Should I Quit Academia If I Cannot Pursue Truth?

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson says there is absolutely no point in pursuing an academic career without pursuing the treasures that are part of it: the good, the beautiful, and the true. If other academics and administrators get in the way of that pursuit, the right move is to go find something else to do.

In principle, the advantage is a secure and reasonable salary, and the disadvantage is that a secure and reasonable salary is all the pay offers. A successful business person can have an immense financial return. A cap sits on that return in the academic realm, but an academic can have enough. Enough is worth taking when the security comes with a chance to mentor young people who want to develop, a great pleasure, and a chance to pursue ideas and investigate the truth. Security plus mentoring and investigating the truth is a really good deal. Without the mentoring and the investigation, the job is a stupid deal. The university is not Harvard Yard and not the Harvard Endowment. The university could disappear entirely from all of that, and maybe already has. He hopes not, because it was a great place, and maybe it could be a great place again. He would not call it a great place at the moment, although people are working hard to reverse that.

The reason to enter academia is to be an academic, pursue the truth, and say what one believes to be the case.