"Do I work for a public university, or Tony Soprano?"

Reactions to my Parliamentary testimony reveal an intellectual Gulag within Canadian academia

On September 22nd, I appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Science and Research. I was invited as an expert witness for their study “Impact of the criteria for awarding federal funding on research excellence in Canada.”

Late this week, I began receiving emails thanking me for speaking out (presumably due to this clip on YouTube). While wonderful to receive, the messages revealed severely isolated dissenting academics. Few have established support networks, and they are insecure about speaking their mind. As a result, they quietly conform to values antithetical to their own.

This begets a spiral of silence. Fear keeps people from challenging EDI injustices. Lack of dissent builds false consensus, which further increases the risk of speaking out.

Few truly agree with the race/sex discrimination, censorship, and compelled speech of EDI, yet it has quickly permeated every institutional nook and cranny. A small number of activists—willing to punish dissenters—have entrenched this illiberal worldview. But if only a few can inflict such damage, then a small committed band of liberal defenders can stop it.

Being free to follow your conscience and communicate your honest thoughts is non-negotiable in a free society. We should accept no less. Administrators trying to improve employee engagement need not concern themselves with support groups and petting zoos. They need only aggressively promote a liberal culture of open contestation, and improved morale will follow.

I hope that my testimony, among others, may help motivate people to speak their minds. We need a Spartacus moment. I believe it will come. But each of us needs to engage and speak honestly, including those who support EDI.

Below is the text of my testimony followed by a video that includes questions from MPs of the standing committee.

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This year my long-held NSERC Discovery Grant was not renewed. Not for any scientific reason, but for a political one. Specifically, I was unable to profess sufficiently enthusiastic support for the official state ideology of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, or EDI, which one now must do to receive Tri-Council funding.

Essentially, scientists must say how they will recruit diverse people and identify and address “systemic barriers” to inclusion.

I attempted to meet these requirements by arguing that, because EDI requires racial discrimination and speech restrictions—policies opposed by most Canadians—EDI is itself a barrier to inclusion. To overcome this barrier, I proposed ensuring that EDI critics feel included and that we prioritize a culture of free speech and viewpoint diversity, without which science simply cannot flourish.

The NSERC evaluation committee obviously did not buy my interpretation of EDI.

Unhelpfully, my rejection was accompanied only by the vague scolding that I did not “describe an approach to recruit a diverse HQP and provide an inclusive training environment.” While friendly enough, NSERC program officers couldn’t tell me what this meant.

Luckily, a senior administrator at my university who speaks Tri-Council could decipher this message. He relayed to me that, while I don’t have to sincerely support EDI, I most certainly must give the impression that I do. Just say what needs be said, and get your money.

To attract a diverse array of candidates, for example, I was told it’s not enough to assume that those interested in my work will seek me out with a simple email. Instead, I must boldly proclaim my commitment to finding diversity at intersectional sanctuaries like the campus Rainbow Centre. This is puzzling advice. Not least because, of those struggling to find people on the internet, it seems unlikely that foremost among them are members of the gay community.

Now, senior administrators are very attuned to the linguistic practices surrounding the acquisition of public funds, so this advice rings broadly true—the Tri-Council aims to tell us what to think and what to say.

For skeptics, let me quote from the EDI Best Practices Guide. It says, systemic barriers may be “‘unseen’ to those who do not experience them,” but nonetheless “all individuals must recognize that systemic barriers exist.”

It would be charitable to describe this as pseudoscience. Reputable scientists require experimental results to be universally observable and replicable by people of other languages and cultures, centuries into the future. Claiming that knowledge is invisible to some people—based on skin colour, for example—is anti-science.

In other words, the Government requires scientists to affirm the existence of phenomena that are not empirically verifiable. To invoke Paul McCartney, it’s beginning to feel like we’re “Back in the USSR.”

So how has this nonsense so completely permeated Canada’s research ecosystem? Well, after a few cancellations, people fall in line. Fear leads to self-censorship, and open, vigorous debate fizzles out.

I’ve tried to discuss EDI on campus a few times, with the following results:

First, I was told that “EDI is not debatable” by two different administrators, on two separate occasions.

Second, I was kindly advised to stop talking about EDI because I have a family. I should think about my kids, I was told. It made me wonder, do I work for a public university, or Tony Soprano?

To summarize: Tri-Council EDI requirements are compelled political speech, and we find ourselves here because many have allowed themselves to be silenced.

I will leave you with two broad recommendations that I believe are critical for restoring the integrity of science; the first is corrective, the second preventative.

1. As a CORRECTIVE measure: depoliticize science funding—this includes, among other things, removing EDI requirements.

2. As a PREVENTATIVE measure: entrench a culture of free speech, which is the best defense against bad ideas. All recent manias—from gender medicine to EDI—could have been avoided had they been openly debated from the start. I propose an Office of Devil’s Advocacy, to fund evidence-based arguments against emerging scientific fads. This builds in viewpoint diversity and ensures that counterpoints are officially aired. Everyone benefits as ideas are defended, sharpened, and refined.

I am happy to expand on any of these points during questions, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be heard. Thank you.