The Toronto Star reports that a certain controversial U of T professor is making nearly $50,000 a month through crowdfunding:
Prof. Jordan Peterson, who made headlines last fall when he publicly refused to use gender neutral pronouns, has been using the fundraising platform Patreon since last March to subsidize costs associated with filming and uploading videos of his lectures to YouTube.
He is now harnessing his online clout with eyes on a new goal — to offer an online university degree in the humanities for which students pay only for examinations.
“I’m fighting this as a battle of ideas,” Peterson told the Star. “Hopefully I can bring high-quality education to millions of people — for nothing. Wouldn’t that be cool.”
Peterson said he views university establishments as “the next best thing to a cult” due to their focus on what he calls “postmodern” themes such as equity. He says his independent project will contrast the university model by providing straight humanities education.
For about his first seven months on Patreon, Peterson earned about $1,000 per month. That changed last October, when he saw a dramatic increase in support, which has not slowed. The professor surpassed a fundraising goal of $45,000 on June 10, and is now aiming for $100,000 per month. On Monday, Peterson was making $49,460 every month from 4,432 patrons.
He is currently the 32nd highest-earning Patreon creator, of more than 75,000 people who are using the site to fundraise.
“Obviously people are pretty happy with the approach that I’ve been taking to psychological matters and, I suppose, to some degree, political matters online,” Peterson said.
He does have quite a few YouTube videos now. Here’s his message to Millennials on how to change the world — properly: