Juno News - Why can’t we criticize ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ dogma？ A conversation with Mark Hecht

00:00:00.000 Hi, everyone. Welcome to the True North podcast. My name is Lindsay. I'm an investigative journalism

00:00:10.480 fellow with True North. And today, my guest is Mark Hecht. Mark Hecht is an instructor in

00:00:16.520 Earth and Environmental Sciences at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. And until a few

00:00:22.660 months ago, he was just kind of your regular old university instructor. But then controversy hit

00:00:28.960 in September of this year, when Mark wrote an op-ed called Ethnic Diversity Harms a Country's

00:00:35.800 Social Trust, Economic Wellbeing, argues instructor. So that op-ed was published in the Vancouver Sun,

00:00:42.500 but subsequently unpublished. So we're going to talk about that. We're going to talk about Mark's

00:00:47.960 experience, the reaction, the criticism, the support he received, and what's happening with his university

00:00:55.020 now. So welcome, Mark. Thank you, Lindsay. Good to have you, or good to be here with you.

00:01:00.880 Let's talk about your op-ed. So Ethnic Diversity Harms a Country's Social Trust, Economic Wellbeing.

00:01:07.180 You know, why did you decide to write the op-ed? What was the process of pitching it? Can you explain

00:01:12.920 that to us? Sure. Well, let's first of all clarify the title, because that was actually the Vancouver

00:01:18.200 Sun that put that title in. My own personal title was Trust Requires Less Diversity Canada. 0.95

00:01:27.480 So it went into the Vancouver Sun on Friday, September 6th, and I had pitched it about a week

00:01:34.940 before to the editor in charge, Gordon Clark, I think it was. Anyway, I sent it in, and he said,

00:01:43.920 looks interesting. I'll put it into the next Saturday edition or the weekend edition coming

00:01:49.200 up, because it was a slightly longer piece. It was about 11 or 1200 words. They usually like to

00:01:55.760 have something a little shorter, but they had space in the weekend edition. So it went up on Friday on

00:02:02.600 the online edition, and almost immediately there was reaction on Twitter, which was pretty severe,

00:02:09.460 I guess you could say. But it still went to the printing press and was published in an actual

00:02:15.620 newspaper and went out to the Vancouver Sun subscribers on Saturday. So over the course of

00:02:22.220 that sort of Friday evening to the end of Saturday, it was online for maybe all of half a day before it

00:02:28.080 finally came down. So what kind of claims and what kind of research did you talk about in the op-ed that

00:02:34.640 people found so questionable and worth suppressing? You know, people have asked me this quite a bit

00:02:42.740 and said, well, if there's anything you could change, would there be anything at all? And I

00:02:46.780 would say there's probably one word that I would have added at the end of the piece, and that's the

00:02:53.060 word dogma. And I'd actually put it at the very beginning, and I said, this was essentially a critique

00:03:01.640 of the dogma of diversity, tolerance, and inclusion, which is basically poking at the tenets of Canadian

00:03:07.580 society right now. But I think a lot of people took those words, diversity, tolerance, inclusion,

00:03:13.820 but specifically diversity, and kind of twisted it into some sort of racial thing that I was meant to

00:03:22.180 be saying, I guess. So seeing diversity as something that was race-based, which is not at all what I was

00:03:27.380 talking about. So you wouldn't use the word dogma? I would put dogma, sorry, I would put dogma

00:03:34.060 at the very end, because I also put, kind of in quotes, we should say goodbye to diversity, 0.99

00:03:40.380 tolerance, and inclusion. What I was really saying is we should say goodbye to the dogma of diversity,

00:03:46.580 tolerance, and inclusion, just like I did at the beginning of the piece. Right, because one of the

00:03:52.840 conclusions you came to, I suppose, was if we're going to have a very diverse multicultural society,

00:03:59.800 either, you know, the people are going to end up in ethnic enclaves, you know, as we're seeing,

00:04:05.360 you know, in Vancouver, British Columbia, and I suppose in Ontario, too, like the highly diverse parts

00:04:09.820 of Canada. So either that is the result, as we've seen in other European countries, or we, if we want to

00:04:18.240 have high social trust, we just can't have as much diversity. Was that what you were saying?

