Jamie Sarkonak: He mildly questioned DEI. His law school calls that ‘misconduct’

Of note. May not have been from a neutral position but nevertheless a cautionary tale. Court case to watch:

…Tim Haggstrom’s crime? Writing an open letter to his fellow students, from a neutral position, to foster dialogue and attempt to inject reason into the debate. His punishment? A campaign by other students to sabotage his career, culminating in an official finding of misconduct by a spineless university that appears to have forgotten its role in protecting free expression on campus.

That campaign, at least, didn’t work. Now a lawyer (and the national director of the Runnymede Society, whose local chapter events I often attend) Haggstrom, via his legal team at civil liberties charity Freedoms Advocate, is asking the Saskatchewan Court of King’s Bench to have the misconduct ruling thrown out — along with the university policies that work to deny procedural fairness to those who don’t emphatically agree with diversity, equity and inclusion.

For the university’s own sake, Haggstrom better win.

He alleges unfair, Charter-infringing treatment in his court filings, and he’s got a strong argument. At the time Haggstrom expressed the need for discussion over affirmative action at the law school, the University of Saskatchewan had already adopted an identity-based worldview, aimed at elevating certain groups in the university.

The institution had, since 2020, a diversity, equity and inclusion policy that implored the entire campus to uphold DEI values, cementing identity-based thinking — and with it, the idea that procedures are only fair when they result in equal outcomes between groups — into campus culture. That year, the university president committed himself to the “dismantling of institutional structures, policies and processes that contribute to inequalities faced by marginalized groups.”

In 2021, the university signed a memorandum of understanding with the student union, committing to deliver anti-oppression and anti-racism training to staff, which was being rolled out by the next year. That initiative was led by anti-racist scholar Verna St. Denis, who has openly called for biasing university education to favour her own progressive, deeply racial worldview. St. Denis also contributed to the university’s Indigenous strategy, also released in 2021, which planned for institution-wide decolonial change.

Further, according to the originating application filed in court by Haggstrom, the university had made training materials available on the topic of “power and privilege.” The materials are no longer on the university website, but were archived online. They teach a hierarchical understanding of race (specifically, that white people have better access to education and success); they characterize meritocracy as a feature of “settler mindsets”; they state that internalized colonialism causes oppressed people to commit sexual assault; they instruct readers to “refute colonialism” (that is, the very basis of our nation) to assist in making Canada “the friendly, open, welcoming country it espouses to be.” They remark that anti-oppressive education “ought to be uncomfortable as white students begin to unlearn what they have been taught through their previous learning experiences.”

The course ends on a question: “As an individual how can you decolonize yourself and what can you do with your power and privilege to help in the betterment of Canada?”…

Source: Jamie Sarkonak: He mildly questioned DEI. His law school calls that ‘misconduct’