Jordan Peterson and His White Heterosexual Male Students
For the pariah Jordan Peterson is often painted out to be I find him to be a rather moderate person who usually espouses fairly benign takes. To be sure Jordan Peterson is a successful researcher and psychologist and his self-help advice is likely useful for many people, but Peterson does at times stray from his more moderate positions. His recent op-ed in which he outlines his reasoning for leaving his tenured position at the prestigious University of Toronto is one of those moments.
While Jordan Peterson listed many reasons for his leaving academia (some of which were more legitimate than others) a particularly salient reason he cited was his heterosexual white male student’s inability to find a job. A situation that Peterson believes can only be explained as discrimination. As a scientist, I had hoped he might provide us with empirical data and statistics to support his point. Disappointingly he provided only anecdotal stories. Since Peterson didn’t provide any data to support his claims I went looking to see if I could find it. So let’s start first with what I found in regards to gender and race and then discuss sexual orientation.
Here is a quote from the National Center for Education Statistics regarding the racial and gender makeup of secondary education faculty in the U.S.
“Of all full-time faculty in degree-granting postsecondary institutions in fall 2018, some 40 percent were White males; 35 percent were White females; 7 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander males; 5 percent were Asian/Pacific Islander females; and 3 percent each were Black males, Black females, Hispanic males, and Hispanic females.1 Those who were American Indian/Alaska Native and those who were of Two or more races each made up 1 percent or less of full-time faculty.”
From this, we can see that white men at 40% of all faculty are the largest and most represented group in academia. White men outnumber white women, and they vastly outnumber all minorities of either gender who combined only make up a total of 25% of all academic faculty throughout the United States.
Canada does not break down their demographics by individual racial identities like the United States. Rather they lump all minorities together, but they do give us enough information to make some rough estimates. According to the Canadian government, men make up about 51% to 50% of teaching positions depending on whether we are talking about universities or colleges. Likewise, the percentage of minorities present in academia varies between universities and colleges in Canada. Between 19.4% for universities and 13.6% for colleges. If we split that 19.4% of minorities in half assuming roughly half will be male and female like the broader population within Canadian higher education we get a male minority population of 9.7%. Subtracting that from our roughly 50% of men we find White men make up around 40% of academia within Canada as well. Even this is a generous assumption is given that minority representation is much less in colleges vs universities.
But you might push back and say, while Jordan Peterson said white heterosexual men specifically not just white men, so let’s look at the numbers on sexual orientation.
Honestly, this statistic was much harder to find and I could only find a study done in Canada, but that seems fitting as Jordan Peterson is a Canadian professor. Given also that our cultures are quite similar I will ask for the liberty to assume that rates will be almost analogous in the United States.
The survey done by the Canadian government, which surveyed both faculty and graduate students (which inflates the number because students were more likely to be gay, lesbian, bi, pan, etc..) at post-secondary educational institutions found that only 8% of all respondents identified with a sexuality other than heterosexual. You spread that 8% across all gender and ethnic groups and only a very small percentage of white male faculty will not be heterosexual. But even if we assume all 8% of non-heterosexual faculty in academia are white males, heterosexual white males would still be the second-largest group in academia after white women at 32% verse 35%.
To put this into an even broader perspective white men make up only 30% of the United States population and about 36% percent of the Canadian population which means that they are actually overrepresented within academia in both Canada and the United States compared to the broader population with white men holding about 40% of academic teaching positions in both countries. Now as a scientist I’m not sure how Jordan Peterson can look at these numbers which clearly show White Heterosexual men dominating academia and cry wolf. Is this really what discrimination looks like?
Jordan Peterson then suggests that we be suspicious of whether the relatively small percentage of racial minorities who make up academia actually deserve to be there. Instead, his white heterosexual male students who can’t find a job deserve it more. But I have to ask why is it that white men are always deserving but people of color and other minorities are never deserving? I know this might be a hard pill to swallow, but if academia has a clear majority (even an over-representation) of white heterosexual men and you as a white heterosexual man can’t find a job within the institution perhaps you don’t have the merit you think you do, or maybe you just didn’t get lucky. Either way, discrimination doesn’t seem to be the right answer.
