I think something clicked for me in reading Alice Dreger's piece on why she opted out of inclusion in the NYTimes piece on the Intellectual Dark Web. chronicle.com/article/Why-I-…
Dreger orients her work around a particular set of values which are consistent with academic discourse. Her objection is that she believes academic institutions are not living up to their end of the bargain to promote that discourse.
I generally agree with Dreger about higher ed institutions, though I may root my critique in different problems than she does (adjunctification and other exploitative labor). Either way, she's continuing to practice her values outside the academy.
The academics in the IDW see themselves as self-styled heretics, but in a lot of ways, their scholarship isn't so much heretical as simply not up to snuff. JPB's 12 Rules is nonsense by academic standards.
Even Pinker's book on the Enlightenment is widely derided by actual scholars of the Enlightenment. As scholarship, these books have no salience in academic circles. This is fine, I don't write for academic circles either, but there heretical nature isn't only rooted in "beliefs."
So when their work is dismissed by academics, it's not necessarily an attack on their beliefs. It's a recognition that they've abandoned the values of scholarship that Dreger well articulates in her piece. Antagonizing progressives isn't a scholarly purpose.
I don't know that academia is afraid of JBP's ideas. It's more that there's nothing to engage with in terms of scholarship. This piece takes Peterson's opining on mythos seriously and shows there's no there there. blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/homer-h…
David French says critics "miss the point" of the Intellectual Dark Web, but argues that the point is essentially to be antagonistic to a whole panoply of perceived evils, only some of which sort of exist. nationalreview.com/2018/05/intell…
In the CHE Drager says, "I value ambivalence itself, along with intellectual humility," which I see as a core belief underpinning good scholarship. The IDW academics would never embrace this value. Ambivalence is de facto weakness. Humility isn't salable.
I think it's not so much that anyone fears the ideas of the IDW. I have a hard time finding an idea worth wrestling with in most of the work, TBH, but there is an affront to those values Drager articulates that I think is largely unspoken.
It hinges on a difference of methods, not just of beliefs. That disconnect of values seems more significant than any of the putative policy beliefs of the group.
This from David French's piece supporting of the IDW is interesting in its framing. 
It posits the danger as those on the left who "tell" people what to think or say, as though telling people what to think or say is some kind of significant power. Consider this in contrast to what forces truly hold power in corporations. Leftists?
Even in academia, think about U of Chicago, which as an administration is aligned with the IDW on speech while also quashing the rights of its graduate teaching assistants to unionize. If those GA's express leftist sentiments, do they have anywhere near the power of the admins?
Or in academia the Koch org literally has controlled faculty positions and scholarship. Is that power not more meaningful than opinions of individual professors?
French cites almost nothing tangible to prove this degree of power he gives to the left. Kevin Williamson being un-hired by the Atlantic and the McAdams case at Marquette are about it. Both are far more complicated than leftists dominating the cultural and academic spaces.
in the end, French's argument boils down to a wish that what he believes were simply more popular, like he wishes for a kind of affirmative action for his own ideas. Check out his kicker:
He thinks the lack of popularity for his ideas is rooted in "bullying," but isn't it just as likely that it's simply a matter that other ideas are more popular? We have plenty of space for diversity of opinion, the popularity of the IDW is evidence enough.
For a group that claims to be rooted in beliefs in free speech, "stop bullying us with your speech" seems like a pretty lame argument.