00:04:24.700 Yeah, essentially. I mean, the research is pretty clear, and I would say it's even something we all

00:04:29.240 know, that every society can handle a little bit of, I guess we could say newcomers or immigrants 0.95

00:04:35.920 that will be eventually integrated into society. But if you have too much at one particular time,

00:04:42.980 then people will tend to isolate themselves into enclaves. And then you have to deal with those kinds of,

00:04:48.040 divisions in society. And the more divisions you have, the more you break down social trust.

00:04:53.980 And how would you define social trust? Like, what is an example of a community with high social

00:05:00.160 trust or low social trust? Can you just kind of describe that for people who are struggling to

00:05:04.960 envision it?

00:05:08.940 There's always the wallet test. The wallet test is probably the greatest test of all for defining social

00:05:14.040 trust. It's just how likely is it that you would feel if you left your wallet, say, at a coffee shop,

00:05:21.800 how likely is it that you would get that back, or at least that you would perceive that you would get

00:05:26.120 it back from a total stranger? That's probably the easiest way to define social trust. When you know

00:05:33.900 you're going to get your wallet back, you probably live in a society that has high social trust.

00:05:37.520 If you feel like you will never get it back, you're probably in a society that has low social trust.

00:05:42.680 And so I saw you briefly mentioned, so your article comes out on September 6th. And then I saw it too

00:05:50.380 on Twitter immediately, the backlash, the white nationalist, white supremacist, racist, etc. The

00:05:56.700 various claims were just coming in hard. I was kind of following it live when that was happening.

00:06:01.160 Um, and so some people took issue with the Gatestone Institute, which is, I suppose, uh, the

00:06:09.260 institute that published the research you were citing. I hadn't heard of them before, but a lot of people

00:06:13.760 were trying to discredit, uh, the research in your article by saying there was something wrong with the

00:06:19.380 Gatestone Institute. Have you ever heard of any problems with the Gatestone Institute?

00:06:24.900 Um, yeah, I've definitely heard of problems. And if I could change something, I would probably, okay, I would change

00:06:31.020 the word dogma, I'd add the word dogma, and I would get rid of the Gatestone Institute. Um, and I'd probably

00:06:37.620 use, uh, Rud Koopmans, who's a well-known researcher in this area. Um, but he essentially says exactly what

00:06:44.920 the Gatestone Institute says, or at least what I quoted from the Gatestone Institute. Um, you know,

00:06:51.280 was it the best choice for citation? Probably not. But their message was still the same as the sort of

00:06:58.060 high-level researchers. Some of, I'll just give some examples of what people were saying. So

00:07:03.620 the MLA for Delta North, Ravi Kalon, uh, he wrote in the Vancouver Sun, the article was, in short,

00:07:11.200 racism and white supremacy, wearing a thin disguise of academic bluster. It was every kind of wrong.

00:07:17.080 I was floored. I was angry. I was sad. I couldn't sleep. So this was the kind of, um, reaction we were

00:07:25.660 seeing. So your article came up on September 6th and was it taken down from the Vancouver Sun website

00:07:33.500 the same day? I think it actually came down like the middle of Saturday on the 7th. Okay. When it

00:07:41.400 actually disappeared completely. Okay. But yeah, so it was too late for them to remove it from the

00:07:47.340 print edition. So it is in, in the print edition of the Vancouver Sun for that day. Um, and so the only

00:07:53.580 way to read your article now is if you have, um, a paper from September 7th, I suppose, or if you

00:08:01.700 look on internet archives. So, you know, the Vancouver Sun completely scrubbed it from their website.

00:08:07.620 Um, they apologized. And for the next week, we were looking at op-eds from various news outlets in Canada

00:08:17.300 talking about why diversity is great. So what does it say that, um, they had to suppress your article

00:08:24.480 and subsequently publish a whole bunch of articles talking about why diversity is great? Can we not

00:08:29.780 handle one maybe dissenting or critical opinion or argument? Yeah, we're really at this point in

00:08:37.440 society right now where we're definitely struggling with freedom of expression or free speech. Um, and this

00:08:43.620 is a pretty good example of it. Actually, we just saw most recently Don Cherry's, um, comments being

00:08:50.260 suppressed as well. But I mean, we're seeing it throughout the society and it's, um, it, it's a

00:08:56.700 strange topic to be, to be sure. Um, yeah, I don't know where we are, but it's pretty bad when people

00:09:04.220 can't even talk about simple things that in fact, what I said in the article is not anything new. It's,

00:09:11.640 it's well-known social science data. So the fact that I'm actually bringing up social science data,

00:09:18.780 um, and people can't even argue the basics of what's actually well-known is kind of disturbing.

