In this episode, Dr. Carl Sagan discusses the need for diversity, inclusion, and equity in Canada's academic institutions, and why the use of diversity and equity as criteria for allocating research funds is an affront to individual dignity and to research excellence.
00:00:00.000Many thanks for the invitation to participate in this important discussion.
00:00:04.420Meritocracy is the sole operative ethos when judging research excellence.
00:00:08.780Scientific quests have a singular goal to better understand the world and its wondrous mysteries.
00:00:15.120Science is not an empathy party meant to elevate and celebrate so-called marginalized groups.
00:00:21.340The use of diversity, inclusion, and equity when allocating research funds is an affront to individual dignity and to research excellence.
00:00:30.760A 2025 report by the Aristotle Foundation found that 97.5% of academic job postings at Canadian universities reference diversity, inclusion, and equity.
00:00:43.880I will discuss briefly three such examples from my chapter in The War on Science.
00:00:48.480First example, the University of Waterloo's School of Computer Science recently advertised for two open NSERC Tier 1 Canada Research Chairs, and I quote their cult.
00:00:59.500Their call, position one in all areas of artificial intelligence, the call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as women, transgender, gender fluid, non-binary, or two-spirit.
00:01:14.060Second position in all areas of computer science, the call is open only to qualified individuals who self-identify as a member of a racialized minority.
00:01:46.340Third example, from my own university, Concordia University, researchers there obtained a New Frontiers in Research grant to decolonize light.
00:01:57.440On their website, they explain, quote, the Decolonizing Light Project explores ways and approaches to decolonize science, such as revitalizing and restoring Indigenous knowledge and capacity building.
00:02:12.620The Decolonize Light Project is congruent with the five-year strategic plan of Concordia University to decolonize and indigenize the entire curriculum and pedagogy.
00:02:25.240Apparently, science has suffered for too long from a whiteness problem.
00:02:30.580Canadian medicine has also succumbed to this parasitized ideological capture, as I discuss in my forthcoming book, Suicidal Empathy.
00:02:38.260The Anti-Racism Expert Working Groups of CanMeds, which develops evolving training codes for physicians and surgeons in Canada, concluded that, quote,
00:02:50.480a new model of CanMeds would seek to center values such as anti-oppression, anti-racism, and social justice rather than medical expertise.
00:03:01.480If you suffer from an aggressive cancer, it might be comforting to know that your oncologist is trained to, quote,
00:03:09.020combat the historical and ongoing struggles, structures of racism, white supremacy, settler colonialism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, classism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and more.
00:03:30.320Science is or should be an apolitical process.
00:03:34.360Scientific truths and natural laws exist independent of researchers' identities.
00:03:41.200The distribution of prime numbers does not change as a function of whether the mathematician is a white heterosexual Christian man or a transgendered Muslim obese individual.
00:03:51.980The periodic table of elements is not dependent on whether a chemist is a Latinx queer or a cis-normative Hasidic Jew.
00:04:01.640Oh, you are a non-binary bisexual chemist?
00:04:05.280Well, this completely changes the atomic numbers of carbon, palladium, and uranium.