Chancellor of Ralston College.
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Jordan Peterson was born on 12 June 1962, in Edmonton, Alberta, and grew up in Fairview, a small town in the northwest of the province.
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Jordan Peterson was the eldest of three children born to Walter and Beverley Peterson.
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In junior high school, Jordan Peterson became friends with Rachel Notley and her family.
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Jordan Peterson was a member of the New Democratic Party from ages 13 to 18.
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Jordan Peterson later transferred to the University of Alberta, where he completed his BA in political science in 1982.
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Jordan Peterson then returned to the University of Alberta and received a BA in psychology in 1984.
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From July 1993 to June 1998, Jordan Peterson lived in Arlington, Massachusetts, while teaching and conducting research at Harvard University, where he was hired as an assistant professor in the psychology department, later becoming an associate professor.
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Jordan Peterson has authored or co-authored more than a hundred academic papers and was cited almost 8,000 times as of mid-2017 and more than 18,000 times as of 2022.
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For most of his career, Jordan Peterson maintained a clinical practice, seeing about 20 people a week.
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Jordan Peterson has been active on social media, and in September 2016 he released a series of videos in which he criticized Bill C-16.
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In February 2018, Jordan Peterson entered into a promise with the College of Psychologists of Ontario after a professional misconduct complaint about his communication and the boundaries he sets with his patients.
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The college did not consider a full disciplinary hearing necessary and accepted Jordan Peterson entering into a three-month undertaking to work on prioritizing his practice and improving his patient communications.
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Jordan Peterson had no prior disciplinary punishments or restrictions on his clinical practice.
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In 2023, the college ordered Jordan Peterson to undergo social media communication coaching, following concerns about his public comments.
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In 1999, Routledge published Maps of Meaning: The Architecture of Belief, in which Jordan Peterson describes a comprehensive theory about how people construct meaning, form beliefs, and make narratives.
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In 2004, a 13-part TV miniseries based on Jordan Peterson's book aired on TVOntario.
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In 2013, Peterson registered a YouTube channel named JordanPetersonVideos, and immediately began uploading recordings of lectures and interviews.
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In March 2016, after three years of basic uploading of course videos, Jordan Peterson announced an interest to clean existing content and improve future content, including a new experiment in crowdfunding through Patreon.
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Jordan Peterson hired a production team to film his 2017 psychology lectures at the University of Toronto.
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Regular donations for the YouTube channel were interrupted in January 2019, when Jordan Peterson deleted his Patreon account in public protest of the platform's controversial banning of another content creator, Carl Benjamin.
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Jordan Peterson has appeared on many podcasts, conversational series, as well as other online shows.
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Jordan Peterson defended engineer James Damore after he was fired from Google for writing Google's Ideological Echo Chamber.
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Several climate scientists criticized Jordan Peterson, saying that he misunderstood climate modelling.
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Jordan Peterson said he was notified that he would be required to delete the tweet in order to restore access to his account, which he said he "would rather die than do".
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Also in June 2022, Jordan Peterson signed a deal with the news company The Daily Wire, which includes the distribution rights to Jordan Peterson's video and podcast library.
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Jordan Peterson will produce bonus content and specials featuring guests for the video on demand platform DailyWire+.
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In March 2023, Jordan Peterson shared on social media a fictitious detransition story which falsely depicted a YouTube political commentator as an ex-transgender man.
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In May 2017, Jordan Peterson began The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories, a series of live theatre lectures, published as podcasts, in which he analyzes archetypal narratives in the Book of Genesis as patterns of behaviour ostensibly vital for personal, social and cultural stability.
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Jordan Peterson had previously said the fellowship would give him an "opportunity to talk to religious experts of all types for a couple of months," and that the new lectures would have been on the Book of Exodus.
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Jordan Peterson has characterized himself politically as a "classic British liberal" and a "traditionalist".
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Jordan Peterson has stated that he is commonly mistaken as right-wing.
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The New York Times described Jordan Peterson as "conservative-leaning", and The Washington Post described him as an "aspiring conservative thought leader".
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Nathan J Robinson of the left-wing magazine Current Affairs writes that Peterson has been seen.
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Jordan Peterson suggests that universities are largely responsible for a wave of political correctness that has appeared in North America and Europe, saying that he had watched the rise of political correctness on campuses since the early 1990s.
