Juno News - Only 4% of Canadian university arts professors are conservative

In this episode, Lindsay Shepard discusses a new academic study by the University of London's Eric Kaufmann on political discrimination among academics and students in the US, UK, and Canada. She highlights the top 5 findings from the study, and suggests ways to restore viewpoint diversity to the university.

00:00:00.000 Earlier this month, a major academic study on cancel culture and political discrimination

00:00:11.100 among professors and graduate students in the UK, the US, and Canada was released. This report,

00:00:17.760 written by University of London professor Eric Kaufman, is the largest survey-based study to

00:00:22.420 date on this topic. So in this video, I'm going to highlight what I consider to be the top five

00:00:28.220 findings from this new report. Here we go. Number five, 73% of university arts professors identify

00:00:36.640 as leftists, whereas a mere 4% are right-wing. The other 23% presumably identify as centrist or

00:00:45.080 undefined. Obviously, this is incredibly unbalanced, and by contrast, in the 1960s, there was about one

00:00:52.560 conservative for every two leftists. This skew means that non-leftists do face political

00:00:58.440 discrimination at the university. Kaufman found that in the US, more than a third of conservative

00:01:04.000 academics and PhD students have been threatened with disciplinary action for their views. But

00:01:09.740 because this leftist majority is generally not the group facing disciplinary action or being subject to

00:01:15.600 cancel culture, they will continually deny that there is a problem with viewpoint diversity at the

00:01:21.080 university at all, and they'll just act like nothing is wrong. Another implication of this heavy leftist

00:01:26.420 skew is that non-leftists will self-select away from academia. So that means that students who are

00:01:34.160 conservative might feel like they don't fit in with the post-secondary scene and they'll discontinue their

00:01:40.100 academic career, or a right-leaning faculty member may retire early. This means the leftist skew keeps

00:01:47.240 reproducing itself. Number four, 72% of Canadian academics would feel uncomfortable going to lunch

00:01:54.460 with a gender-critical feminist scholar. That is, a professor who believes that biological sex is real 1.00

00:02:00.420 and that trans women shouldn't be in women's shelters. So it's not even conservatives or right-wing 0.72

00:02:07.620 people who are facing alienation and political discrimination at the university. It's also people

00:02:12.840 who believe that women have sex-based rights. Next, number three and number two really demonstrate the 0.98

00:02:21.480 disconnect between academics and the general public. Seven percent of Canadian academics are

00:02:28.200 Conservative Party of Canada voters, compared with 36% of the population, and 52% favor increased

00:02:36.120 immigration numbers, compared to only 13% of the general public. I know I was definitely left with the

00:02:42.040 impression in university that it is morally wrong to be opposed to open borders. But, you know, when

00:02:48.360 you have this sort of ideological bubble, your education is just not as strong. That's why you have people

00:02:54.280 coming out of universities who, for example, will claim that Canada is a systemically racist, white 0.96

00:03:00.280 supremacist country. And when you push them on it, they can't really articulate or explain what they mean.

00:03:07.800 And it's because they're just not used to being around anyone who's going to challenge what they

00:03:12.280 say. So it's really not beneficial at all to be educated in an environment where you are in an

00:03:18.120 ideological bubble. And number one, 45% of Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter. This is

00:03:27.080 the leftist skew in action, just straight-up intolerance for other viewpoints. And conservatives

00:03:33.800 are well aware of this intolerance. Approximately 6 in 10 conservative academics allege that they face

00:03:40.280 a hostile climate in their department because of their beliefs, and only 9% of left-wing professors

00:03:47.000 say the same thing. So what happens is that faculty members who are right-leaning end up self-censoring.

00:03:54.600 And that's exactly what Eric Kaufman found in his report. 70% of right-leaning American professors

00:04:01.400 self-censor in teaching and research. I know you might be thinking, well, of course universities

00:04:07.080 are bastions of leftism and they discriminate against those who don't have their worldview.

00:04:12.520 I could have told you that. But it is important to have these figures in a formal report rather than

00:04:18.680 just relying on anecdotal evidence. So now we can kind of move past the doubt of whether there really

00:04:25.800 is a problem or how bad the problem really is. And we can move on to, well, what do we do about it?

00:04:33.000 Leave a comment below with your suggestion on how we can restore viewpoint diversity to the university.

00:04:39.880 I will leave you with a recap. 73% of university arts professors are leftists and 4% are right-wing.

00:04:48.680 72% of Canadian academics would feel uncomfortable going to lunch with a gender-critical feminist scholar. 1.00

00:04:54.920 Only 7% of Canadian academics are CPC voters. And 52% are in favor of increased immigration numbers.

00:05:04.280 And 45% of Canadian academics would not hire a Trump supporter.

00:05:09.960 I'm Lindsay Shepard with True North. Thanks so much for watching. If you like True North's

00:05:14.520 commentary and coverage, please consider becoming a supporter. I'll see you next time.

Juno News - March 15, 2021

Only 4% of Canadian university arts professors are conservative

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript