Portland Professor Resigns, Says University Turned Into 'Social Justice Factory'

A philosophy professor at Portland State University, Peter Boghossian, resigned from his position after he said the campus became a "social justice factory" and a place that made "intellectual exploration impossible."

In an open letter to the university, he criticized the school as a place where "administrators have abdicated the university's truth-seeking mission," the Washington Examiner reported.

"I never once believed — nor do I now — that the purpose of instruction was to lead my students to a particular conclusion," Boghossian wrote in the letter to provost Susan Jeffords.

"Rather, I sought to create the conditions for rigorous thought to help them gain the tools to hunt and furrow for their own conclusions. This is why I became a teacher and why I love teaching. But brick by brick, the university has made this kind of intellectual exploration impossible," the professor wrote. "It has transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division."

Students at Portland State University were being trained to be closed-minded and not taught to think, according to Boghossian, which he said created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.

"Portland State has always been and will continue to be a welcoming home for free speech and academic freedom," the university responded in a statement. "We believe that those practices are not in conflict with our core institutional values of student success; racial justice and equity; and proactive engagement with our community." The statement added, "As with all personnel matters, we have no comment on Dr. Boghossian’s statement of resignation."

Other professors and teachers at universities and schools nationwide are rebelling against a trend in academia that emphasizes woke curriculum such as critical race theory, radical feminism, and anti-Israel ideology. In July, at least 50 CUNY professors resigned in protest from their faculty union after it passed a one-sided resolution condemning Israel for recent attacks on Palestinians and threatening to support the BDS movement to boycott and divest from the Jewish state. 

• College Prof Examines 'Ethical' Argument That Whites Should Commit Suicide
• Critics Balk at CRT Training Video at Air Force Academy