How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism

2025/07/31 Leave a comment

Thoughtful reflections and suggestions how EDI policies can be inclusive of Jewish identities:

According to Statistics Canada, police-reported hate crimes against Jews rose by 82 per cent in 2023.

In the months following Oct. 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, university campuses across Canada became sites of tension, protest and divisions.

Jewish students and faculty increasingly reported feeling alone, excluded and targeted.

As our research has examined, despite these urgent realities, Jewish identity and antisemitism remain largely invisible in the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) frameworks of Canadian higher education.

These frameworks are meant to address the ongoing effects of historical and structural marginalization. Emerging from the four designated categories in Canada’s Employment Equity Act, EDI policies in Canadian universities tend to centre race, Indigeneity as well as gender, with limited attention to religious affiliation.

Canadian higher education’s primary EDI focus on racism and decolonization is important, given the history of exclusion and marginalization of Black people, Indigenous Peoples and people of colour in Canada. Yet, this framing inadequately addresses the historical and ongoing antisemitism in Canada.

A cross-university study of EDI policies

To understand this oversight, we conducted a content and discourse analysis of the most recent (at the time of the study) EDI policies and Canada Research Chair EDI documents from 28 Canadian universities.

Our sample included English-speaking research universities of more than 15,000 students and a few smaller universities to ensure regional representation.

We focused on how these documents referred to Jewish identity, antisemitism and related terms, as well as how they situated these within broader EDI discourses. We found that, in most cases, antisemitism and Jewish identity were either completely absent or mentioned only superficially.

Three patterns emerged from our analysis:

1. Antisemitism is marginalized as a systemic issue: Where it appears, antisemitism is generally folded into long lists of forms of discrimination, alongside racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia and other “isms.” Unlike anti-Black racism or Indigenous-based racism, which often have dedicated sections and careful unpacking, antisemitism is rarely examined. While EDI policies can be performative, they still represent institutional commitment and orientation. Not specifically considering antisemitism renders it peripheral and unimportant, even though it remains a pressing issue on campuses.

2. Jewish identity is reduced to religion: When Jewishness is acknowledged in EDI frameworks, it is almost always under the category of religious affiliation, appearing as part of the demographic sections. This framing erases the ethnic and cultural dimensions of Jewish identity and peoplehood and disregards the ways in which many Canadian Jews understand themselves. The lack of understanding of Jewishness as an intersectional identity also erases the experiences of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews, and Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews.

While some Jews may identify as white, some do not, and even those who benefit from white privilege may still experience antisemitism and exclusion.

The recent scholarly study, “Jews and Israel 2024: A Survey of Canadian Attitudes and Jewish Perceptions” by sociologist Robert Brym, finds that 91 per cent of 414 Jewish respondents in the overall study believe that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state — a response Brym believes indicates that the respondent is a Zionist, echoing a broad definition of the term. (Three per cent of Jewish respondents opposed the view that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state, and six per cent said they didn’t know).

For most Canadian Jews in the study, Brym writes, “support for the existence of a Jewish state in Israel is a central component of their identity.”

But Zionism presents a challenge for EDI for several reasons. Firstly, Zionism enters into a tension with (mis)conceptions of Jews as non-racialized people within anti-racism discourses.

Secondly, some scholars and activist movements address Zionism largely as a form of settler colonialism.

While debates over the historical sources of Zionism and their political implications are legitimate and evolving, the danger arises when debates shift to embodying and targeting Jews as individuals. Furthermore, “anti-Zionist” discourses, often amplified in student protests, risk flattening the diversity that exists under the Zionist identification.

3. Pairing antisemitism and Islamophobia: In the EDI policies we examined, antisemitism is rhetorically paired with Islamophobia: In nearly every case where antisemitism was mentioned, it was coupled with Islamophobia. This rhetorical symmetry may be driven by institutional anxiety over appearing biased or by attempts to balance political sensitivities. Yet it falsely implies that antisemitism and Islamophobia are similar or are inherently connected.

While intersectional analysis of antisemitism and Islamophobia can yield insight, this pairing functions as an avoidance mechanism and a shortcut.

Failure to name, analyze Jewish identity

The erasure of antisemitism from EDI policies affects how Jewish students and faculty experience campus life. Jews may not be marginalized in the same way as other equity-seeking groups, yet they are still deserving of protection and inclusion.

The EDI principle of listening to lived experiences cannot be applied selectivity. Jewish identity is complex, and framing it narrowly contributes to undercounting Jewish people in institutional data and EDI policies. Simplistic classifications erase differences, silence lived experiences and reinforce assimilation.

By failing to name and analyze Jewish identity and antisemitism, universities leave Jewish members of the academic community without appropriate mechanisms of support. The lack of EDI recognition reflects and reproduces the perceptions of Jews as powerful and privileged, resulting in a paradox: Jewish people are often treated as outside the bounds of EDI, even as antisemitism intensifies.

The question of Jewish connection to Israel or Zionism introduces another layer of complexity that most EDI policies avoid entirely. While criticism of Israeli state policies is not antisemitic, many Jews experience exclusion based on real or perceived Zionist identification. Universities cannot afford to ignore this dynamic, even when it proves uncomfortable or politically fraught.

