Peter Boghossian was an old instructor of mine at PSU. As a B or C-tier "new atheist" who wasn't quite on tenure track, it was interesting seeing how he tried t

Peter Boghossian was an old instructor of mine at PSU. As a B or C-tier "new atheist" who wasn't quite on tenure track, it was interesting seeing how he tried to get attention. He was pretty solid in his lectures outside of politics and religion -- he was generally well-read and was very entertaining, but seeing him trying to "trigger" people on those topics made a lot of students groan. He had a small group of students who would follow him around everywhere and he would ask the class and his clique to promote and astroturf him on Reddit, Wikipedia, et al. Which is valid... I guess it's better if his students are doing it than him? A few times on campus, he was seen coaching students who were later identified by a local antifascist group as being linked to "the Daily Stormer" -- which I have mixed feelings about; I truly believe everyone deserves to have tools for better thinking, but you're right to suspect Boghossian as possibly having agendas. In a direct response to your last question, he did get in some hot water for bad faith academic publishing that produced questionable benefits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair I'll say that people criticizing RMS doesn't make the libre software movement bad, and it doesn't invalidate his accomplishments.