Dave Snow: When political scientists get political

2024/02/29 Leave a comment

Believe not unique to political science and his conclusions based on extensive article analysis.

Some of my academic friends, in broad agreement with Snow’s depiction of the shift, point out however that most academics prefer to publish in higher profile international journals given greater weight in tenure and related decisions:

…. I draw three main conclusions. First, Canadian political science scholarship is clearly shifting in important ways. For better or worse, papers published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science reflect the discipline itself. While the discipline has not undergone a wholesale change (as seems to be the case in history), a sizeable proportion of Canada’s flagship political science journal is composed of papers using critical approaches and methodologies that place a greater emphasis on narratives of historical marginalization, particularly with respect to Indigenous Peoples and decolonization. 

Second, the journal’s openness to critical methodologies and identity diversity has been accompanied by a narrowing of its ideological diversity. While authors’ policy recommendations are by no means ideologically homogenous, they generally range from centre-left to far-left. This tilt is most obvious in papers that focus on decolonization, but it is present throughout the entire journal. Of 227 papers published over the last five years, I did not find a single one that provided anything approximating a conservative policy recommendation. By contrast, even the journal’s most empirically rigorous quantitative papers often contain recommendations such as “political parties should recruit and promote more women candidates” and “Policy tools specifically designed to problematize, target and alleviate racial economic inequality also seem needed.” Conservative scholars used to publish mildly conservative policy recommendations in the journal. Those days are now long gone.

Third, the journal editors’ statement is sadly reflective of similar statements made in Canadian higher education regarding equity, diversity, and inclusion, insofar as it refuses to acknowledge any previous progressive change. The Canadian Journal of Political Science had already clearly opened itself up to diverse perspectives and methodologies in recent years. Several papers in a 2017 special issue had already identified some of these changes. Yet this did not stop its new editors from claiming that the discipline was still engaged in “gatekeeping” on behalf of “white androcentric paradigms.” Thankfully, political scientists are well-equipped to use data to test the truth of such speculative arguments.

In spite of the challenges facing our universities, Canadians continue to profess high levels of trust in academics, including those in the social sciences and humanities. To retain such trust, we must demonstrate a commitment to the core purposes of the university: intellectual curiosity and the pursuit of truth. We do ourselves no favours when we abandon these goals in favour of political projects. 

Dave Snow is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the University of Guelph.

Source: Dave Snow: When political scientists get political

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Horn: The Return of the Big Lie: Antisemitism is winning

2024/02/19 Leave a comment

Long read with concluding thoughts applicable to all groups on what universities and other institutions need to do:

It is fairly obvious what Harvard and other universities would need to do to turn this tide. None of it involves banning slogans or curtailing free speech. Instead it involves things like enforcing existing codes of conduct regarding harassment; protecting classroom buildings, libraries, and dining halls as zones free from advocacy campaigns (similar to rules for polling places); tracking and rejecting funding from entities supporting federally designated terror groups (a topic raised in recent congressional testimony regarding numerous American universities); gut-renovating diversity bureaucracies to address their obvious failure to tackle anti-Semitism; investigating and exposing the academic limitations of courses and programs premised on anti-Semitic lies; and expanding opportunities for students to understand Israeli and Jewish history and to engage with ideas and with one another. There are many ways to advocate for Israeli and Palestinian coexistence that honor the dignity and legitimacy of both indigenous groups and the need to build a shared future. The restoration of such a model of civil discourse, which has been decimated by heckling and harassment, would be a boon to all of higher education.

Harvard has already begun signaling change in this direction: The university recently reiterated and clarified rules regarding the time, place, and manner of student protests. For Harvard to take more of these steps would be huge, but I have struggled to understand why all of them still feel so small. Perhaps it’s because the problem is a multi-thousand-year fatal flaw in the ways our societies conceive of good and evil—and also because somewhere deep within me, I know what has been lost. There was a time, not so very long ago, when we didn’t have to prove our right to exist.

Among the mountains of evidence that Jewish students sent me, one image has stayed in my mind. There are videos of crowds chanting “Long live the intifada!” inside Harvard’s Science Center, and “There is only one solution: intifada revolution!” in Harvard Yard, along with other places equally familiar from my student days. But I keep coming back to the crowds marching and screaming in front of Harvard Law School’s Langdell library, because Langdell is a sacred place for me. On my 22nd birthday, in 1999, when I was a senior at Harvard, a law student I’d met at Hillel took me up through Langdell’s maintenance passageways to the library’s rooftop, where he asked me to marry him. I said yes.

