In this episode, we discuss the need for diversity and inclusion in science, and the lack of it in Canada's universities. We discuss the role of science as a tool for white supremacy, white privilege, and white supremacy as tools for white privilege.
00:01:45.260Many thanks for the invitation to participate in this important discussion.
00:01:50.060Meritocracy is the sole operative ethos when judging research excellence.
00:01:54.400Scientific quests have a singular goal to better understand the world and its wondrous mysteries.
00:02:00.760Science is not an empathy party meant to elevate and celebrate so-called marginalized groups.
00:02:06.980The use of diversity, inclusion, and equity when allocating research funds is an affront to individual dignity and to research excellence.
00:02:16.400A 2025 report by the Aristotle Foundation found that 97.5% of academic job postings at Canadian universities reference diversity, inclusion, and equity.
00:02:28.740I will discuss briefly three such examples from my chapter in the War on Science.
00:02:34.120First example, the University of Waterloo's School of Computer Science recently advertised for two open NSERC Tier 1 Canada Research Chairs.
00:06:19.080Thank you for inviting me to speak today.
00:06:21.400As mentioned, my name is Dr. Nadia Hassan, and I'm an assistant professor at the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies.
00:06:26.940I'm also the director of the Islamophobia Research Hub at York University in Toronto.
00:06:32.240I have nearly 20 years of experience working at the intersection of academic and community-based research through both non-profit organizations and post-secondary institutions.
00:06:41.000Today, I want to talk about two things.
00:06:44.040First, the importance of funding research that deepens our understanding of and helps us combat racism, hate, and discrimination in all its forms.
00:06:52.560And second, how federal funding can strengthen meaningful partnerships with communities.
00:06:57.400We're having this conversation in a troubling global context.
00:07:02.120First, in the United States, the targeting of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives has brought with it a dismantling of academic freedom itself.
00:07:10.180This has led to restrictions so sweeping that terms such as climate, woman, peanut allergies, safe drinking water, have made their way onto banned words lists in federal agencies, according to outlets like the New York Times, The Washington Post, and PEN America, who also report that this has already resulted in failed or rescinded research grants.
00:07:32.860This type of political censorship undermines democracy, limits innovation, limits innovation, and stifles critical scholarship.
00:07:40.000It is a cautionary tale for Canada and a reminder that our federal agencies, and this committee in particular, must resist these chilling trends.
00:07:52.940Why Canada must continue to fund research that addresses racism and discrimination.
00:07:57.220The evidence is strong that diversity in research ecosystems results in more innovation and better research impact.
00:08:04.360So, for example, research on Black maternal health, an area that has been long ignored in the research community, uncovered systemic inequities that led to new initiatives reducing infant and maternal mortality.
00:08:16.580Indigenous-led scholarship has revealed the devastating impacts of colonial violence, language locks, cultural erasure, implications for health and safety, while pushing institutions towards truth-telling and action.
00:08:32.300These examples, however incomplete, show how rigorous research does more than describe problems.
00:08:39.700It has saved lives, changed systems, and built paths to justice.
00:08:43.820This work is not easy, and at times that it requires courage, though it should not have to.
00:08:50.900Consider the recent stabbing of a gender studies professor and students during a lecture at the University of Waterloo.
00:08:57.020The attacker admitted to deliberately targeting the class, and in his manifesto, expressed support for the gunmen who live-streamed the killing of 51 people at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.
00:09:07.560He also referenced the massacre of 69 young people in Norway carried out in the name of xenophobic and Islamophobic ideologies.
00:09:15.320In this climate, professors in gender studies all over Canada and related fields increasingly fear for their safety.
00:09:23.060Many, including me, are now advised to avoid publicly posting our office or classroom locations and implement safety plans and trainings.
00:09:31.700This is not a healthy environment for fostering intellectual curiosity, open debate, or the free exchange of ideas.
00:09:38.280In my own work at the Islamophobia Research Hub, I strive to create methodologies that empower impacted communities.
00:09:45.820So, for instance, we're working with policymakers, labor organizers, service providers, and Muslim communities to study systemic barriers to the economic integration of Muslims in Canada.
00:09:54.960We're also examining the impacts of Islamophobic violence, such as the fatal attack on the Upsil family in London, Ontario, and the Quebec City Moss shooting, on the mental health and identity of young Muslims.
00:10:06.660These projects center community-based knowledge, where lived experiences become a foundation for evidence-based change.