What needs to change

If Canadian universities are to build truly inclusive campuses, then their EDI frameworks must evolve in both language and structure.

First, antisemitism must be recognized as a form of racism, not merely religious intolerance. This shift would reflect how antisemitism has historically operated and continues to manifest through racialized tropes, conspiracy theories and scapegoating.

Second, institutions must expand their data collection and demographic frameworks to reflect the full dimensions of Jewish identity: religious, ethnic and cultural. Without this inclusion, the understanding of Jewish identity will remain essentialized and unacknowledged.

Third, Jewish voices, including those of Jews of colour, LGBTQ+ Jews and Jews with diverse relationships to Zionism, must be included in EDI consultation processes. These perspectives are critical to understanding how antisemitism intersects with other forms of marginalization.

Fourth, the rhetorical pairing of antisemitism and Islamophobia, while perhaps intended to promote balance, should be replaced with a deep unpacking of both phenomena and their intersections.

Finally, universities must resist the urge to treat difficult conversations as too controversial to include. Complex dialogue should not be a barrier to equity work. The gaps we identified reveal how current EDI frameworks can exclude any group whose identities fall outside established categories.

In a time of polarization and disinformation, universities must model how to hold space for complexity and foster real inclusion.

Source: How to improve university EDI policies so they address Jewish identity and antisemitism

Filed under Antisemitism, DEI, Multiculturalism Tagged with ,

Morton: Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives

2025/07/11 Leave a comment

Interesting argument. But greater ideological diversity and openness would be welcome:

…Conservatives have criticized identity-based affirmative action because, they suggest, it imposes an expectation on students of color that they will represent what is presumed to be, say, the Black or Latino view on any given issue, which discourages freethinking. Admitting students for viewpoint diversity would turn the holding of conservative ideas into a quasi-identity, subject to some of the same concerns. Students admitted to help restore ideological balance would likely feel a responsibility to defend certain views, regardless of the force of opposing arguments they might encounter.

For professors hired for their political beliefs, the pressure to maintain those views would be even greater. If you had a tenure-track position, your salary, health insurance and career prospects would all depend on the inflexibility of your ideology. The smart thing to do in that situation would be to interact with other scholars who share your point of view and to read publications that reinforce what you already believe. Or you might simply engage with opposing ideas in bad faith, refusing even to consider their merits. This would create the sort of ideological echo chamber that proponents of viewpoint diversity have suggested, often with some justification, leads to closed-mindedness among left-leaning professors…

Jennifer M. Morton, professor of philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania

Source: Why Hiring Professors With Conservative Views Could Backfire on Conservatives

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Lisée | Les gardiens du dogme

2025/07/09 Leave a comment

Applies more broadly than to trans:

…Le malaise déborde du cadre des ordres professionnels impliqués pour s’étendre au milieu universitaire. « Soyons francs, le climat qui prévaut dans les milieux universitaires nous inquiète », écrivent les sages. « Loin d’offrir l’espace par excellence au questionnement et à l’organisation d’une délibération ouverte, rationnelle et apaisée, l’université semble plus que jamais exposée aux effets pernicieux de la polarisation. »

Le rapport cite Rachida Azdouz, psychologue et chercheuse affiliée au Laboratoire de recherche en relations interculturelles : « Quand des chercheurs sont considérés comme des “alliés” par leur terrain de prédilection, il leur devient difficile de formuler une pensée indépendante sur les enjeux qu’ils sont censés documenter. » Or, il en va ainsi d’universitaires qui s’affichent à la fois sur les plateaux de télé comme des « experts » de la question trans et, sur leurs sites Web, comme des « alliés » de la cause. Ce n’est plus de la science, mais de la militance.

Une chercheuse a par exemple raconté aux sages qu’elle avait été soumise à des pressions pour supprimer des résultats dans une recherche de façon à occulter les besoins particuliers des femmes de sexe biologique. « J’ai vécu un clash de valeurs, parce que je viens […] d’un univers scientifique, » leur a-t-elle dit.

Le rapport note que « l’intimidation ou la censure ne sont pas le fait d’une majorité, mais d’une minorité ». Force est de constater qu’elle est d’une grande efficacité. « Nous avons entendu des témoignages d’universitaires qui n’ont accepté de nous parler que sous le sceau de la confidentialité, craignant de recevoir des menaces ou de nuire à leur carrière. Nous avions affaire à des personnes posées, reconnues dans leur domaine d’expertise, qui souhaiteraient pouvoir soulever certaines questions ou explorer certains champs de recherche au regard de l’identité de genre. »

Les sages citent cette chercheuse : « La militance ne soutient pas le dialogue, mais l’adhésion à une identité de genre, et s’il n’y a pas adhésion complète, il y a injonction d’endosser l’idéologie. » Un membre d’un groupe de femmes ajoute : « On est arrivé à un stade où les membres ne veulent même plus s’exprimer sur la question. Le problème, c’est la radicalité. Il y en a à chaque bout du spectre. La majorité est entre les deux, mais ce sont les plus radicales qui parlent le plus fort. »

Le traitement infligé par l’OPSQ à une pionnière de la sexologie au Québec doit être le signal d’alarme qui pousse l’État à rétablir l’esprit scientifique lorsque des ordres professionnels cèdent à des arguments militants. Il doit aussi obliger davantage de transparence dans les processus d’enquêtes et de plaintes, qui sont instrumentalisés par des tenants de dogmes pour éteindre en catimini le débat scientifique et la quête, jamais achevée, des meilleurs remèdes.

