I wish to raise concern over several aspects of research funding in Canada that fall under the rubric of diversity, equity and inclusion, DEI.
The main point I wish to make is that DEI, as practised by the research councils, reflects a left-wing world view I term “cultural socialism”.
Cultural socialism consists of two tenets. The first is diversity and equity. 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.
The second is inclusion. Minority groups must be protected from emotional harm, even if this requires censoring free speech and limiting the pursuit of truth. This aspect of DEI underpins what's known as “cancel culture”.
DEI is political, not neutral. When 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 63-24, while those who identified as right wing disapproved 74-15. Centrists also disapproved by more a more modest 42-35. The point here is that DEI questions expose wide political divides, therefore DEI is political.
DEI is a dominant ethos of Canadian research funding councils, evident in both diversity statements on application forms and naked race and sex discrimination in hiring and funding calls.
I'll make three points here about DEI. First, most Canadians do not support it. I found that 59% of Canadians favoured a colour-blind approach to combatting racism by treating people as individuals and trying not to see race, as against just 29% for a colour-conscious approach involving combatting racism by being made aware of race, in order to better notice inequalities. In the U.S., a majority of people, including Black and Hispanic respondents, support the Supreme Court decision banning racial preferences in university admissions.
Second, DEI reduces research excellence. Richard Sander famously showed that admitting Black students to law schools with lower entrance scores correlated with those students achieving lower grades. More 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. Black and Hispanic scholars had substantially fewer citations than whites and Asians, though the gap was not as large as for gender. This may reflect a form of societal inequality, but artificially narrowing the talent pipeline at award stage does not rectify this problem. It merely prioritizes equity over excellence.
Third, DEI creates the conditions for delegitimizing research funding. Confidence in higher education in the United States has fallen from nearly 60% in 2015 to just 36% by 2024. Among Republican voters, it's gone from 56% in 2015 to 20% in 2024.
In Canada trust remains higher, but it is at risk. For 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. Conservative support of 49% is still higher than the 34% trust I find among U.S. Republican voters, but this shows that once a sector becomes left-coded, it loses the confidence of Conservative voters. Consider that only a quarter of Canadian Conservative voters now trust the media and that's approaching U.S. levels, and support for established institutions such as the CBC is in sharp decline.
Why isn't this recognized? Some 75% to 90% of Canadian academics, according to surveys, are on the left, with a quarter identifying as “far left”. As William Deresiewicz writes, they're therefore insulated from public opinion. This is why DEI heavily shapes grant assessment and hiring, despite being opposed by most voters.
As the U.S. pattern shows, this is not sustainable. Public reaction to scenes on campus, especially since October 7, which have been informed by cultural socialism's outrider of settler colonialism, will only make this more salient.
I strongly advise Canadian research councils to abandon their current focus on cultural socialism or DEI if they wish to retain public support.
Thank you.