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Jordan Peterson believes the humanities have become corrupt and less reliant on science, in particular sociology.
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On Marxism, postmodernism and feminism, Burston faults Jordan Peterson's thought as oversimplified.
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Jordan Peterson has argued that "disciplines like women's studies should be defunded", advising freshman students to avoid subjects such as sociology, anthropology, English literature, ethnic studies, and racial studies, as well as other fields of study that he believes are corrupted by "post-modern neo-Marxists".
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Jordan Peterson believes these fields propagate cult-like behaviour and safe-spaces, under the pretense of academic inquiry.
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Jordan Peterson had proposed a website using artificial intelligence to identify ideologization in specific courses, but postponed the project in November 2017 as "it might add excessively to current polarization".
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Jordan Peterson has repeatedly stated his opposition to identity politics, stating that it is practiced on both sides of the political divide: "[t]he left plays them on behalf of the oppressed, let's say, and the right tends to play them on behalf of nationalism and ethnic pride".
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Jordan Peterson considers both equally dangerous, saying that what should be emphasized, instead, is individual focus and personal responsibility.
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Jordan Peterson has been prominent in the debate about cultural appropriation, stating that the concept promotes self-censorship in society and journalism.
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Jordan Peterson has used the terms "Cultural Marxism" and "postmodernism" interchangeably to describe the influence of postmodernism on North American humanities departments and he views postmodern philosophy as an offshoot or expression of neo-Marxism.
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The video led to threats and harassment of Newman, and Jordan Peterson called for his supporters to be more civil.
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Jordan Peterson believes that order is masculine and chaos is feminine, and that these qualities are inherent to human existence.
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On 27 September 2016, Jordan Peterson released the first installment of a three-part lecture video series, entitled "Professor against political correctness: Part I: Fear and the Law".
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Jordan Peterson stated that his objection to the bill was based on potential free-speech implications if the Criminal Code were amended, saying he could then be prosecuted under provincial human-rights laws if he refused to call a transgender student or faculty member by the individual's preferred pronoun.
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The series of videos drew criticism from transgender activists, faculty, and labour unions; critics accused Jordan Peterson of "helping to foster a climate for hate to thrive" and of "fundamentally mischaracterising" the law.
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Jordan Peterson speculated that these warning letters were leading up to formal disciplinary action against him, but in December the university assured him he would retain his professorship, and in January 2017 he returned to teach his psychology class at the University of Toronto.
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In February 2017, Maxime Bernier, candidate for leader of the Conservative Party of Canada, stated that he had shifted his position on Bill C-16, from support to opposition, after meeting with Jordan Peterson and discussing it.
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In June 2018, Jordan Peterson filed a $1.5-million lawsuit against Wilfrid Laurier University, arguing that three staff members of the university had maliciously defamed him by making negative comments about him behind closed doors.
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Climate scientists accused Jordan Peterson of being "stunningly ignorant" and of confusing weather forecasting with climate modeling.
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Jordan Peterson defended "automotive freedom" and claimed that excess carbon dioxide is beneficial to the world.
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Lott said that Jordan Peterson has respect for Taoism, as it views nature as a struggle between order and chaos and posits life would be meaningless without this duality.
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Jordan Peterson has expressed his admiration for some of the teachings of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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Jordan Peterson's audience is huge and ever more diverse, but a significant number of his fans are white men.
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In 2016, Jordan Peterson became an honorary member of the extended family of Charles Joseph, a Kwakwaka'wakw artist, and was given the name Alestalagie.
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Jordan Peterson married Tammy Roberts in 1989, with whom he has a daughter and a son.
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In 2016, Jordan Peterson restricted his diet to only meat and a few vegetables in an attempt to control his depression and the effects of an autoimmune disorder.
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In late 2019 Jordan Peterson sought "emergency" detox from benzodiazepine addiction.
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Jordan Peterson stated this rehab was the result of his prescribed dosage of clonazepam being increased after his wife Tammy was diagnosed with kidney cancer.
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In January 2020, Jordan Peterson was unable to find North American doctors willing to accommodate his treatment desires and so flew to Moscow, Russia along with his daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter to pursue treatment there.
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Two months later, Jordan Peterson informed viewers of his YouTube channel he had returned to Canada and aimed to resume work in the near future.