Source: Chronique | Les gardiens du dogme

…Le malaise déborde du cadre des ordres professionnels impliqués pour s’étendre au milieu universitaire. « Soyons francs, le climat qui prévaut dans les milieux universitaires nous inquiète », écrivent les sages. « Loin d’offrir l’espace par excellence au questionnement et à l’organisation d’une délibération ouverte, rationnelle et apaisée, l’université semble plus que jamais exposée aux effets pernicieux de la polarisation. »

Le rapport cite Rachida Azdouz, psychologue et chercheuse affiliée au Laboratoire de recherche en relations interculturelles : « Quand des chercheurs sont considérés comme des “alliés” par leur terrain de prédilection, il leur devient difficile de formuler une pensée indépendante sur les enjeux qu’ils sont censés documenter. » Or, il en va ainsi d’universitaires qui s’affichent à la fois sur les plateaux de télé comme des « experts » de la question trans et, sur leurs sites Web, comme des « alliés » de la cause. Ce n’est plus de la science, mais de la militance.

Une chercheuse a par exemple raconté aux sages qu’elle avait été soumise à des pressions pour supprimer des résultats dans une recherche de façon à occulter les besoins particuliers des femmes de sexe biologique. « J’ai vécu un clash de valeurs, parce que je viens […] d’un univers scientifique, » leur a-t-elle dit.

Le rapport note que « l’intimidation ou la censure ne sont pas le fait d’une majorité, mais d’une minorité ». Force est de constater qu’elle est d’une grande efficacité. « Nous avons entendu des témoignages d’universitaires qui n’ont accepté de nous parler que sous le sceau de la confidentialité, craignant de recevoir des menaces ou de nuire à leur carrière. Nous avions affaire à des personnes posées, reconnues dans leur domaine d’expertise, qui souhaiteraient pouvoir soulever certaines questions ou explorer certains champs de recherche au regard de l’identité de genre. »

Les sages citent cette chercheuse : « La militance ne soutient pas le dialogue, mais l’adhésion à une identité de genre, et s’il n’y a pas adhésion complète, il y a injonction d’endosser l’idéologie. » Un membre d’un groupe de femmes ajoute : « On est arrivé à un stade où les membres ne veulent même plus s’exprimer sur la question. Le problème, c’est la radicalité. Il y en a à chaque bout du spectre. La majorité est entre les deux, mais ce sont les plus radicales qui parlent le plus fort. »

Le traitement infligé par l’OPSQ à une pionnière de la sexologie au Québec doit être le signal d’alarme qui pousse l’État à rétablir l’esprit scientifique lorsque des ordres professionnels cèdent à des arguments militants. Il doit aussi obliger davantage de transparence dans les processus d’enquêtes et de plaintes, qui sont instrumentalisés par des tenants de dogmes pour éteindre en catimini le débat scientifique et la quête, jamais achevée, des meilleurs remèdes.

Source: Chronique | Les gardiens du dogme

.. The malaise goes beyond the framework of the professional orders involved to extend to the academic environment. “Let’s be honest, the climate that prevails in university circles worries us,” write the wise. “Far from offering the space par excellence to question and organize an open, rational and peaceful deliberation, the university seems more than ever exposed to the pernicious effects of polarization. ”


The report quotes Rachida Azdouz, a psychologist and researcher affiliated with the Research Laboratory in Intercultural Relations: “When researchers are considered “allies” by their favorite field, it becomes difficult for them to formulate an independent thought on the issues they are supposed to document. However, this is the case with academics who display themselves both on TV sets as “experts” on the trans issue and, on their websites, as “allies” of the cause. It is no longer science, but militancy.


For example, a researcher told the wise men that she had been subjected to pressure to remove results in a research in order to hide the special needs of women of biological sex. “I experienced a clash of values, because I come […] from a scientific universe,” she told them.


The report notes that “intimidation or censorship is not the work of a majority, but a minority”. It must be noted that it is highly effective. “We have heard testimonies from academics who have only agreed to speak to us under the seal of confidentiality, fearing threats or harming their careers. We were dealing with people, recognized in their field of expertise, who would like to be able to raise certain questions or explore certain fields of research with regard to gender identity. ”


The wise men quote this researcher: “Activism does not support dialogue, but adherence to a gender identity, and if there is no complete adherence, there is an injunction to endorse ideology. “A member of a group of women adds: “We have reached a stage where members no longer even want to comment on the issue. The problem is radicalism. There are at every end of the spectrum. The majority is between the two, but it is the more radical ones who speak the loudest. ”


The treatment inflicted by the OPHO to a pioneer of sexology in Quebec must be the alarm signal that pushes the state to restore the scientific spirit when professional orders give in to militant arguments. It must also require more transparency in the processes of investigations and complaints, which are exploited by supporters of dogmas to secretly extinguish the scientific debate and the never completed quest for the best remedies.

