Great points De. I think there’s an ideal balance. We certainly don’t want academics to be keeping their ideas in a vacuum. I like when I listen to professors on Ryan Holiday’s podcasts for example.

I think the key part of your insights are the idea that pursuit of such popularity is the problem here.

It’s one thing if you naturally put out great work and thus become popular like Nikole Hannah-Jones, Michael Kraus, or Cornell West for example. It’s another thing if you seek the popularity over the contributions to scholarship.

Agreed, Peterson is much more appealing to those on the fringes of social media than the classroom.