00:09:26.040 Yeah. And, and right away you're hit with accusations of, of white nationalists and,

00:09:30.880 and white supremacist and bigot and, and hateful and all that. Even, uh, the BC human rights commissioner,

00:09:36.580 Mr. Kasari Govinder, um, said your article was a call to hatred. How would you respond to that?

00:09:43.460 I don't even know where to start with that. I mean, there's so much on the far left of,

00:09:47.540 um, if somebody doesn't like something on the far left, they simply throw out, uh, the common

00:09:52.880 statement that somebody's being hateful, which of course is pretty poorly defined. But for the most

00:09:58.300 part, I find anybody that says this is hateful usually doesn't have an argument or a leg to stand

00:10:03.140 on for any sort of opinion that they actually have. Um, and the fact that BC human rights

00:10:08.120 person is saying this kind of stuff is, uh, indicative of a larger problem we have in society

00:10:14.620 right now. Yeah. Well, I mean, in, in the criminal code, you know, we do have hate speech laws in

00:10:22.160 Canada. So, um, incitement to hatred is in our criminal code of, of like hate speech laws,

00:10:28.620 incitement to hatred. So I feel like calling it a call to hatred, which was the wording of the,

00:10:33.300 the human rights commissioner. It's almost like one step away from calling it criminal hate speech,

00:10:39.000 but without wanting to maybe go that far in case you would sue her or something. So I thought that

00:10:44.840 was, um, a little sketchy. So, you know, all this was out in the open. This was the public reaction.

00:10:50.860 Uh, a lot of Vancouver Sun journalists getting publicly angry at their own publication. And,

00:10:56.800 you know, as I mentioned, the, the editor in chief, Harold Monroe, he, he apologized and said,

00:11:03.160 you know, the Vancouver Sun celebrates diversity and all that. Um, which is kind of interesting that,

00:11:07.700 that a newspaper has a mission to celebrate something. Um, but what was your experience

00:11:14.360 behind the scenes? So specifically within your university, Mount Royal, uh, were you getting

00:11:20.460 support? Were you getting hate mail? Were you getting fan mail? What was going on in your inbox?

00:11:26.800 It's been a mix. Um, in the hallways, I had a lot of people coming up to me and just patting me on

00:11:33.220 the back and saying, thank you for saying what you said. Um, please don't use my name in any way

00:11:38.760 though. Um, in this whole cancel culture that we have, it's understandable. Nobody wants to be

00:11:44.580 sticking their necks out and having their heads chopped off. So I did have a lot of people in the

00:11:49.000 hallways just saying those kinds of things. Um, and yet at the same time, I've also had colleagues

00:11:54.400 that won't even look me in the eye in the hallway anymore. Uh, so there's the two extremes on either

00:11:59.140 end, but internally in my own department, um, I'd say that's also been a mix. I've had the chair

00:12:08.880 basically say he didn't agree with what I said, um, which he's entitled to that opinion,

00:12:16.740 but I would say he overstepped his role, which is he stepped. I don't know if I should say this.

00:12:23.340 No, I'm going to say it anyway. He came into my office and said, I don't agree with what you said,

00:12:27.560 which I think as a leader is the one thing you shouldn't be doing as a leader. You should come

00:12:33.100 in and say, this is what I'm doing as a leader, but I'm not bringing in my own personal opinions.

00:12:38.260 And if I am going to bring in my own personal opinions, then I'm stating right up. This is

00:12:42.460 just you and me discussing personal opinions. So I think the chair overstepped his boundaries in

00:12:47.100 terms of the role he plays. Um, and in fact, I don't think he really knows what it means to be

00:12:51.160 a leader. Um, that's pretty harsh, but anyway, that's where I stand. Um, is this, um, Jonathan Whitley?

00:12:58.480 No, Jonathan Whitley is actually one step above the chair. So the chair often, um,

00:13:05.600 facilitates or goes between the various disciplines to figure out who's going to get course load work

00:13:11.580 and stuff like that. But Jonathan Whitley is actually one step higher. He's the Dean.

00:13:16.060 So he has the ultimate control over, um, the money and the allocation of work.