Filed under gender Tagged with , , ,

Will the Trump era reverse Canada’s brain drain problem?

2025/04/07 Leave a comment

Opportunities:

…The imminent arrival of three eminent Ivy League professors and efforts by Canadian universities to attract American researchers, officials hope, herald the reversal of a perennial problem for Canadian universities: the brain drain to the United States.

“Canada has long wrestled with ways to retain our home-grown talent and attract international academics. Given the developments south of the border, there’s certainly an opportunity now for Canada to build on this. But we’re also competing with other countries,” said David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers.

“The big obstacle we face is that we’re in a period of serious financial retrenchment in the sector. Inadequate public funding and a sharp drop in international student enrolments due to caps on study visas mean that universities and colleges are suspending enrolments, cutting programmes, freezing new hiring, and even announcing layoffs.

“How to attract new talent when you’re cutting back on people and programmes? We have a climate that is generally supportive of academic freedom, but it’s only one part of the picture of what would make Canada an attractive destination. We also need the federal and provincial governments to urgently address the public funding gap,” said Robinson.

Richard Gold, director of McGill University’s Centre for Intellectual Property Policy and a lawyer, made the same point in an interview with University World News, before adding that to fully benefit from American scientists who come to Canada, Canadian universities and industry will have to drastically step up their game in developing the financial and corporate infrastructure that brings scientific discoveries to market.

“We’ve done really poorly at translating research into companies that make money and stay here. We sell most of our AI intellectual property to Google and others,” he said by way of example. “And then [we] buy it back at a higher price. Now there’s a recognition that we can’t rely on the United States,” he noted.

In 2000, in an effort to fight the brain drain, the Canadian government established the Canada Research Chair programme, which provides funding from an annual budget of CA$311 million (US$217 million) to more than 2,000 university professors.

“Chairholders aim to achieve research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences.

“They improve our depth of knowledge and quality of life, strengthen Canada’s international competitiveness, and help train the next generation of highly skilled people through student supervision, teaching, and the coordination of other researchers’ work,” according to the programme’s website.

Keeping an eye out for Americans

Trump’s policies seem to be a genuine boost to Canada’s chances of attracting those “highly skilled people”.

A recent survey published by Nature showed that 75.3% of 1,608 US respondents said they were “considering leaving the country following the disruptions to science prompted by the Trump administration.

According to Nature, the day an early-career physician-scientist at a major university learnt his NIH grant had been terminated, “he e-mailed the department chair of colleagues at a Canadian university … He and his wife, who is also a scientist, are now interviewing for jobs in the country [Canada] and hope to move by the end of the year.”

As soon as the American administration announced cuts to the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and other agencies, Frédéric Bouchard, Doyen de la Faculté des arts et des sciences at Université de Montréal (U de M), told his 35 department chairs “to keep an eye out for Canadians who began their careers in the United States or non-US citizens who had contemplated offers from the United States that may want to revise their plans either for budgetary or for political reasons – and also for Americans who are reconsidering where they can best pursue their careers”.

Despite budgetary restrictions at U de M, Bouchard told University World News that he expects to hire at least 25 professors this year and that there will be an increase “either of American candidates or international candidates who were considering the US market”.

Though he was unable to provide details, Bouchard said that following the announcement of the NIH grant cuts and US cuts to climate research, several long-time donors to U de M’s science programme approached him “to say that if we needed [financial] help to do strategic hiring, to give them a call”.

Donors to science, he added: “are very interested in the science ecosystem, if you will, because they know that science is international. So at some sort of high level, they always keep an eye out on how the international system is going.

“They see that research is being rattled [by the US cuts] and they know that we’re always building. So I was not surprised that they contacted us, but it was a welcome email”.

Beyond Canada

As Bouchard explained, universities around the world are also making plans to hire professors whose research programmes have been closed by the American cuts or because they do not feel comfortable in the United States.

The Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), which three years ago saw professors and graduate students leave Ukraine for safety following the Russian full-scale invasion, is among those universities on the lookout.

With funds provided by the Simons Foundation, the mission of which is to support mathematics and basic sciences, KSE is actively looking to hire mathematics and physics professors.

In a posting on X on 29 March, KSE rector Tymofii Brik invited academics who are “feeling uncertain or threatened” to apply to KSE and promised a warm welcome as well as relocation support.

In an interview with University World News, Brik noted that “right now there is a crisis in the United States”, a country he first studied in as a Fulbright Fellow.

“The crisis is political and geopolitical,” he said, noting that Trump’s administration has cut research funds, plans on increasing taxes on endowments, and attacked and cut funds from, among others, Columbia University.

“It seems that a lot of American faculty are frustrated. We hear that Jason Stanley is leaving Yale University because the university is not supporting faculty anymore,” Brik said.

“I think it’s an opportunity for us because despite the war, we are operational,” Brik noted.

“If you really want to be an academic and push science and innovation, Ukraine is about the best place because you have access to data about social activities and demography.