I watched the video of the students marching and screaming in front of Langdell, and in an instant I remembered everything: studying in campus libraries for my Hebrew- and Yiddish-literature courses, talking for hours with Muslim and Christian and progressive and conservative classmates, inviting friends of all backgrounds to join me at Hillel, scrupulously following the Jewish tradition of “argument for the sake of heaven” in even the most heated debates, gathering for Shabbat dinners crowded with hundreds of students—and over those long and beautiful dinners, falling in love. My classmates and I often disagreed about the most important things. But no one screamed in our faces when we wore Hebrew T-shirts on campus. No one shunned us when we talked about our friends and family in Israel, or spat on us on our way to class. No crowds gathered to chant for our deaths. No one told us that there should be no more Jews. That night, my future husband and I worried only about getting in trouble for sneaking up to the library roof.

Source: THE RETURN OF THE BIG LIE: ANTI-SEMITISM IS WINNING

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Clark: It’s too late for universities and colleges to complain about the foreign student cap

2024/02/02 Leave a comment

Indeed. They and others should have seen this coming as it was untenable:

Canada’s universities and colleges sent an open letter to Immigration Minister Marc Miller this week about the cap he has imposed on new foreign students.

The gist was this: Please no, don’t do this yet, wait, hold on, we’re not ready, this is too sudden, can you give us a break?

Mr. Miller’s answer should be, in a word, no.

The warnings were ignored for too long – by the feds, by provincial governments especially in Ontario and British Columbia, and by colleges and universities. That left no option apart from ripping the Band-Aid off.

Source: It’s too late for universities and colleges to complain about the foreign student cap

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Black-only swim times, Black-only lounges: The rise of race segregation on Canadian universities

2024/02/02 Leave a comment

Sigh, hard to see how this will improve social integration and inclusion:

…While the idea of explicitly race-segregated spaces at Canadian universities would have been unthinkable only a few years ago, recent months have seen a wave of Black-only lounges, study spaces and events at Canadian post-secondary institutions.

The University of British Columbia recently cut the ribbon on a Black Student Space featuring showers, lockers and even a nap room.  To gain access, students must apply and affirm that they are one of the following: “Black African descent, African-American, African-Canadian, Afro-Caribbean, Afro-Latinx, and Afro-Indigenous.”

Toronto Metropolitan University, formerly Ryerson, opened a Black Student Lounge in 2022. The space is intended as a shelter from “the harms of institutional racism.” In multiple public statements, TMU has referred to itself as a hotbed of colonialist institutional oppression, and the lounge is intended as a place where students can “heal” and “recharge” from said oppression, and “promote Black flourishing.”

The University of Toronto maintains a distinctive office of Black Student Engagement that curates a series of Black-only frosh and orientation events. While there are university-sanctioned “engagement” programs for Latin American and Southeast Asian students, these are mostly limited to mentorship appointments and workshops.

And it’s not just U of T pursuing Black-only frosh events. As noted in a feature by VICE, as recently as 2015 Canada didn’t feature a single Black-only frosh. But after Ottawa universities debuted BLK Frosh that year, the practice soon became commonplace….

Source: Black-only swim times, Black-only lounges: The rise of race segregation on Canadian universities

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Friedman: Here’s What the University Presidents Should’ve Said to Congress

2023/12/13 Leave a comment

Good commentary:

I suspect I am not the only one who found it difficult to laugh on Saturday night, watching SNL’s send-up of last week’s congressional hearing on antisemitism and college campuses. Coming only hours after Liz Magill actually resigned as Penn’s president amid the ongoing fallout, the real-world consequences of the hearing had become too… well, real.

Here was a leading university president stepping down, amid a storm of politicians’ and donors’ demands, after an exchange with Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) from last week’s hearing went viral. In it, Magill, along with the presidents of Harvard (Claudine Gay) and MIT (Sally Kornbluth), offered a series of technical, “lawyerly” responses to the question of whether calling for genocide of Jews on campus would constitute bullying or harassment under their codes of conduct.

Stefanik’s audacious and frank question demanded a fuller explanation; but the presidents’ curt responses left many aghast at the prospect that such a heinous hypothetical could ever be construed as acceptable.

The fallout was swift. Now, the incident has a high likelihood of shaping the next wave of a years-long debate about free speech on college campuses.

At best, it may spur universities to review their philosophies and policies, and to recommit to creating campuses where bigotry and hate are rejected and where open and respectful exchange can thrive. At worst, it may embolden some politicians to ratchet up their attacks on higher ed, using the latest crisis to advance ideological ends.

“One down,” Stefanik posted on X in response to the news of Magill’s resignation, “Two to go.”

