Jordan Peterson

By AI Staff

Jordan Peterson is a Canadian clinical psychologist. He is Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Peterson became a household name in Canada, the United States, and indeed around the world for his invocation of free speech rights regarding the use of preferred pronouns by students at the University of Toronto. He received his bachelor’s degrees in Political Science and Psychology from the University of Alberta, and his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from McGill University.

Since 2016, when Peterson began broadcasting on YouTube his principled opposition to Canada’s Bill C-16, “An Act to amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code,” Peterson has risen from an academic professor doing research and teaching clinical psychology to a media sensation. He lectures and gives talks regularly on topics such as abnormal, social and personality psychology and has attracted a large following online (numbering in the millions) for his content on personal growth, taking responsibility, as well as the significance of traditional belief systems for psychological health and growth. His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, which came out in 2018, was a best-seller. Peterson is also known for his critical stance toward political correctness, which he views as potentially corrosive to open dialogue and healthy society.

Peterson was also a post-doctoral researcher at McGill University and an associate professor of psychology at Harvard University, where he performed research on rises in aggression from drug and alcohol abuse. His intellectual interests range widely; he is also interested in the rise of totalitarian governments and has studied the Cold War period in the West as well as the totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. He counts among his major influences the pioneering psychologist Carl Jung.

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