“You have real-time data about how the economy changes during the war. You can have access to data on military issues, so if you are an engineer, you can analyse that.

“Maybe the money is not as great as in the United States. But at least you have a sense of security and academic fulfilment. And you know that you’re fighting for democracy,” he added.

Threats to sovereignty

Dr Marc Ruel, a professor in the department of surgery, and division head and chair of cardiac surgery at the University of Ottawa Heart Institute (UOHI), earlier this year accepted an offer by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), to become the chief of the division of adult cardiothoracic surgery. Last month, he announced he had changed his mind.

Ruel saw himself, he told the CTV Television Network, as “a bit of a Canadian export” – a reference to Canada’s status as a hockey-mad country, which supplies 42% of the players on American National Hockey League teams, almost 150% more players than the next largest group: Americans themselves.

In an email to University World News, Ruel said he has the “greatest admiration for UCSF and their focus on care excellence, research, education, and innovation” and that his decision to remain in Canada should not be taken as “engag[ing] in their [American] internal politics”.

He told the Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail the “tipping point” in his decision to stay was Trump’s talk of making Canada America’s 51st state and the threat of crippling tariffs; by coincidence, he informed UCSF of his change of mind on 4 March, the day that Trump announced tariffs of 25% on Canadian imports.

Ruel told the Globe and Mail the threat to Canada’s “sovereignty and our identity . . . changes everything”.

“I can’t go to a jurisdiction that belittles our country,” he said.

In his email to University World News, Ruel set his decision in the context of international scientific exchange.

“In my view, it’s important for international scientific collaboration and exchange that the sovereignty of partaking countries is not something that is up for grabs or threatened by another.

“If that happens, it’s rather difficult for trust and collaboration to thrive. Science, research, and clinical leaders generally care about how their country – which has educated and supported them – is viewed by the one with which they will closely collaborate or might even move to in order to provide a new stage for their innovation, clinical care, research, or education platform,” he stated.

Patriotic education

While the Trump administration’s attack on Columbia triggered Stanley’s decision to accept the offer to come to Canada, his analysis of the authoritarian nature of American politics includes a trenchant critique of the laws that states like Florida have brought in banning the teaching of critical race theory in the K-12 system.

The vagueness of these laws, he explained to interviewer Michel Martin on Amanpour & Company, was not a bug in the system but, rather, a feature, designed to keep teachers looking over their shoulders because “your fellow citizens have been empowered to report you” for deviating from the “official state ideology”.

The ‘Dear Colleague’ letter issued by the Department of Education that Martin read serves as ‘Exhibit A’ for Stanley’s analysis.

The letter states “that educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon systemic and structural racism and advanced discriminatory policies and practices, and that proponents of these discriminatory practices have attempted to further justify them, particularly during the last four years under the banner of diversity, equity and inclusion, you know, DEI, smuggling racial stereotypes and explicit race consciousness into everyday training, programming and discipline”.

‘Exhibit B’ is Secretary of Education Linda McMahon’s statement in what she called the “final mission statement of the Department of Education”, which Trump tasked her with dismantling. In that statement, she wrote that the goal of American education is “patriotic education”.

The problem, Stanley underscored, is that the US was “founded and built upon systematic racism and exclusion. It’s part of our founding documents that we wanted to take more indigenous land … The United States is built on slavery. There’s no factual argument about that.

“So when you begin by saying that universities and K-12 schools are not allowed to teach facts, then you’re already on a very problematic playing field.

“And part of the point of these guidelines is to be vague because it allows wide latitude to target professors and to encourage students to report professors for anything that might suggest that the United States was not always the greatest nation on Earth and was essentially free from sin”.

Turning to higher education, Stanley noted: “Universities are not there in a democracy to stroke the egos of the citizens of a country. Just imagine your cartoon vision of an authoritarian country: it’s where the purpose of schools is to tell students to love their country and not question it.

“In a democracy, universities are there to teach the facts. They’re not there to breed patriotism. These documents explicitly tell us the purpose of schools and universities is to create patriotic citizens. That is not the purpose of the university. That’s nationalist education. That is not democratic education.”

Bending to Trump

Stanley is equally critical of American academics and university leaders who, he wrote in The Chronicle of Higher Education, have, in a pre-emptive way, acceded to Trump’s threats.

“Let’s keep our heads down and we won’t be seen; we won’t be a target,” he wrote before characterising Columbia’s “obsequious, embarrassing” response as amounting to: “Oh, hit us again, please. Hit us again.”

The Trump administration’s attack on Columbia – the withdrawal of US$400 million in research grants and pressuring the university to place the Department of Middle Eastern Studies into “academic receivership” because the administration objected to its “ideology” – stems, Stanley explained to Martin, from the Trump administration’s equation of “antisemitism” with “leftism”.

Born, Stanley says, in the hothouse atmosphere of Columbia’s campus during the pro-Palestinian encampment last year, which included “a large number of Jewish students” (but during which both Jewish and Palestinian students felt threatened), the equating of antisemitism with leftism has left little room for Jews like Stanley, who is highly critical of Israel but does not “want to take down the State of Israel”.

