Academics who still hold the university’s Enlightenment ideals to heart find themselves forced to make a very hard choice: stay and fight the good fight, or leave and fight from the outside. Peterson justified his choice starkly: he could no longer make a moral case to stay, because doing so would mean forcing himself, his students, and his colleagues to acquiesce to a lie. So he left. Others, like Dorian Abbot, are choosing to stay and fight. Good for him. Both choices are worthy of our praise, but we should be clear why: it is not the choice itself that is praiseworthy, but the courage that went into making it.

Three years ago, I had to make the choice myself. The academic culture where I found myself at the end of my career bore little resemblance to the culture when I began. My choice was to leave. I made it privately; it was accompanied by no furor. Since then, I have spoken to many colleagues, both retired like me and still early in their careers, who express similar feelings and forebodings as mine. Like me, they express their concerns privately, but not publicly. Their motivations run the gamut. Some just want to be left alone. Some want to stay focused on “tending their own gardens,” as Voltaire expressed it. Some want just to hang on until retirement. Some hope this is a temporary madness that soon will pass.

I have bad news for us all. The academy has changed fundamentally, and with each passing year there are fewer and fewer who can restore it.