00:13:21.140 Right. And so this is the Dean that, um, canceled your field school after this controversy happened.

00:13:28.320 Can you talk a bit about that?

00:13:29.760 So after the op-ed about, uh, what was it? A week and a half later, I had the,

00:13:35.600 um, the first of three information sessions for the field school that I was going to run.

00:13:41.960 And about two hours before the first one was to go, uh, I ended up in Jonathan Whitley's office and

00:13:48.040 he said, the field school is canceled. You know, I basically said, so this is, has to do with the op-ed.

00:13:54.480 And he said, well, it may appear that way, but that's, there were other considerations.

00:14:01.940 Anyway, he wouldn't go much beyond that. Um, but obviously it had to do with the op-ed.

00:14:07.240 So anyway, someone from international education actually had to come down and, um, sort of intercept

00:14:12.860 the students as they were coming in the door and basically tell them the field school is canceled.

00:14:16.760 Um, see if you can find another one.

00:14:20.520 Because on your, um, profile on Mount Royal's website, I mean, one of your, uh, things is

00:14:26.880 listed as field school. So have you led them before?

00:14:31.460 No, not, not as the lead, not as the lead hand on this. Um, I've been involved in other

00:14:37.700 field schools, particularly through the geology side of our department. Um, but I haven't led

00:14:43.600 my own. So this was going to be the first one that I was actually going to do myself.

00:14:48.740 But everything was set to go before this happened. Like you had your whole syllabus

00:14:53.300 planned out. And I noticed on your syllabus and it looks like a great, it was called sustainable

00:14:57.680 Europe, right? Yeah. It was like an ecological, like geography field school to Europe, different

00:15:04.020 countries in Europe. Yeah. It was mostly looking at, um, what European cities in particular

00:15:09.520 are doing in terms of sustainability. And that had a few different themes, you know, economic,

00:15:15.580 mobility, transportation, um, but also social, um, social considerations as well, which I think

00:15:22.900 is where I got into the most trouble because I, one of the themes I talked about or one of

00:15:26.200 the topics was social trust, uh, which of course is a really prominent subject in Denmark and

00:15:33.040 the Netherlands, which is where we were going to go. Um, anyway, that's also what I talked

00:15:38.560 about in the op-ed. So obviously having something in the field school and controversy with the op-ed

00:15:44.940 did not please, uh, the Mount Royal administration enough that they said, okay, we're getting rid

00:15:52.260 of this guy and we're getting rid of the field school.

00:15:55.400 So after this happened, the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, they sent an open letter,

00:16:01.200 um, and it's on their website, SAFS.ca, S-A-F-S.ca. They wrote, wrote an open letter saying,

00:16:07.580 you know, did this have to do with Mark's op-ed? Cause that would, uh, be kind of an infringement

00:16:12.600 of academic freedom. Did they say anything substantial in their response to the Society

00:16:18.080 for Academic Freedom and Scholarship? Uh, no, Jonathan Withey wrote back a letter,

00:16:22.120 a little over a week later. And in the letter, which is also posted on the same website, it's also

00:16:28.540 posted on my, my website as well. He essentially, of all the things he said, there was only one thing

00:16:35.660 in there which really made a definitive statement. And that was that, um, field schools will not be led

00:16:42.260 by part-time instructors, which is what I am. Even though this had long been approved, Mount Royal has

00:16:49.860 always had part-time instructors do field schools. It's even had contract, um, people come in and do

00:16:56.340 field schools for it. So suddenly this was a change in policy, like overnight, which just happened to be

00:17:02.820 coincidental to this field school. Um, so what now at, at Mount Royal? Are you staying? Are you leaving?

00:17:11.900 What's happening now? I will be finishing my contracts at the end of this semester. So I'm teaching three

00:17:17.800 courses right now. Um, and then, yeah, I will be leaving. I'm moving and I'm no longer working at

00:17:25.160 Mount Royal in any capacity whatsoever. As of, as of like December, January? Uh, yeah, end of December.

00:17:33.320 Yeah. So did the op-ed controversy play any part in you, uh, wanting to leave? Did you not apply to have

00:17:42.040 your contract renewed or anything like that? I've been working at Mount Royal for almost 12 years,

00:17:48.660 and my plan was actually to, um, no longer pick up teaching contracts in the following semester,

00:17:55.280 and I made that very clear actually in the summer of this year. Um, so I was going to move to Van,

00:18:00.720 or Victoria, um, essentially January 1st, but I would still come back for the field school and run that

00:18:07.980 every, every year for the next, who knows, probably five, six years, something like that.