Trump’s administration, he underscores in this interview, has divided Jews into “good” and “bad” Jews. “And the good Jews are the ones who support Israel’s actions in Gaza, and the bad Jews are the people like me who are highly critical of what is happening and push for Palestinian rights,” he noted.

Worse, Stanley fears that the “history of this era will say that the Jewish people [as defined by Trump] were a sledgehammer for fascism.”

“It’s the first time in my life as an American that I am fearful of our status as equal Americans … because we are suddenly at the centre of politics, of US politics. It’s never good to be in the crosshairs for us; we are being used to destroy democracy,” he told Martin.

Fighting for freedom

Again and again in his essay, in his interview with Martin and on CBC, Stanley stressed his love for the United States.

“They are destroying my country,” he told Martin, referring to the Trump administration. “They are intentionally destroying my country.”

To do this, the destruction of the universities is vital.

“You take down the universities. You tell people that universities are just for job skills.

“They’re not democratic institutions anymore. And then you encourage people not to go to universities. You make student loans more difficult and expensive; privatise them. And then you delegitimise the university,” he stated.

Canada offers him the opportunity to fight the “fascist regime”, he believes, because it is a country “dedicated to freedom, to the values I love”.

Source: Will the Trump era reverse Canada’s brain drain problem?

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HESA: That Was The Quarter That Was, Winter 2025 [Trump administration]

2025/04/01 Leave a comment

ùMore on the impact of the Trump administration’s higher education policies:

…On top of this came attacks on institutional autonomy, which for the most part consisted of threats to defund any institution which continued activities deemed to be “DEI”, a term the Administration defined in terms so vague as to make it nearly impossible to comply. In the case of Columbia University, it also threatened to defund an institution due to its failure to combat “antisemitism”, which was an odd thing to demand given how many genuine antisemites seem to orbit the Trump regime (Columbia caved). And also there was the detention and potential deportation of hundreds of international students, mainly it seems for the crime of exercising free speech and freedom of assembly in such a way as to be critical of Israel. The cumulative impact of what has happened in US in the past seventy days will take years if not decades to reverse. Careers have been destroyed. Promising lines of research – such as those involving mRNA research – have simply been dropped. If one wanted to destroy America’s future prosperity and scientific pre-eminence, one could scarcely have done more than the Trump Administration has done. This will be to the good fortune of some individual institutions in other countries, but to the world as a whole – especially North America – the faltering of science and the economic progress that depends on it will lower economic growth potential for a decade or more to come.


There are, broadly, three aspects to the whole US story. The first is one of anti-scientism, a broad disdain for the idea that anyone other than those in power are permitted to say what the truth is. This is most obvious when looking at the policies of the Department of Health and the NIH around the non-promotion of vaccines, but it permeates the administration generally. There are no other parts of the world – for the moment – where we see anything similar. But the other two aspects her – attacks on institutional autonomy and academic freedom on the one hand, and reductions in the financial capabilities of universities on the other, do have echoes elsewhere.

With respect to state controls over institutional autonomy and academic freedom, the most obvious parallel case to the United States over the past three months is Georgia, where the controversial pro-Russian government sees universities as a centre of dissent and wishes to increase supervision over them and thereby limit autonomy.  India and Pakistan have also seen flare-ups over the past few months with respect to autonomy – mainly but not exclusively relating to government use of the power to name vice-chancellors – but this is less a “new shift” than the latest incidents in a long-running battle.


The other issue, of course, is overall university funding. The United States is certainly unique in the extent to which scientific research budgets are under attack. And it is unique in the sense that it seems to be the only country where individual institutions are being singled out for specific funding reductions in the manner of Columbia University. But it is not unique in the sense that universities are feeling the need for quick retrenchment.There two closest parallels are Argentina and the Netherlands. In the former, President Milei’s inflation-busting program involves reducing government spending to well below the rate of price growth. By some accounts, real transfers to universities are now down about 30% on last year, which has led to a series of strikes. In the latter, the still new-ish coalition government, elected in 2024, is still enacting both a series of cuts to university finances and imposing restrictions on teaching programs in English, which has the effect of reducing universities’ international student fee income. This too, is leading to strike action.

Among OECD countries, universities in France, already struggling to deal with last year’s reductions in funding, got hit with a new round of compressions in the February budget, and most are looking at deficits both this year and next. The anglosphere trio of the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia are also facing continuing struggles from the loss of international students stemming from a combination of tighter visa restrictions, reduced demand and greater international competition, but unlike the other examples cited, these financial challenges in the short-term stem from a loss of market income, not government income….

Source: That Was The Quarter That Was, Winter 2025

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Countries boost recruitment of American scientists amid cuts to scientific funding

2025/03/31 Leave a comment

A reminder that Canada faces competition from other countries in seeking to attract USA-based talent concerned about the Trump education-related immigration practices:

As the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s DOGE seek to reduce the federal workforce and cut spending, some European countries are looking to capitalize on the opportunity by recruiting talent from the scientific community.

The administration’s actions, including eliminating programs and funding for scientific research, are prompting some researchers and scientists to consider leaving the U.S. to live in other countries, such as France, to continue their work.