00:10:13.920However, this kind of research is not easy to sustain under current Tri-Council funding structures.
00:10:22.240Federal funding must be structured in ways that make community-academic partnerships more accessible, efficient, and sustainable.
00:10:29.420Community partnerships are heavily encouraged, but the support mechanisms are often inadequate.
00:10:34.500As someone who has been both a community partner and now a university researcher, I have seen both sides of this struggle.
00:10:42.020So, for example, with community partners, I co-wrote a 53-page SSHRC application for a $23,000 connections grant that was meant to focus on the experiences of Muslim women accessing shelters.
00:10:55.020We did not receive the grant, but what stayed with me was the enormous uncompensated labor I had to request from partners already overstretched and underfunded women's shelters.
00:11:04.180While SSHRC now allows salary research allowances for community partners, streamlining the application and modernizing its outdated portal are crucial to fostering meaningful partnerships.
00:11:43.540Good afternoon, and thank you for having me speak today.
00:11:46.000My name is Robert Thomas, and I'm the president of the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship,
00:11:51.500a scholarly society founded in 1993 in Ontario to advocate for academic freedom and the merit principle in Canadian academia.
00:11:59.820I'm also an academic librarian at the University of Regina, where my work focuses primarily on the academic academic freedom.
00:12:03.820This is primarily in the humanities and social sciences.
00:12:06.420Today, I'd like to give arguments in support of two criteria that we believe are essential for a successful and principled national research environment.
00:12:13.860The first of these is a merit-based research funding and hiring decisions in Canadian research chairs and funded research.
00:12:21.340It is important to base decisions in a way that supports and encourages the most promising and meritorious research agendas.
00:12:31.220Canada needs, for instance, the best cancer business and political science research.
00:12:37.700What Canada does not need is research where mariotocratic excellence has been eclipsed by other government policy goals, whether or not these have laudatory aims.
00:12:48.260In particular, I refer to funding and hiring decisions where identity factors such as sex, gender, and race can displace the focus on the individual's work itself.
00:13:00.140SAF provides two arguments to this point.
00:13:02.240The demographics of faculty in any particular discipline does not generally reflect the population at large, and outside of sex ratios is not always accurately known.
00:13:15.480As an example, engineering researchers are more likely to be male than our nursing ones.
00:13:23.200Demanding both disciplines have the same sex ratios flies in the face of reality.
00:13:32.920The other argument we make is a moral one.
00:13:35.140A scholar should be valued for his or her individual contribution.
00:13:38.920We believe that there is something dehumanizing about being funded or hired, either fully or in part, because of identity group factors.
00:13:48.840I will share a story about a colleague of ours, Augie, who works in sociology on the East Coast,
00:13:54.720and wrote a piece in the SAF's newsletter a few years ago.
00:14:03.760So he was talking to an unnamed colleague, trying to convince him in the importance of merit as a principle of academic choice, academic merit.
00:14:15.800And the unnamed colleague talked to Augie and said, you know, when we were hiring you for this job, one of the things that we really liked about you is that you were gay and that it would bring more diversity to the department.
00:14:29.920This did not impress Augie because, as he said in the article, he was hoping that his colleagues appreciated him as a competent sociologist and not as a competent homosexual.
00:14:43.120A second point is academic freedom and how it's affected by EDI statements and research.
00:14:51.200So the final point I'd like to make around equity, diversity, inclusion statements.
00:14:54.800In our view, forcing researchers to voice support for EDI principles in their funding applications in the form of political and ideological attestation that should be considered anathema in a free society and is an extraneous criteria for funding.
00:15:08.600Some researchers may no doubt write such statements in good conscience.
00:15:12.260Others will have to outright lie or at least hide their real opinions in order to get the funding that allows them to the work that they have passion for.
00:15:20.500Those in the middle will feign enthusiasm for a commitment to EDI that does not exist.
00:15:24.920I believe that this is detrimental both because it infringes on the moral autonomy of researchers, but also because it creates a false idea of broad agreement and assent which may not well exist.
00:15:34.240Turkish-American academic Timur Karan has written much about preference falsification, where individuals falsify their beliefs due to social pressures to conform.
00:15:43.760Many other people in these groups will follow suit, falsifying their beliefs as they see the buy-in by their colleagues as proof of the widespread acceptance of the official perspective.