“…these leaders might have modeled how fostering a climate of free speech and open exchange need not—and must not—mean allowing hate to flourish unchecked.”

Meanwhile, the people who have spent years pushing for bans on Critical Race Theory, gender studies, or seeking to dictate how faculty teach about American history, have already announced their intention to introduce bills to fight antisemitism for the upcoming legislative sessions. We ought to be skeptical when the team that has repeatedly shown its desire to advance censorship now seeks to be in the vanguard of setting out new regulations for speech.

But perhaps most troubling about the now viral exchange is that Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth were technically correct. Any free speech advocate will tell you that the analysis of whether insulting, offensive, odious, or even hateful speech can be punishable begins with the question of context.

This is understandably compounded on university campuses by their size and complexity. For the application of university policies it obviously matters who is speaking—students, faculty, administrators, invited speakers—and where—in a classroom, in the quad, in a dorm room, on social media, etc.

Certainly, Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth could have made this all clearer. As private universities, they are not obligated to hew to the First Amendment, but many do, understanding that this offers the best safeguards for free speech and academic freedom. The presidents could have explained this in greater detail, and how this works in practice. They could have explained how different kinds of speech might be punishable in certain circumstances but not in others. And they could have offered a clear condemnation of the hypothetical before them, regardless of the legal or policy analysis involved.

The high-stakes format of the congressional hearing was, of course, not set up for the nuanced exchange this question truly demands. And perhaps that was the point. As Michelle Goldberg explained in the The New York Times, the clip looks really different when viewed on its own than it does in the context of the entire hearing, where it seems clear that Stefanik was referring to her own earlier questions about whether certain specific common pro-Palestinian slogans like “from the river to the sea” directly connote genocide of Jews or not.

The context—again—matters. If Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth thought they were being asked about whether certain specific phrases should result in punishments, their hesitancy to say that they should, from a speech-protective lens, is not only technically consistent with the First Amendment, it also makes a lot more sense.

In the wake of the hearing, in addition to Magill’s resignation, we are now seeing ideas to regulate “hate speech” put forth, such as one resolution from the Board of Advisors at Wharton, that, among other things, proposes to punish students and faculty for celebrating murder or using language “that threatens the physical safety of community members.” The language of the resolution is general and vague, and particularly in campus contexts where students now routinely invoke notions of “harm” and “microaggressions,” it would inevitably open the door to chilling a wide swath of speech on any side of the Israel-Palestine conflict—let alone on a great many other issues, too.

But this is the danger in this moment: that institutions adopt new policies to restrict speech in the rush to remedy their image, policies which might appear to solve one challenge, but will in fact make many other challenges worse. Proposals to ban “hate speech” against racial and ethnic minorities, for example, tend not to contemplate how they can be used by someone like former President Donald Trump, who said “Black Lives Matter” was a “symbol of hate,” or by really any authority to suppress any speech they find disfavorable.

The better answer that Magill, Gay, and Kornbluth could have proffered last week would have been to explain that just because an incident of hateful speech might not constitute grounds for punishment, it does not mean that it needs to be construed as acceptable to a college or university community. And that the question of determining a punishment for speech can, in fact, be separate from a university’s more immediate holistic response: to condemn hate, work to educate their communities, and offer resources to those impacted.

In so doing these leaders might have modeled how fostering a climate of free speech and open exchange need not—and must not—mean allowing hate to flourish unchecked.

The missed opportunity to offer moral clarity and condemnation of hate at last week’s hearing has invited criticism from those who care deeply about higher ed’s future, as well as those who have been working to impose new ideological controls on universities, or generally undermine them. We must be wary of what comes next—as some who want to take advantage of this crisis are clearly already making plans.

Jonathan Friedman is Director of Free Expression and Education at PEN America.

Source: Here’s What the University Presidents Should’ve Said to Congress

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The Hamas-Israel War Obliterated the Campus Microaggression – The Daily Beast

2023/12/11 Leave a comment

One of the better commentaries from a free speech advocate following the disastrous testimony to congress by Ivy League university presidents:

…

A culture of free speech can lead to hurt feelings or a sense of unsafety. But it is not a “tool of the oppressor,” it is a righteous principle—like due process—that earns its strength by being applied to both the minority and majority, the popular and the unpopular, the righteous and the wrong.

Colleges can choose to do away with their overbroad speech codes and systems of discipline that lack due process or consider intent, nuance, and context. Or they can keep them, and defer to the feelings of the offended.

But what is clear is that you can’t have it both ways. For the authority to police speech to hold any legitimacy, it must be applied universally, and not excluded when the aggrieved are pro-Israel Jews. (Once again, there’s a word for that.)

I’ve argued this relentlessly over the years, but principled support for free speech is always under siege by the side that thinks the other has gone “too far”—so it’s worth repeating again: Do not demand fallible authorities to be the arbiters of acceptable discourse, because you will not always be favored by the authorities.

Many on the progressive left are shocked to find themselves and their allies labeled as unacceptably “problematic.” It’s a situation they could not previously conceive—but they should have. Real free speech advocates have been warning of this very situation the entire time.

The only way to ensure that your own ideas won’t be shut down when they are unpopular is to support—and demand—a culture of free speech, which does not include the right not to be offended.

Source: The Hamas-Israel War Obliterated the Campus Microaggression – The Daily Beast

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Sean Speer: Canadian universities have lost their social licence. They shouldn’t be surprised if they lose their funding too

2023/11/04 Leave a comment

Interesting how concepts originating from the left can be turned against them. And yes, the risk is real:

The Canadian Left introduced the notion of “social licence” into our policy and political lexicon during the Harper era to describe the expectation that oil and gas companies act, consult, and operate in ways that secured public buy-in for individual projects and the sector as a whole. 

Conservatives were mostly critical of the concept at the time. It seemed elusive, woolly, and conceived of to block projects rather than ultimately enable them. I’ve wondered in recent weeks, however, if in hindsight it has utility for thinking and talking about the place of institutions in a democratic society. 

In particular, Canadian universities should ask themselves hard questions about their own social licence. The growing gap between the culture and ideas on campus and the rest of the population ought to be a major cause for concern. Universities’ alienation from the society in which they inhabit represents a threat to their social licence. 

The shocking reaction of many university faculty members and students to Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel has exposed this gap for the rest of us to see. One gets the sense (as others such as Tyler Harper have noted) that the consequences will be lasting. The incentives for politicians to seriously take on universities have changed. 

Academic freedom isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card from democratic accountability—particularly in Canada where we still heavily rely on public dollars (even if the relative share has fallen) to finance universities. Scholars don’t have a positive right to publicly-subsidized employment or research funding. Universities don’t have a positive right to their current funding levels. 

There’s nothing stopping provincial governments, for instance, from cutting core institutional funding (especially in a zero-sum world in which health care is consuming roughly half of program spending) or even reducing public subsidies for particular fields or disciplines (which might come in the form of policy reforms that require universities to charge the full cost of certain programs). 

The upshot: if you’re a university president, you need to stop spending so much time and attention on managing your internal politics and start dedicating more to your external politics. Placating the most radical voices on your campus isn’t worth it if the cost is the public’s support for your institution’s basic mission. In fact, the opposite is true: a firm stand against radicalism is arguably the best means to protect your institution’s long-run interests.

Source: Sean Speer: Canadian universities have lost their social licence. They shouldn’t be surprised if they lose their funding too

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The Conversations About the War in Gaza We Ought to Be Having

2023/10/31 Leave a comment

Worth reading:

The conflict in Israel and Palestine has thrown American campuses and society into turmoil.

We are both deans of public policy schools. One of us comes from a Palestinian family displaced by war. The other served in Israeli military intelligence before a long career in academia. Our life stories converged when we were colleagues and friends for 10 years on the faculty of Princeton University. Notwithstanding our different backgrounds, we are both alarmed by the climate on campuses and the polarizing and dehumanizing language visible throughout society.

Universities should state hard truths and clarify critical issues. As leaders of public policy schools, we train the leaders of tomorrow to think creatively and boldly. It starts with countering speech that is harmful, modeling civic dialogue, mutual respect and empathy, and showing an ability to listen to one another.

Universities should not retreat into their ivory towers because the discourse has gotten toxic; on the contrary, the discourse will get more toxic if universities pull back.

Faculty and students on some campuses across the country have reported feeling unsafe in light of verbal and physical attacks. Activist groups and even student groups are screaming past one another instead of listening and engaging with the other side. The polarizing talk in media, political and campus circles create an environment lacking in sophistication and nuance.

For example, chants like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” are commonly perceived as calls for the annihilation of the state of Israel. What’s more, the position these chants represents completely ignores the fact that the majority of Palestinians have rejected this stance since the 1993 Oslo Accords, and leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have consistently called for a two-state solution. Furthermore, the claim that all Palestinians in Gaza are responsible for Hamas lacks empirical support.

Condemnation of the Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians by Hamas — and calling it out as an act of terrorism — shouldn’t be avoided out of risk of offending Palestinians and their supporters. Not condemning the terrorist attacks is a failure of a moral core, and by no means should condemnation of terrorism be viewed as incompatible with believing in Palestinian rights and statehood, alongside Israel. Terrorism is, by common understanding, an attack on all humanity.

We teach our students to deal with policy predicaments that start with tough questions that require understanding opposing ideas. The uncertainty about what the future of Gaza will look like, whether the peace process can be revived and how the security and safety of Israelis and Palestinians will be achieved — these are, to be sure, hard questions with solutions that do not fit on placards.

While campus groups and all Americans enjoy freedom of speech, educators at universities must respond to speech that is harmful, hateful, untrue or lacking nuance and historical context. Free speech only works when there is vigorous counter speech.

As deans, we also know that in this volatile political environment, we must ensure that our campuses have places where each side can air their opinions and even come together and hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation. Examples of this include webinars that our respective schools held in the wake of the attacks featuring a diversity of voices, including academics and policymakers, Israelis and Palestinians, Democrats and Republicans. That must start with the core element of civic engagement and civil disagreement.

Campuses must protect free speech, but equally advocate for mutually respectful dialogue. That obligation is both especially important and especially demanding in our current political and societal landscape.

A discussion of the actions that states should take in self-defense is worth convening, as well as one on the conduct of warfare in a dense urban environment. Israel’s response should be directed at eliminating the threat posed by Hamas, not at innocent civilians in Gaza. What that means in practice is a matter for debate. Calling out Israel for its bombing of civilian areas in Gaza shouldn’t be avoided out of risk of offending Israelis and their supporters.

There is no better place for these discussions than a university campus. But sponsoring this kind of debate takes courage.

As educators, we at times have to make our students uncomfortable by challenging their preconceptions and encouraging them to think through their positions using data, evidence and logic. It is unrealistic to believe that individuals can put their emotions away. But if a university doesn’t encourage students to reflect on how their own emotions shape, and occasionally distort, their analysis of the world around them, where else could they possibly learn this?

Even prior to the current violence, the Arab-Israeli conflict was an intensely uncomfortable topic to discuss, and, unfortunately, some schools may try to solve that problem by omitting it from their curriculums. Journal editors may be wary of wading into such hotly charged topics. This gap has left an intellectual vacuum filled by hate speech, antisemitism, Islamophobia and other stereotypical tropes on campuses and crowded out rigorous empirical analysis and reasoned discussions. Add to that a polarized media establishment, political landscape and social media, and no wonder we’ve seen the conversation on campus devolve into a verbal war of platitudes and talking points.

We remain hopeful, however. Over the past few weeks, we’ve also witnessed a vibrant student body eager for more information around these issues.

Universities play a vital role in shaping the conversation. Polls show that universities still enjoy a higher level of trust by the public than many other institutions, although it is dwindling. We have unique access to the world’s best intellectual minds and financial resources to support them.

We will squander this trust and legacy if we stay on the sidelines.

 Amaney Jamal and Keren Yarhi-Milo: Dr. Jamal is the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. Dr. Yarhi-Milo is the dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.

Source: The Conversations About the War in Gaza We Ought to Be Having

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Diversity and inclusion on campus after the Hamas attacks – Inside Higher Ed

2023/10/25 Leave a comment

Reflections worthy of note, particularly the question: “How can campuses sustain some semblance of civility, forbearance and open-mindedness in the face of deep political and ideological divides?”

No easy answer but the last few weeks have demonstrated the necessity:

As tensions on elite college campuses flare in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, and as many students and faculty members take sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, many worry that the earlier talk about diversity, multiculturalism and inclusion has turned out to be a fraud.

It’s easy, at this fraught historical moment, to worry that tolerance and pluralism on campus are fraying and that antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of ethnic tribalism, stoked by ideologues, extremists and zealots, threaten to rip our campuses apart.

Every day seems to bring another account of students assaulted on a campus for their political views or their religious identity and of fliers and posters being ripped down. We even have reports of a professor at major university expressing “exhilaration” about the flaring violence in the Holy Land and another “ruminating about killing ‘zionist journalists who spread propaganda & misinformation.’”

Isn’t that what we mean by a hostile educational environment?

You don’t need to be Jewish to worry about the circulation of antisemitic tropes, memes and sentiments on campuses and social media. Meanwhile, many Muslim students feel that their concerns and viewpoints are downplayed, disdained or dismissed.

All this is especially shocking because campuses, in recent years, have placed such a high premium on diversity and multiculturalism and campus leaders have expressed such a strong commitment to facilitating “difficult dialogues.”

Much of the public conversation of what’s occurring on campus has been framed in terms of free speech, doxing and faculty members’ right to academic freedom. But I think there’s an even more pressing issue: How can campuses sustain some semblance of civility, forbearance and open-mindedness in the face of deep political and ideological divides?

I myself fear far less about the future of free speech on campus than whether all students will feel welcomed and supported when their political or religious views or identities or personal opinions differ from their classmates’. I have witnessed intellectual bullying, guilt-mongering and deliberate provocations within my own classrooms. Those problems aren’t simply a Fox News–fueled fantasy.

I will offer some suggestions about what campuses can and should do to support a more inclusive campus environment, but before I do, I’d like to take a few moments to discuss the broader issue of tolerance, assimilation and pluralism in American history.

This topic presents us with a paradox. On the one hand, this country has had a long history of nativism, xenophobia and discrimination against outsider groups, punctuated by rancorous and ongoing debates over immigration policy. On the other hand, it’s also the case that the United States has been more successful than almost any other society in absorbing and integrating immigrants. I think it’s indisputable that, for all its failings, by almost every measure, including interracial and interethnic marriage, this society has made genuine progress in becoming more inclusive.

This makes the apparent decline in mutual acceptance on campus all that much more worrisome.

During the 20th century, the United States was described, at various times, as:

  • A melting pot, where immigrant groups shed their distinctive identities and melt into a single, unified culture.
  • A salad bowl, a metaphor that suggests that the United States consists of distinct cultural groups that maintain a unique identity while co-existing side by side and contributing to the nation’s character.
  • A nation of nations, in which each group retains its autonomy but all are united under a shared national identity.
  • A tapestry, with ethnic group maintaining its own distinctive characteristics, yet woven together to create a vibrant mixture of languages, traditions, music, foods and art.
  • A kaleidoscope, as a continually shifting pattern of cultures that change and re-form into new patterns, emphasizing the dynamism of American cultural interactions.

There are those, like John Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, who described an American as a “new man” who is distinctively individualistic, self-reliant, pragmatic and hardworking. Free to pursue self-defined goals, this new man rejects the ideological zeal and fixed identities that had characterized the Old World.

Then there are those who stress acculturation, the process through which individuals and groups absorb and adopt elements of the larger society. This doesn’t necessarily mean they fully assimilate; they can certainly maintain aspects of their original culture. And yet the tendency is to gradually adopt the customs, values and norms of the dominant culture—as a result, their original cultural identity fades or disappears.

Then, too, there are those who view the pressures for conformity and homogeneity much more negatively. This perspective looks at how schools, employers, mass media and the legal and political systems work together to suppress diversity and impose a high degree of cultural and linguistic uniformity—even as they nominally celebrate multiculturalism in cultural expression, dress, food and religion.

Assimilationist pressures can come from within or without: from a desire for social acceptance and belonging or economic advancement. From intermarriage, peer pressure, media influences and expectations in school and the workplace. From secularization, mass culture and consumerism, which have also contributed to a homogenized American identity.

Assimilation is, of course, a spectrum, not a binary outcome. Immigrants can adopt certain elements of American culture while retaining aspects of their original culture. I’d argue that the willingness to accept hybrid cultural identities, practices and traditions that has made assimilation easier.

Nor is American culture static. It is dynamic, undergoing a continual process of adaptation and change. In fact, one of American society’s distinctive features is a certain kind of cultural fluidity, adaptability and absorbative capacity.

Unlike France, the Western European country that, historically, was the most open to immigration, but which was also the most insistent on assimilation, the United States has been far less resolute in demanding that immigrants acculturate and its consumer industries far more eager to incorporate elements from the newcomers’ cultures, from foodways to music. Of course, this process was less a matter of cultural exchange than of cultural appropriation. The fact that the company previously known as Dunkin’ Donuts is the country’s larger purvey of bagels is telling.

Among this society’s most striking paradoxes is that largely in the absence of intensive “Americanization” campaigns, immigrants’ offspring became, within two generations, largely indistinguishable in attitudes, dress, language and politics from native-born Americans. Whether this pattern will persist in an age when it is far easier than in the past to maintain ties with one’s culture of origin remains uncertain. But rates of intermarriage suggest that it very well might.

It’s essential to emphasize that acculturation and assimilation co-existed with persistent discrimination and inequalities along lines of skin color. The burgeoning literature on the historical, social, legal and cultural construction of whiteness; on white privilege in terms of law enforcement, job prospects and access to educational opportunities, loans and health care; and on the normalization and invisibility of whiteness (and heterosexuality and maleness) as an identity remind us that identities are both fluid and profoundly consequential.

Which brings me to the topic of today: What can colleges and universities do to create a more civil and inclusive campus environment? After all, they’ve already taken certain obvious steps. Senior leadership has expressed a clear commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion and has asserted that these principles lie at the core of their institution’s mission and values. Campuses have mandated diversity training and established protocols for reporting instances of discrimination, harassment and bias.

In addition, institutions have incorporated multicultural perspectives into the curriculum, established cultural centers to support diverse students’ needs and promoted international food fairs and other activities and events to celebrate diversity. Many have acknowledged their historical ties to slavery, racism, colonialism, eugenics and other problematic aspects of their past and, as a result, have removed statues, renamed buildings and engaged in acts of restorative justice.

Nothing wrong with any of that. But, obviously, these steps haven’t been sufficient.

Not surprisingly, many wealthy donors want something more. As The New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat has written in a piece entitled “Why Big Money Can’t Easily Change Campus Politics,” many of these donors strongly object to the leftward ideological drift on elite campuses and the “administrative temporizing over the proper response to Hamas’s massacre of Israeli civilians and pro-Hamas statements by certain student groups.”

However, Douthat is right: their efforts to pressure college presidents and boards of regents are doomed to failure because, in the columnist’s words, an ideologically conformist, increasingly left-wing professoriate controls the curriculum, hiring and tenure and, he would no doubt add, an even a more staunchly progressive student life staff shapes the campus’s culture. The best donors can do, in Douthat’s opinion, is to:

  • Found or fund centers or institutes or programs or individual faculty members committed to heterodoxy and intellectual diversity and liberal ideals in some form.
  • Support smaller and poorer mission-driven institutions where their money might actually make a difference.
  • Give funds to student groups that do help those students who feel embattled and besieged and especially to student organizations that foster free debate.

Sounds good to me.

But let me add two other recommendations.

First, the college curriculum needs to treat diversity in a much more holistic, nuanced and comparative manner, especially at the lower-division level.

My students took U.S. history in fifth, eighth and 11th grades. I believe that they’d be better served by a course that looked systematically at various subcultures’ histories, traditions, values and challenges from a comparative vantage point and that looks at how these subcultures have interacted over time.

Wouldn’t undergraduates benefit from learning more, again from a comparative perspective, about these groups’ struggles for advancement and equality and the barriers they encountered?

Certainly, any course in comparative ethnic studies must avoid stereotyping, superficiality, tokenistic inclusivity and crude politicization. For some critiques of current approaches that lack the level of depth that I favor, see here and here. What we need instead is an approach that is truly analytical, fully inclusive and genuinely comparative.

Second, our campuses need to focus much more attention on local needs. I don’t believe there is a better way to foster a sense of community and connection on campus than by cultivating a shared commitment to addressing the problems that surround our institutions. Here’s how to do this:

  • Conduct a community-needs assessment. Identify the educational, environmental, health and other social problems and challenges that neighboring communities face.
  • Support research projects that address specific local challenges involving education, public health and environmental issues.
  • Increase engagement with local schools by offering tutoring programs, after-school activities, enrichment programs and mentorship opportunities.
  • Address local public health and social service issues and local environmental concerns by working with various local service providers.
  • Embed service-learning opportunities across the curriculum, for example, by awarding credit for community service in local schools, clinics and shelters or providing research and technology support to local organizations.
  • Host community events, forums, debates, workshops and theatrical events, art exhibitions and other performances on campus to foster constructive dialogue.
  • Expand continuing education opportunities tailored to the needs of the local community, including adult education classes, vocational training, English language courses and workshops on various topics, from computer literacy to financial planning, tailored to the needs of the community.
  • Research and acknowledge historical town-gown tensions and work toward reconciliation and trust-building.

Nothing I suggest here will address campus tensions over Middle East policy or the sense among many Jewish and Muslim students that their concerns are insufficiently acknowledged. But collaboration on issues of local concern might well advance cross-campus cooperation and communication, which are the essential underpinnings for positive interactions.

Steven Mintz is professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin.

Source: Diversity and inclusion on campus after the Hamas attacks – Inside Higher Ed

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Fraser: François Legault et les universités anglophones

2023/10/25 Leave a comment

Good column by former official languages commission Fraser:

Dans l’approche du gouvernement du Québec envers des institutions de la communauté anglophone, c’est difficile d’éviter l’impression qu’il y a une ignorance, et une méfiance, derrière ses gestes. L’attitude du premier ministre François Legault envers la communauté anglophone est un secret de polichinelle ; dans son mémoire, il a raconté ses batailles de rue avec les jeunes anglophones de l’Ouest-de-l’Île, et, dans son premier discours politique de candidat, il a rassuré les membres de l’association de comté du Parti québécois de sa hantise pour les Anglais.