00:18:13.440 Um, and that was all well known. Everybody knew that. So yeah, now I'm not doing the field school

00:18:20.420 either. So I'm completely leaving Mount Royal. I see. Um, so did you, are you kind of leaving

00:18:26.440 Mount Royal feeling like a black sheep? Uh, I don't know if I feel like a black sheep. I probably am a 1.00

00:18:32.660 black sheep, but, um, I'm disappointed in the leadership is what I would have to say. Uh,

00:18:40.080 whether some of my colleagues agree or disagree with what I said is, is sort of tangential. Um,

00:18:47.400 but clearly some of the faculty that disagree with what I've said have been, um, kind of prominent

00:18:53.640 behind the scenes in terms of trying to influence the decisions of the administration. And I think

00:19:00.100 they've probably been successful in, I mean, I'm only guessing, but I would say they've been

00:19:04.880 influential, influential in, in getting the administration to remove me completely, which

00:19:13.220 means canceling the field school. Um, so yeah, I guess overall, I'm just feeling disappointed in the

00:19:18.860 leadership mostly, even though I've had actually a very good teaching career and enjoyed Mount Royal

00:19:24.660 for the most part. It's been very good, but yeah, leaving, leaving on a bit of a sour note.

00:19:31.540 Is the op-ed controversy something you kind of want to just move past or do you want to try to

00:19:38.660 keep these issues? I keep talking about them and, and, um, keep trying to do research and work with,

00:19:44.800 you know, social trust and things like this.

00:19:46.360 Um, you know, kind of thrown into this role and I never saw myself in this role, which of course,

00:19:53.240 you know what this is all about. You got thrown into this role that you're now in. Um, and in a

00:19:58.620 certain way, it's kind of, it's kind of a passion that's been thrown into me. That's like, no, we've

00:20:04.920 got to keep talking about this and doing this. Um, there would definitely be some people who would try

00:20:11.080 and, you know, hide in a corner for a while and hope everything would go away. But no, I think this

00:20:15.720 is actually like inflamed me to just push forward and keep these topics going. Um, I wrote somewhere

00:20:22.920 where I can't remember where it was now, but you basically messed with the wrong bear. The battle

00:20:30.020 is on. So yeah, I'm definitely feeling this sense that we've got to keep doing this, keep pushing

00:20:37.320 forward, keep the topic open. It can't be suppressed. People need to talk about these

00:20:42.320 things. Great. And so how can we, uh, follow your work on that? Do you have a blog? Are you going

00:20:48.060 to use social media? Are you going to write a book? Uh, there's a couple of ways. One, I do have my

00:20:53.900 own website, uh, my own blog at www.markheck.com. And I've been writing articles there, posting every

00:21:01.980 week that might become more formalized. I can't really say anything at this point, but it might

00:21:07.020 become more formalized. Uh, I've also written a book, which has kind of been sitting around.

00:21:12.300 It was almost a project of mine for a number of years. I self-published it, The Rules of Invasion,

00:21:17.720 Why Europeans Naturally Invaded the New World. Um, which again, some people think this is a racist,

00:21:24.180 you know, Europeans are supreme and superior and all sorts of things like that. But that's not actually

00:21:29.540 the argument I make in the book. But the book does have a lot of topics that are pertinent to

00:21:34.960 what we're talking about here and now, which is, you know, what are the boundaries of society? Why

00:21:41.240 do we have certain identities? And do the patterns that we see as humans, are they kind of similar to

00:21:48.000 the patterns you see in the natural world as well? Um, so I think that'll be officially published

00:21:54.140 sometime soon as opposed to just self-published. So yeah, there's a few venues.

00:21:59.320 Great. Well, we are really looking forward to following your work. Thank you so much for

00:22:03.920 talking with me today, Mark. Thanks, Lizzie. It was a real pleasure.

00:22:07.980 Thanks, everyone. And see you on the next podcast.

00:22:10.700 Thank you.

Juno News - November 17, 2019

Why can’t we criticize ‘Diversity & Inclusion’ dogma？ A conversation with Mark Hecht

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