00:15:56.380As Curran's research shows, buy-in can face grave problems as people inevitably discover that many in their circles are not actually true believers, but indeed are themselves obfuscating their actual beliefs.
00:16:11.060Long-term buy-in to contentious beliefs like EDI requires that people have the moral autonomy to dissent without risking censure, career, suicide.
00:16:19.900Suicide. Mandating EDI statements of any kind in our view is unhealthy as it impinges on moral autonomy, but also self-defeating for EDI's proponents as it helps bury the arguments that need to be had for long-term acceptance.
00:16:35.460For these reasons, we believe that making funding decisions and hiring decisions based on identity factors and the requirement of EDI statements should not have any part in research funding criteria in Canada.
00:17:58.780I wish to raise concern over several aspects of research funding in Canada that fall under the rubric of EDI.
00:18:06.800The main point I wish to make is that EDI, as practiced by the research councils, reflects a left-wing worldview I term cultural socialism.
00:18:16.040Cultural socialism consists of two tenets.
00:18:18.940First, diversity and equity, which means rather than equalizing outcomes by class, as in, say, Marxist socialism, outcomes should instead be equalized by race and sex through discrimination against, say, white men.
00:18:34.140Second, inclusion, I, that minority groups must be protected from emotional harm, even if this requires censoring free speech and limiting the pursuit of truth.
00:18:44.320This aspect of EDI underpins what's known as cancel culture.
00:18:52.000When I asked a representative sample of 1,500 Canadians in September 2023 whether they approve of flying the pride flag on government buildings, those who identified as left-wing approved 63 to 24, while those who identified as right-wing disapproved 74 to 15.
00:19:10.240Centres also disapproved by a more modest 42 to 35.
00:19:14.180The point here is that EDI questions expose wide political divides.
00:19:21.000EDI is a dominant ethos of Canadian research funding councils, evidence in both diversity statements on application forms and naked race and sex discrimination in hiring and funding calls.
00:19:33.000I'll make three points here about EDI.
00:19:35.520The first, most Canadians do not support it.
00:19:38.720I found that 59% of Canadians favoured a colour-blind approach to, quote, combating racism by treating people as individuals and trying not to see race, unquote, as against just 29% for a colour-conscious approach involving, quote, combating racism by being made aware of race in order to better notice inequalities, unquote.
00:19:59.680Quote, in the U.S., a majority of people, including black and Hispanic respondents, support the Supreme Court decision banning race preferences in university admissions.
00:20:08.820Second point is that DEI reduces research excellence.
00:20:12.680Richard Sander famously showed that admitting black students to law schools with lower entrance scores correlated with those students achieving lower grades.
00:20:22.240More recently, data collected for a 2024 study in the journal Nature showed that female academics had significantly lower numbers of citations than men, even when controlling for field of study and years in the profession.
00:20:35.640Black and Hispanic scholars had substantially fewer citations than whites and Asians, though the gap was not as large as for gender.
00:20:41.680This may reflect a form of societal inequality, but artificially narrowing the talent pipeline at award stage does not rectify this problem.
00:20:51.360It merely prioritises equity over excellence.
00:20:55.140Third is that DEI creates the conditions for delegitimising research funding.
00:20:59.660Confidence in higher education in the United States has fallen from nearly 60% in 2015 to just 36% by 2024,
00:21:06.960among Republican voters from 56% in 2015 to 20% in 2024.
00:21:13.580In Canada, the trust remains higher, but it is at risk.
00:21:16.840For instance, I find just 49% of conservatives trust social science and humanities professors compared to 69% of those supporting the liberal NDP and Green parties.
00:21:28.980This is still higher, conservative support of 49% is still higher than the 34% trust I find among U.S. Republican voters.
00:21:37.920But this shows that once a sector becomes left-coded, it loses the confidence of conservative voters.
00:21:43.280Consider that only a quarter of Canadian conservative voters now trust the media,
00:21:48.020and that's approaching U.S. levels and support for established institutions such as the CBC is in sharp decline.
00:21:57.060Well, 75% to 90% of Canadian academics, according to surveys, are on the left, with a quarter identifying as far left.
00:22:04.380As William Deserowicz writes, they're therefore insulated from public opinion.
00:22:08.760This is why EDI heavily shapes grant assessment and hiring, despite being opposed by most voters.
00:22:14.700As the U.S. pattern shows, this is not sustainable.
