“A Stark Warning” on Ideological Control of Universities

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It’s been a while since I did one of these long replies to an editorial, but this one needs a response. The other week I was reading Peter MacKinnon’s “A stark warning about the state of Canadian academia: Universities are ostracizing monocultures that need reform

Peter MacKinnon often has interesting things to talk about, and I appreciate hearing his perspective, much as I often disagree with his solutions. So lets look at his evidence and solutions

The Evidence

The starting point to this editorial is a quote from Dr. Yuan Yi Zhu when speaking to the Canadian House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. I’ll give you the long version:

However, I think it is fair to say that within Canadian academia, there is a monoculture where, if you deviate even very slightly from what is fashionable and what is commonly accepted by your peers, not only will you be ostracized, but often you will not be able to have an academic career in the first place.

Unfortunately, when I advise my students, I have to tell them, “You know, if you are in any way not progressive, you have to hide your views until you actually have at least a dissertation accepted, because otherwise you will never get ahead.”

https://openparliament.ca/committees/science-and-research/44-1/111/dr-yuan-yi-zhu-2

This was said in the context of concerns being raised regarding the use of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion requirements in applications for federal research funding. Dr. Yuan also had concerns that the approval of funding applications was often tied to the use of specific buzzwords rather than the strength of the research proposal. He proposes that both the requirement to speak to EDI and the preference given to buzzwords means that federal research funding tends to follow ideological trends.

I think it’s important to point out that Dr. Yuan’s perspective here is that the funding awarding needs to be non-ideological, because that is not what MacKinnon takes away from it. Instead his reading of it is influenced primarily by the other presenters at the same committee session, Eric Kaufmann and Christopher Dummitt.

Although Mr. Kaufmann tried to connect his perspective with Dr. Yuan’s, his perspective was that the problem is not lack of neutrality, but rather that the reviewers are politically left leaning and the political perspectives of the granting council need to be balanced

I think that the values of the general public that supports research are what should prevail, not the values of academics, I’m afraid—or at least the vocal academics who wind up participating in these committees.

I disagree with Mr. Kaufmann here that his perspective is the same as what Dr. Yuan stated. It may align with what Dr. Yuan believes and has said elsewhere, but it does not align with what he said in this case and so I have no interest in trying to attach Kaufmann’s perspective to Dr. Yuan, unfortunately, this is exactly what MacKinnon does.

MacKinnon links in an editorial to support him written by Jamie Sarkonak, which is focused more on what Dr. Christopher Dummitt discussed at the committee, around a lack of “viewpoint diversity” in academia and that this leads to conservative academics “self-censoring” which, he says, damages any attempt to have universities be a “truth-seeking and truth-validating research enterprise”.

Sarkonak condenses all of this into the declaration

Together, they described an environment of injustice and conformity — cultivated in part by the ideologically guided hand of the federal government through its research funding agencies. It’s just not fair.

Although beginning with the quote from Dr. Yuan, the true starting point for MacKinnon is that the combination of DEI statement requirements as well as the lack of politically conservative members of the decision panels means that access to federal research funding is not a level playing field and leads to a lack of viewpoint diversity. That term is important because it is a term that is never mentioned by MacKinnon, but is in the title of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute study (“The viewpoint diversity crisis at Canadian universities” by lead researcher Dr. Dummitt who I previously mentioned) that he uses to transition from talking about federal research funding to the actions of professors collectively, and to bring up his concerns with the the political beliefs of professors.

MacKinnon continues by citing the Liberal Party of Canada’s 2021 political platform encouraging diversity in various areas. Of note, from what I can tell, the result of this platform four years later is the creation of a leadership development initiative and the hiring of less than two dozen “culturally competent and trauma-informed” counsellors.

These three points, MacKinnon, contends, have led to a situation where “students fall silent rather than challenge orthodoxies presented to them in classes”.

This provides the background to the rest of his editorial. His evidence then is:

  1. Dr. Yuan’s statements about how Canada has gone too far toward trying to use federal research funding to encourage Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and instead the funding should be ideologically neutral.
  2. There is a lack of conservative viewpoints among federal research funding reviewers.
  3. The current government party talks about wanting to increase diversity across Canada.
  4. There is a lack of conservative viewpoints among professors in Academia.
  5. The lack of conservative viewpoints among professors discourages conservative students from expressing themselves.

Unfortunately MacKinnon does not directly connect from the first three points to the final two, allowing the reader to make their own connection, but as I see it, the argument is that the Liberals have imposed their view (evidence point 3) on the granting councils (point 2) which can now be seen in Dr. Yuan’s perspective (point 1) and because they have done this it has changed the political ideology of professors (point 4) and that is impacting students (point 5) and is further changing the makeup of granting councils (point 2). The implicit argument is that this is a cyclical problem which would make things worse eventually for those who are not left leaning.

In support of his point is Drs. Dummitt and Patterson’s research that 88 percent of professors identify as voting for left leaning parties and only 9 percent for right leaning parties. Now, if this is a cyclical problem advanced by the ideology of the Liberal Party it means that it must have something to do with the ascent of the Liberal Party ten years ago. Thankfully we don’t have to take their word for it, we can look at previous research such as that published by Nakhaie and Adam in the Canadian Journal of Sociology in 2008 (PDF) which helped form the foundation of Dummitt & Patterson’s. As seen in these tables, although the headline of Dummitt & Patterson’s research is what political direction they claim to lean (88/9), the research on how they voted is different.

