There’s one subject Jordan Peterson likes to talk about more than Disney movies and Jungian archetypes and that’s the supposed assault on Western civilization being waged by “postmodern neo-Marxists” in academia.

In a PragerU video titled “Dangerous people are teaching your kids,” he warns parents that they are funding their children’s indoctrination at the hands of radical professors intent on destroying the intellectual foundations of Western civilization.

Instead of pointing to any particular professors or institutions, Peterson directs his critique at a faceless “gang of nihilists” made up of villains like the “language police,” henchmen to the nefarious “Dean of Diversity.”

Peterson claims “it’s now possible to complete an English degree and never encounter Shakespeare, one of those dead white males whose works underly our society of oppression.”

The factual basis of this is relatively easy to challenge. One need look no further than the English curriculum of UC Berkeley, a college often cited as a prime example of the kind of political correctness run amok that Peterson is always tilting against.

Even at a place ostensibly filled with footsoldiers of the Frankfurt School, learning Shakespeare is mandatory. Berkeley offers five courses on the English playwright, including a general overview as well as specialized classes dedicated to themes or periods of his career. Undergraduates are required to pick at least one.

And the English department’s “foundational courses”—the only other courses required to get a degree in the program—exclusively cover English-language writers prior to the 20th century, who tended to be both white and male, and are most certainly dead.

Maybe his opinions reflect his experiences with his own school?

University of Toronto’s English program is a little more flexible, but it does require minimum coursework in pre-19th century British literature, a category that includes four courses that cover Shakespeare as well as two courses entirely devoted to him. And the only other writers to receive such a treatment—Spenser, Chaucer and Milton—all share certain demographic characteristics.

Peterson calls on his followers to be precise in their language and to “steelman” their opponents in debate, but he doesn’t practice what he preaches. Instead, in an appalling display of bad faith, he makes sweeping generalizations that have little to no basis in reality.

When marginalized groups call for more literature courses that speak to their own experiences, Peterson’s response is to treat this reasonable demand as if it were an attack on everything that is holy. What does that say about his worldview?

Though he has rebuked the far-right for pushing racial identity politics and collectivism, Peterson’s critiques of academia are almost identical to theirs—he even uses the same snarl words like “cultural Marxism,” a slur with a lineage that goes back to the Nazis.

And by portraying any criticisms of Eurocentrism as “dead white male” bashing, Peterson feeds into the aggrievement narratives encapsulated in white nationalist slogans like “diversity means anti-white.”

Despite Peterson’s dire portrayal of postmodern barbarians storming the citadel of Western civilization, academics calling for the inclusion of a wider range of perspectives aren’t out to erase white men. Depicting them as a monolithic entity with a singular nefarious agenda does a huge disservice to the debate on the direction of higher education.

Peterson also denigrates the work of POC and women writers by implying that the only reason for them to be included in curriculum is to appease the hungry gods of diversity. America is a multiracial, multiethnic nation, and all the voices that have played a role in telling its story deserve to be recognized.

While it seems highly unlikely, as Peterson claims, that any American English student could pass through college—or high school for that matter—without studying Shakespeare, it’s much easier to imagine a scenario where that same student graduates never having heard the name Zora Neale Hurston.