Some Penguin Random House Staff Members Cried After News That the Publisher Will Publish a New Jordan Peterson book

Penguin Random House Canada will publish, in March 2021, Dr. Jordan Peterson's new book Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life.

From the blurb:

The sequel to 12 Rules for Life offers further guidance on the perilous path of modern life.  

In 12 Rules for Life, clinical psychologist and celebrated professor at Harvard and the University of Toronto Dr. Jordan B. Peterson helped millions of readers impose order on the chaos of their lives. Now, in this bold sequel, Peterson delivers twelve more lifesaving principles for resisting the exhausting toll that our desire to order the world inevitably takes.
 
In a time when the human will increasingly imposes itself over every sphere of life—from our social structures to our emotional states—Peterson warns that too much security is dangerous. What’s more, he offers strategies for overcoming the cultural, scientific, and psychological forces causing us to tend toward tyranny, and teaches us how to rely instead on our instinct to find meaning and purpose, even—and especially—when we find ourselves powerless.
 
While chaos, in excess, threatens us with instability and anxiety, unchecked order can petrify us into submission. Beyond Order provides a call to balance these two fundamental principles of reality itself, and guides us along the straight and narrow path that divides them.

Reportedly, several employees at the publisher became "emotionally overwhelmed" at the prospect of the company releasing it.

"Several employees cried at the meeting discussing how Peterson's views have negatively impacted their lives,"  according to VICE's Manisha Krishnan, who first reported the story. “He is an icon of hate speech and transphobia and the fact that he’s an icon of white supremacy, regardless of the content of his book, I’m not proud to work for a company that publishes him,” a junior employee who is a member of the LGBTQ community and who attended the town hall told Krishan.

The employees gathered for what was described as an "emotional town hall" on Monday, during which staff members were allegedly “crying in the meeting about how Jordan Peterson has affected their lives."

Penguin Random House Canada said it was open to hearing the opinions of its staff but, heroically, appears steadfast in its goal of publishing the book.

“We announced yesterday that we will publish Jordan Peterson’s new book Beyond Order this coming March," the statement read. "Immediately following the announcement, we held a forum and provided a space for our employees to express their views and offer feedback. Our employees have started an anonymous feedback channel, which we fully support. We are open to hearing our employees’ feedback and answering all of their questions. We remain committed to publishing a range of voices and viewpoints."

But bottom line, it appears that some employees of a BOOK PUBLISHER want to cancel the publication of the book. No doubt they will continue the pressure against a book whose views are not white supremacist, transphobic or filled with hate speech but just different than their views and more in line with the traditions of individualism and Western civilization.

Let us hope Penguin stays tough.

Peterson's book will be published by Portfolio in the United States and Portfolio Press in the United Kingdom, both subsidiaries of the Penguin Random House company.

You can pre-order the book here.

-RW