According to a survey released by the journal Nature on Thursday, more than 1,200 respondents who identified as scientists said they were considering leaving the U.S. and relocating to Europe or Canada because of President Trump’s actions. Approximately 1,650 people completed the survey, which was posted on the journal’s website, social media and an e-mailed newsletter, according to the journal.

Source: Countries boost recruitment of American scientists amid cuts to scientific funding

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As Trump cuts university research, American scholars look north

2025/03/26 Leave a comment

Encouraging that Canadian universities are actively engaged in such recruitment:

In the early days of the second Trump administration, Frédéric Bouchard, dean of arts and sciences at University of Montreal, told his faculty’s two dozen department chairs to keep an eye out for talented researchers in the United States who might be looking for a change of scenery.

If they knew of anyone unsettled by funding cuts and political moves in the U.S., particularly if that person had a connection to Canada, Prof. Bouchard wanted to be notified immediately.

He has already had calls from colleagues, he said.

“Any time the market for talent is rattled it makes our jobs easier recruiting the best that are out there,” Prof. Bouchard said. “It’s still early. Right now we are just discussing with various potential people, seeing whether they’re interested or not.”

Prof. Bouchard said private donors have even expressed an interest in supporting recruitment.

“Without me asking them they told me that if we found somebody, and we needed additional resources to bring them to Canada, that I should give them a call,” Prof. Bouchard said.

At the University of Toronto, department of immunology chair Jen Gommerman said she has already had researchers in the U.S. contact her about opportunities in Canada. Many are feeling demoralized, she said.

“It’s a fearful time for everyone in academia,” Prof. Gommerman said. “There’s uncertainty. There’s this feeling of loss.”

In the first weeks of the Trump administration, a series of executive orders and policy decisions has destabilized research agencies and universities. The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have all been targeted for cuts, which the White House has said are aimed at saving money and improving efficiency…

Source: As Trump cuts university research, American scholars look north

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HESA: The Future of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education

2025/03/19 Leave a comment

Interesting and likely realistic take:

…There are, furthermore, two big differences between Canada and the US with respect to EDI that are worth keeping in mind. The first is that EDI in Canada had very little to do with the composition of the student body; unlike the US, students from racialized backgrounds are substantially over-represented (as compared to the general population) in the student body up here. This is not to say that students from all racialized backgrounds are over-represented, but more are than are not (see back here for more on this). As a result, EDI in Canada tends to be much more about representation at the staff level, and specifically—given the politics of the institution—about academic staff. And to the extent that diversity in hiring, pay and promotion is at the heart of Canadian EDI efforts, current practice in academia is not all that far off the standard in the Canadian private sector, where diversity initiatives have been the norm for quite some time. This is why there aren’t that many Boards of Governors, even in Conservative places like Alberta, that have really blinked at EDI hiring initiatives.

The second is that the prominent presence of Indigenous peoples and the legacy of Truth and Reconciliation add a complicating layer to the whole issue. Indigenous peoples are generally not included in most EDI processes because it is recognized that, for historical and Treaty reasons, they absolutely should not be lumped in with other under-represented groups in terms of process, even if both are deserving of and would benefit from greater efforts at inclusion. Having two separate processes is complicated and can at a superficial level look a bit wasteful and politically complicated, but at the end of the day, that complication works in favour of EDI, institutionally speaking. No one—and I mean no one—is going to try and reverse Indigenization initiatives at Canadian universities. And because at least some of the aims of EDI & Indigenization are parallel (ish), going after one but not the other is hard to justify. 

So, given all of that, what is the future of EDI in Canada? Well, it depends a bit on which part of EDI we are talking about. I don’t think we are going to reverse course on equity in hiring. Cluster hires will probably continue for a little while yet for the simple reason that alternatives simply have not been very effective at moving the needle on racial equity (we’ve been doing that with female profs for about 40 years now, and while we are getting closer to parity, it has taken an unconscionable amount of time to get there). Neither do I think many institutions are going to change tack in terms of trying to create more welcoming environments: in an era of tight budgets, universities and colleges are going to do all they can to be seen as good employers on non-financial stuff.

Where I suspect we will see change will be in the tendency to add staff positions for the specific purpose of addressing issues of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This is a place where a larger set of suspicions both in government and the professoriate about “bureaucratization” and “administrative bloat” will be decisive. This won’t necessarily reduce the amount of work to be done, so it probably will mean that more of it is done off the side of someone’s desk. I also suspect that institutions will look less favourably on equity groups’ requests for separate university events (e.g. Lavender Graduation ceremonies). 

Will this result in a tamping down of the (muted) culture wars in Canadian higher education? No. Some people will remain opposed to things like land acknowledgements, and the aging white guy irritation with Canadian history departments being insufficiently “positive” about Canada (meaning, in practice, centering narratives on any groups other than white settlers) isn’t going to go away either. Culture wars never end. Friction will continue.

And so too, broadly, will EDI. Words and tactics might soften or change, and a variety of other institutional challenges (mainly but not exclusively financial) may mean that the issue will never again be quite as central to university policy as it was in 2020 and 2021. But we’re not headed in the same direction as the US.

