A professor’s resignation highlights pressures within academia to conform

PETER BOGHOSSIAN, an untenured assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University (PSU), was one of the most vocal critics of post-modern ideology in the academy, until he resigned from his university on September 8th. In 2018 he and two authors tried to publish 20 fake papers, in order to expose what they saw as a willingness to publish anything that used the right jargon. Seven were published, including one on “queer performativity” in urban dog parks, and one calling astronomy imperialist and suggesting physics departments study interpretative dance.