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In this occasional series, Jordan Peterson writes from his international speaking tour for his book, 12 Rules for Life, where he’s speaking to sold out crowds throughout North America, Europe and Australia.

My Dutch publisher made arrangements for me to be publicly interviewed at the University of Amsterdam in front of an estimated audience of 300 students. I am somewhat loath to appear at such events, having developed the same feelings about them as comedians such as Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock and Carlos Mencia. They have all decided that it’s not worth it: the risk to reward ratio is just too high.

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I’ve had highly stressful experiences at the University of Toronto, McMaster and Queen’s in the recent past, when I was confronted by mobs of misbehaving activists, agitated by their idiot professors, blaring air horns at distances close enough to cause damage, chanting slogans which were the opposite of well-crafted and poetic, and parading their ill-informed virtue on full display despite knowledge about the issues at hand that bordered on non-existent. At Queen’s, most infamously, about 150 protestors surrounded the building in which I was speaking — a rather church-like edifice. Dozens of them climbed onto the sills of the ten-foot stained glass windows that lined the outer walls and pounded continuously on them for the full 90 minutes of the talk. One protestor, later arrested with a garrotte, performed her services with enough force to break a window and smear it with blood. Outside, the self-styled heroes of the new revolution barricaded the exterior doors — a crime, by the way — and humorously suggested that burning the building down, with all the attendees and speakers inside, might constitute an acceptable way to proceed.