Source: The Future of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Canadian Higher Education

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HESA: Nobody is Coming to Save Us, But

2025/03/18 Leave a comment

Sensible and ambitious, with potential medium and long-term benefits:

…Now, there just happens to be one kind of change that is suddenly going very cheap, and that is the ability to add top-class academic talent. The carnage down south, with the National Institutes of Health NIH being at least partially dismantled and entire universities being threatened with loss of hundreds of millions of dollars unless they submit to an unspecified number of random administrative fiats from the trump administration, is about to start hemorrhaging talent. It’s not just foreign scholars who are going to leave; top American talent is suddenly footloose, too, because it has become apparent that the damage being done to American science is unlikely to be fully reversible. And even if it could be reversed, you’d never be more than 4 years away from another group of anti-Enlightenment jackals coming and taking another wrecking ball to the whole system. The age of American Science is over, and it’s not coming back any time soon. The opportunity exists, therefore, for ambitious universities to scoop up a fair bit of top new talent.

But wait a minute, you say. Talent requires salaries, and salaries are under pressure, and Big Philanthropy doesn’t cover that. Well, actually, it can, but only if you package it and structure it correctly.

It would indeed be hard for a university to get a philanthropist to pick up the tab in order to grab a new talent across a range of disciplines. There’s nothing “new” about hiring additional profs to plug holes or provide upgrades to an institution’s existing staff. But some philanthropists probably could be persuaded to cover the costs if a university presented a structured package of targeted hires. That is, a set of hires that built on a set of existing strengths and moved the institution closer to world-class status in a specific discipline (e.g., Hegelian Philosophy, Dentistry) or cluster of related disciplines (Human and Animal Health/Vaccines, Water protection, etc.). 

Basically what you would want to do is create a package that encompassed: i) a half-dozen or so fully-funded named chairs, some of which could go to existing staff, others to new star hires, which would mean no net charges to the operating budget ii) money for whatever new space, laboratory or otherwise, was required to house these new scholars and their work, iii) funding for a reasonable number of graduate students, iv) at least some funds for ongoing innovative activities and v) some kind of collective identity. Wrap the whole thing in a bow, name it the [Philanthropist name here] Centre for [Discipline/Grand Challenge name here], hire ambitiously from across the United States to create a cluster of excellence on a level that can really make a mark on a global scale. Normally, this kind of thing would not be possible. But with chaos south of the border, I think right now, it is. And it could be game-changing for a few universities if they could pull it off….

Source: Nobody is Coming to Save Us, But

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HESA: How We Choose to Respond to Crises

2025/02/19 Leave a comment

Some good questions where universities and academics should make a contribution regarding current and future challenges, some driven by Trump, some long-term. Surprising no immigration questions (e.g., how to manage population demographics without relying solely on immigration, how do we come up with a balanced immigration policy that incorporates pressures on housing, healthcare and infrastructure):

…The first and most important way that could happen? By putting the collective brainpower of Canadian academia to work on very specific problems that our governments—with their brutally short-term focus—cannot hope to answer quickly. Imagine if all Canadian universities got together right now and said: we are putting our best minds together for the next 12 weeks (which is about how long it will take for an election to occur, assuming the Liberals lose a confidence vote in late March) and we’re going to answer the following questions about the future of Canada.

  • What does a post-NATO foreign policy look like. Who are our allies now?
  • What does an independent defense policy look like now? What can we learn from, say, Finland’s posture with the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s? Is universal national service an option?
  • How can Canada improve the status of its domestic knowledge-based industries? How do we make “smart” pay?
  • What would it take for Canadian businesses to genuinely pivot to new markets? What are the barriers and how can they be overcome?
  • More generally, how do we once again generate economic growth?
  • How can we best balance the protection of our democracy with the maintenance of norms of free speech?

It’s obvious the country needs answers to all of these hard questions. It’s equally obvious that the country’s universities are collectively the largest source of expertise to answer them. So let’s do it, now. Get a couple of hundred of the best minds in the country, relieve them of whatever other duties they have for the next few weeks and put together a lightning Royal Commission the likes of which we’ve never seen. It would be tough to organize, but who knows? It might remind people that universities are worth funding (Lord knows nothing else seems to be working on that score).
 

  •  But I think universities will also need to go further. They will also need to look critically at whether what universities currently do is aligned with the new priorities. So maybe a second group of top minds could answer questions such as:
  • What would be the impact on national productivity if we re-shaped the bachelor’s degree to be default three years instead of four?
  • Would we be more growth-oriented if we had more bachelor’s graduates, or fewer? What about graduate degrees?
  • How would postsecondary education change if we introduced a form of national service?
  • What role could business faculties play in promoting trade diversity? Would requiring students to take more foreign language courses help?
  • How might more specialist outfits like Citizen Lab contribute to Canadian domestic and foreign policy?

I suspect many will recoil from even posing such questions. Sacred cows, etc. But we have to. We can either, as a sector, act to protect and improve the state we have, or we can leave it easier prey to the bullies, liars, and thieves that are currently assaulting democracies around the globe. Those are the choices.

Canada made difficult choices and took bold action thirty years ago. I am certain we can do it again. But the country—and the higher education sector—first has to take the threat seriously. Will we?

Source: How We Choose to Respond to Crises

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