If you think the purveyors of DEI are about to roll over and die, think again.
“When a man is killed in the films, he folds up decorously and has the decency to die quietly. In real life, it’s different.” So observes author Desmond Bagley in his career-best thriller, Flyaway, when one fatally wounded villain screams interminably until a grim-faced protagonist trigger-pulls the coup de grâce — a rifle muzzle to the temple. Then there is silence.
This was the first novel I read as a young teenager, and it stuck with me. That a fictional story should share such a clear-sighted truth, thereby heightening its own verisimilitude, is a neat writer’s trick, one that perfectly parallels an emerging reality today — that the advocates of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), as in the book, are not going to roll over and die quietly.
In a post on X, Canadian author and strident colonial revisionist Bruce Gilley drew attention to a recent mealy-mouthed op-ed in the Edmonton Journal by Bill Flanagan, president and vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta, which declared that his university was embarking on a new strategy of supplanting its widespread and unpopular DEI activities — now almost universally rubbished as left-leaning divisive nonsense — with a fresh agenda, one that is now rebranded with Postmodern self-assurance as “access, community and belonging (ACB).”
But in Gilley’s blunt retort, “ACB is the new DEI.”
Setting aside appetizing references to alphabet spaghetti, it is worth examining what is being put forward here, and to call out the obvious word-association games that are being played in the public square. That’s because progressives tend to supercharge their rhetoric by co-opting Postmodernist tropes, such as kidnapping well-established words in common parlance and then changing their meanings by fiat to suit their ideological ends.
Consider for instance “inclusion,” that very narcissistic “I” in DEI. The idea seems impossible to resist, but the inclusive spaces concocted by our institutions work only so long as everyone feels welcome. To achieve that, any offensive remarks — as denominated by the most easily offended — must immediately be checked. Hence, inclusion means restricted speech and, inevitably, uniformity of thought.
Diversity is my own personal favourite misnomer. In the DEI lexicon it reflects the breadth of representation defined by immutable human qualities such as race, sex, gender identity and sexuality, among others, which again sounds appealing. “Diversity is our strength,” the advocates endlessly profess. But, much like Bagley’s revelation, the truth is very different. The diversity applies to all things except opinions and views, and those who do not agree must be swiftly silenced by means of cancellation — something that I experienced first-hand. Diversity, then, is another totem for intellectual conformity.
The term “equity” — more broadly associated with businesses and homeowners — has been linguistically fudged by progressives to become “equality of outcome,” which simply translates to imposing anti-meritocratic quotas in the workplace when it comes to hiring and promoting.
The new terms tabled by Flanagan follow a familiar pattern. The word “access” seems wholly innocuous, serving as a banal opener. According to Flanagan, access aims to “remove financial and social barriers.” So, scholarships, then: hardly a game-changing educational breakthrough.
Meanwhile, “community” denotes “our belief in collective well-being and shared purpose.” Again, this adds nothing new to the debate, since universities from their earliest days have ever been self-regarding communities of people engaged in the quest for learning. What university does not believe in the collective (and coddled) pursuit of truth?
And then there is “belonging,” that tell-tale hallmark of applied Postmodernism whereby a person’s identity is defined by bundled subscriptions to various identity clubs so as to marginalize individuality and autonomy, at once problematizing the universal principles advanced by modern science. Normal people hear of “belongings” and think about lost luggage; but when “belonging” comes from the mouths of university apparatchiks, it means ideological taxology — “We are going to label you (to death) and for your own good.”
Gilley is right, of course, and Flanagan is naïve to think that a simple costume change will bamboozle the forces, both federal and provincial, already coalescing around wokeness like paralyzing Dementors. As Dr. Mark D’Souza points out, the American College of Surgeons has tried on a similar bait-and-switch by rebranding DEI as ‘inclusive excellence.’ No one was deceived.
The new concept of ACB is merely a pivot by university administrators in a last gasp — as desperate as it is pathetic — preserve their fiefdoms. In Canada, with fewer than 10 months left before a change of government darkens the otherwise sunlit uplands ahead of their superannuated retirement packages, such administrative types might well be forgiven. If Jagmeet Singh can play endless delay tactics — by decrying the Liberals while simultaneously withholding support for a motion of no confidence — then why should university provosts and presidents refrain from similar sleights of hand?
Canadians will not so easily be fooled, and these academic ideologues should be afforded all the tenderness and mercy they visited upon the countless victims of their cancellations among the professoriate and elsewhere. Which was none at all.
Barring a political miracle, a Conservative majority government led by Pierre Poilievre will take the helm in 2025. Foolish gambits by bespectacled polemicists like Bill Flanagan attempting to weasel their universities’ way out of the DEI quagmire are the echoing screams of a dying cult. This might not be a work of fiction, but a new Canadian prime minister will need to move in for the killshot.
National Post
Leigh Revers is associate professor with the Institute for Management & Innovation at the University of Toronto