Tweeting on Christmas Eve, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre promised to “defund wokism and fight antisemitism. And stand with our friends in Israel against terror.” The statement included a link to an interview he gave to the Winnipeg Jewish Review, in which he said he would “defund … all those with a woke antisemitic agenda,” including universities.
Writing in the National Post, Terry Newman suggested that Poilievre had made “a promise to Canadians and we should hold him to it.” Others, however, took a very different view. Responding to Poilievre on X, University of Victoria professor Will Greaves charged that Poilievre was spouting “vapid, too-online rightwing rhetoric.… No details, no evidence, just vague promises to go after all the people his followers have been primed to envy and resent.”
It is tempting to explain the growing gulf between these two positions as a product of material self-interest on the part of those working in Canadian universities. Although the current Liberal government is very unpopular with the general electorate, it has been generous in its funding of the university sector.
If this is what accounts for the growing difference of opinion between the general public and academics, there may yet be hope that Canadian universities will at least superficially change course as the prospect of a Conservative government becomes more tangible and broader moves away from “woke” ideology occur throughout the English-speaking world. This is essentially the view taken by Leigh Revers in these pages last week.
Unfortunately, this explanation overlooks the extent to which far-left ideology has entrenched itself within many of Canada’s universities over the past decade — to the point that they may be unable to rationally respond to these incentives.
While left-wing prominence has long been a feature of Canadian academic life, a 2022 study by Christopher Dummitt and Zachary Patterson found that only nine per cent of Canadian university professors voted for right-leaning parties in the 2021 federal election, and only 12 per cent identified as “right-leaning” in their political views. These numbers suggest that Canadian universities are not just left-leaning, but in fact now amount to something of an ideological monoculture.
There is little reason to believe that the ideological make-up of Canadian university professors has improved since 2022. If anything, “equity, diversity and inclusion” (EDI) requirements attached to federal research funding by the current Liberal government have encouraged universities to focus further on “woke” research priorities, which has had a visible effect on hiring at many institutions.
This is in addition to the EDI statements that many universities have voluntarily chosen to impose on prospective hires, which commentators have rightly recognized as tantamount to an ideological litmus test. Even as Poilievre’s Conservative party approaches 50 per cent support in some national polls, and seems poised to form a strong majority government in the next election, centrist and right-leaning professors almost certainly continue to occupy a marginalized position at most, if not all, Canadian universities.
This level of ideological homogeneity is concerning enough on its own, given the extent to which Canada’s universities depend upon public funding to operate. But it also has significant negative consequences, not the least of which is the growing gulf between academic and public opinion.
Dummitt and Patterson’s study reported that nearly half of right-leaning professors were worried about professional repercussions should their entirely mainstream views on EDI initiatives and social justice become known to their colleagues, and more than half expressed these concerns about their views on gender identity. This is not the mark of a healthy academic culture, but of one that prizes ideological conformity at the expense of robust intellectual debate in service of the overall public interest.
Students have also suffered as a result of the ideological monoculture that now reigns on most university campuses. During the “great awokening” of 2020-2021, many students who refused to conform were subjected to attacks from their classmates and even formal disciplinary proceedings, as was the case with a student at my own faculty who dared to make Facebook posts mocking the Canadian federal public service’s affirmative action-style hiring policies.
Still more concerning incidents took place over the past year that appear to confirm the confluence between wokeism and antisemitism that Poilievre referenced. According to reports, Jewish students at multiple universities were subject to harassment on campus, their only apparent crime being that they were cast as members of an “oppressor” group and thus held to be personally complicit in “genocide” under the prevailing “woke” intersectional framework.
So, while some hold out hope that Canadian universities can bring themselves back in line with prevailing public opinion, there are significant reasons to doubt that this is possible, at least in the short term. This is highly unfortunate, given that it could cause them to lose funding.
While universities play an essential role in Canada’s intellectual and cultural life, the value that should be ascribed to that role is directly dependant on their ability to act in a manner that is conducive to the overall public good. We can hope against all hope that Canada’s universities will get their houses in order, but we should not be surprised if they face a reckoning instead.
National Post
Stéphane Sérafin is an assistant professor at the University of Ottawa faculty of law, common law section.