Self-reported voted for1993199720002021
Right leaning1311118
Left leaning80837877
Professors
Self-reported voted for1993199720002021
Right leaning35383837
Left leaning62606060
General Population

As you can see from these comparisons there is very little change over time for the general population in Canada. Just under 40% of the population votes for right leaning parties while around 60% votes for left leaning parties. And there is a noticeable change for professors, but the biggest change for professors is actually an increase in voting for non-major parties, which moved from 2.7% to 7.4% between 1993 and 2021.

Unfortunately this leaves the evidence rather shaky. If the proportion of left/right hasn’t changed much in thirty years, then this is not a new problem, rather this is something that is simply reflective of who decides to work in academia. The political ideology of professors has not substantially changed (if using who they vote for as the assessment) since 1993. Which means that the makeup of granting councils is unlikely to have changed. And since there was no actual material changes made by the Liberals in their push for diversity with the exception of adding the EDI statements, points 2, 3, and 4 are flimsy, but point 1 still stands. Point 5 was an extrapolation by MacKinnon from the first four, which without further evidence seems unsupported.

Unfortunately this leaves us where we started, with Dr. Yuan’s statement on the importance of research funding being independent from ideology being the only evidence we have going into MacKinnon’s solutions.

The Problem and Solution

This problem, according to MacKinnon is best seen by his first solution:

What is to be done? There is a short-term and long-term answer to this question. A prospective change of government in Ottawa should reverse the present government’s agenda that has been imposed on the sector, and provincial governments should insist that their universities focus on excellence and the search for truth, not on progressive or social justice goals. Failure of any institutions to do so should be reflected in funding decisions.

The problem represented here is that the government’s focus on and requirements around diversity distracts from, or harms, a “focus on excellence and the search for truth”.

That would line up well with Dr. Yuan’s perspective that mandating diversity statements is harmful to research independence. However, the final line of the proposal is not about government, but rather about institutions needing to abandon “progressive or social justice goals” and that the government should cut their funding if they don’t. Because some research is directly and intentionally about progressive goals or social justice goals, this means that MacKinnon is not advocating neutrality in funding allocation, but rather is advocating replacing the Liberal Party of Canada’s ideology with another party’s ideology.

Although this does not align with Dr. Yuan’s words, it does align with Dr. Dummitt’s and Mr. Kaufmann’s. The problem for them is not that the government needs to get out of the role of imposing their ideology, but rather that other ideologies should be able to be imposed.

MacKinnon then continues into his longer term proposal, which is governance reform. Here he identifies several threats to good university governance.

  1. Substantial institutional growth
  2. Faculty unionization leading to Senate dysfunction
  3. Student councils using member fees for causes students don’t support
  4. Flawed Board appointment processes and dysfunction

His questions then are:

how do we strengthen statutory governance bodies, boards and senates? How do we ensure that freedom of expression and academic freedom prevail over institutional and personal politics? Should we insist that fees collected by students or on their behalf be used for student services, and not for political causes inimical to the interests of some that pay them?

I agree with MacKinnon that Senates and Boards need to be focused, strong, and know what their roles, goals, and objectives are. Further, I think he may be correct that substantial institutional growth and changes in faculty labour relations have caused some of the lack of focus and unclear roles in governance. I probably disagree with him on how to solve that however, because although MacKinnon doesn’t present any full solutions, he does hint that one solution is more oversight through external board appointees who are more in line with the public interest as determined by the government. Or to put it another way, more in line with the ideology of governments. And as mentioned in his short term solutions, a government without a left-wing ideology.

It’s the final two questions that make me raise an eyebrow. He advocates for freedom of expression and for academic freedom (two separate things). But he also has concerns with how student councils operate. He earlier states that “student councils use member fees to support causes that are an affront to some of those obliged to pay them”. Student councils are elected by other students. He seems to be advocating for universities to mandate how these councils may operate. But that would indeed be the institution rejecting the freedom of expression of students, as displayed by their choices in a student council election.

My worry here then is that his short term solution is not independence, but rather requiring adherence of universities to a government ideology (just a different one than currently), and his long term solution is not freedom of expression, but limiting expression to ideology approved by the university.

A Stark Warning

Peter MacKinnon is indeed giving a stark warning. It’s a stark warning that when he looks at the problems in Canadian Academia he sees the problem is not that it is a “monoculture” but that it is the wrong “monoculture”. If we work from the short term solution to the long we see this:

  1. Replace a left-wing ideology in government with a right wing ideology
  2. Ensure that the new government ideology is reflected in funding decisions for research
  3. Reform University Governance to better align with and implement the new government ideology
  4. Limit student expression that does not align with the new government ideology

I want to close off where MacKinnon does

Everyone in our universities, and governments responsible for them, should be chilled by the diagnosis of Professor Yuan, and should ask themselves if there is truth in his words. If their answers are yes, as they should be, they must commit to reforms that are necessary for their institutions to survive and again command wide public support.

I ask myself if there is truth in Professor Yuan’s words, and the answer is yes, on the concept that research funding should be ideologically neutral. MacKinnon then says that I must commit to reforms, but the reforms that MacKinnon proposes are not ideologically neutral, but rather are the opposite. What is proposed is not neutrality in the search for truth, it is adherence to the ideology brought in after “A prospective change of government in Ottawa”.

MacKinnon is right, the idea of someone as well regarded as he is proposing more government control of research and university governance, and limitations on student speech should be a stark warning to everyone in Canadian academia.

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