00:22:17.040Public reaction to scenes on campus, especially since October 7th, which have been informed by Cultural Socialism's outrider of settler colonialism,
00:22:28.360I strongly advise Canadian research councils to abandon their current focus on Cultural Socialism, or EDI, if they wish to retain public support.
00:23:05.660In your book, The Parasitic Mind, How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense, you write this.
00:23:12.820For decades now, a set of idea pathogens, largely stemming from universities, has relentlessly assaulted science, reason, logic, freedom of thought, freedom of speech, individual liberty, and individual dignity.
00:23:25.680If we want our children and grandchildren to grow up in free societies, as we have done, then we have to be assured in our principles and stand ready to defend them.
00:23:36.640Earlier, we had Dr. Snow discuss some of his concerns.
00:23:41.300He had mentioned about an activist agenda having been embedded in funding applications, primarily in the social sciences and the humanities.
00:23:49.620So essentially, you're telling those looking for research to accept the narrative to get the funding.
00:23:56.200Should science not be about discovery and not accepting the narrative that some government bureaucrat or some university bureaucrat puts forward?
00:24:06.380And do you agree that we need to change this, and how?
00:25:39.460Dr. Kaufman, thank you for your comments.
00:25:42.420And you had also appeared at a committee here on November 28th and 2024.
00:25:48.060You had also appeared at the same time as Christopher Dummett, and some of the concerns that both of you had raised were with regards to the lack of viewpoint diversity.
00:25:58.480And in your testimony then, you had talked about, I would like to see the councils get ahead of the problem and move to a colorblind merit approach.
00:26:06.320Can you expand on that and what you would like to see and what recommendations you would make?
00:26:12.600Yeah, I mean, there are two issues here.
00:26:15.440I mean, one is the question of meritocracy, that is, non-discrimination on the basis of race and sex, which we've heard a lot about.
00:26:22.280There's also a point called viewpoint diversity, which is, I mentioned that 75 to 90 percent of academics in Canada,
00:26:28.360according to Chris Dummett's survey and Zach Patterson, were on the left.
00:26:33.940And so you have almost no, very few conservative voices from academia.
00:26:38.140We're seeing in the United States the implications that that has or may have for the health of the higher education sector.
00:26:45.380If you create a hostile environment for certain beliefs, such as conservatism, then you are going to essentially force those people not to go down the academic pathway
00:26:56.380and therefore deprive, particularly the social sciences and humanities, politicized disciplines that need viewpoint diversity in order to arrive at the correct answer.
00:27:06.300They're not going to get that viewpoint diversity, and so you're going to get all kinds of research that's going to go way off track.
00:27:11.420Mr. Thomas, for the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, on the website, it indicates many universities have policies that are discriminatory
00:27:23.160to the extent that they favor groups of students or faculty on the basis of race, sex, etc.
00:27:28.760Such preferential treatment is unfair, is damaging to academic excellence, and stigmatizes the very groups so favored.
00:27:36.780So how does our university systems, the tri-council agencies, how do we go about fixing that?
00:27:44.300I think we have to focus on merit, we have to focus on excellence, and do away with the privileging of identity factors.
00:27:54.820So increasingly within universities in Canada, people, there are advertisements, which you may have heard of from other witnesses,
00:28:02.320that if you want a particular position, you need to have a particular race, you have to be black, you have to be indigenous, you have to be a woman,
00:28:12.980instead of focusing on an individual's abilities to best meet the needs of that science.
00:28:23.300So focusing on excellence on their actual production as an individual, instead of focusing on something that they, by an accident of fate,
00:28:34.960they are a particular race, a particular background, that they bring nothing, people don't bring that to the table per se,
00:28:43.140that it's just something they are, rather than what they focus on with their work,
00:28:47.140which should be, that excellence should be, should be the benefit we're looking for.
00:28:57.360We will allow the seat to MP Noor Mohamad.
00:29:00.580MP Noor Mohamad, please go ahead, you will have six minutes.
00:29:04.360Thank you, Madam Chair, and maybe I'll start with you, Professor Saad,
00:29:07.420because I really did enjoy your book, The Sad Truth About Happiness,
00:29:10.300and sometimes in this profession I think we live in some of those, we live in some of those times.
00:29:14.860You know, listening to you today, I guess one of the questions that came to mind that I'd love if you could share with us
00:29:20.920is any empirical studies that you can cite that show that diversity initiatives actually harm the quality or objectivity of scientific research?