M. egault a déjà parlé de la Coalition avenir Québec comme d’une version moderne de l’Union nationale de Maurice Duplessis, et les points de comparaison ne manquent pas. Comme Duplessis, il a créé son parti en regroupant nationalistes et conservateurs. Comme Duplessis, il accepte mal la critique, dénonçant le journaliste Aaron Derfel, de The Gazette, quand il a découvert les conditions invivables dans le CHSLD Herron.

Son caucus n’a que deux députés de l’île de Montréal, et un seul anglophone ; un miroir, 70 ans plus tard, de l’emprise électorale de Duplessis. (En fait, en 1954, Duplessis a gagné six sièges sur l’île de Montréal, trois fois plus que Legault en 2022.)

Cette hantise est parfois marquée par la peur. Dans sa campagne électorale de 2018, il a dit qu’il « s’est réconcilié avec le Canada », mais a exprimé la crainte que « nos petits-enfants ne parlent plus français » à cause de l’immigration. Pendant la même campagne, il a avoué qu’il croyait qu’un immigrant puisse devenir citoyen canadien en quelques mois, tandis que ça prend trois ans.

Comme réconciliation avec le Canada, on a déjà vu mieux. De toute évidence, les Canadiens sont perçus comme des étrangers. Des étrangers riches, par contre, qui peuvent financer les universités québécoises en payant presque six fois plus que les étudiants québécois pour s’inscrire aux universités québécoises, à McGill, à Concordia ou à Bishop’s. (Les étudiants arrivant de la France vont continuer de payer les mêmes frais de scolarité que les jeunes Québécois.)

Ce geste fait suite à d’autres qui révèlent une attitude négative envers la communauté anglophone, comme si cette communauté n’avait pas le droit de gérer ses propres institutions qet u’il n’existait que grâce à la bienveillance de la majorité francophone. Donc, le gouvernement a déjà annulé le financement pour l’expansion de Dawson College, a limité l’inscription dans les cégeps anglophones d’étudiants qui n’ont pas étudié en anglais et a imposé une exigence de trois cours en français pour les étudiants anglophones au cégep — ce qui chambarde la planification de crédits et l’organisation du personnel enseignant.

Mais tout cela n’était que des hors-d’oeuvre. Le plat principal a été annoncé la semaine passée. Au lieu de considérer les universités anglophones comme un actif pour le Québec, elles sont perçues par ce gouvernement comme un passif, comme une menace à la santé culturelle et linguistique de la majorité.

Au contraire, McGill est l’une des universités les plus respectées en Amérique du Nord et la seule université canadienne qui est bien connue aux États-Unis. Concordia est un peu le pendant anglophone de l’UQAM : c’est souvent l’université de la première génération qui poursuit des études postsecondaires. Et Bishop’s joue un rôle particulier comme petite université avec une culture innovatrice et intime.

On se plaît souvent à dire au Québec que la minorité anglophone est la mieux traitée au Canada. Mais il n’y a aucune province, sauf le Québec, qui a fait un effort systématique au cours des dernières décennies pour affaiblir les institutions de la minorité. En Ontario, on est en train de bâtir une nouvelle université francophone, l’Université de l’Ontario français, qui a accueilli sa première cohorte en septembre 2021. Au Manitoba, le collège St. Boniface est devenu l’Université Saint-Boniface. Au Nouveau-Brunswick, l’Université de Moncton a célébré cette année son 60e anniversaire.

Historiquement, le mécénat ne faisait pas partie de la tradition francophone au Québec. Dans son mémoire Mes grandes bibliothèques. Mes archives, mes mémoires le bibliothécaire et archiviste Guy Berthiaume raconte comment il a travaillé pour faire sa marque dans le domaine de campagnes de finance3ment pour les universités francophones québécoises. « La collecte de fonds professionnelle, systématique et assumée était, jusqu’au début des années 1980, absente des universités francophones et elle faisait l’objet d’encore de beaucoup de préjugés dans les milieux intellectuels », écrit-il.

Par contre les universités anglophones y travaillent depuis le début de leur existence. Il y a, et il y a toujours eu, un effort soutenu pour créer un sentiment d’appartenance et de communauté chez leurs diplômés.

Maintenant, elles paient le prix de leur succès. Au lieu d’être valorisées et respectées comme des pôles d’attraction nationaux et internationaux, elles sont traitées avec mépris, comme des vaches à lait pour le réseau universitaire. Quelle honte !

Source: François Legault et les universités anglophones

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