Universities Minister speaks out against censorship and marginalization of white

Universities: Minister speaks out against censorship and marginalization of white men

Minister Pascale Déry sends a clear message to university management: censorship and the exclusion of candidates to promote diversity have no place on campus. Quebec is even exploring “all options” to help research chairs that would refuse money from Ottawa.

• Also read: evil white men

“Under no circumstances should we tolerate censorship in academic circles,” writes the Minister of Higher Education in a letter sent Monday to Quebec’s rectors and rectors. Censorship inhibits thinking, and anxious thinking hinders the pursuit of excellence central to academic mission. We cannot sacrifice academic freedom in the name of specific struggles at the risk of ending up losing both.”

The letter is said to bring “clarification” after several controversies have rocked campus in recent months.

“It’s important to position myself, to send a clear message, because some rectors don’t know me as a new minister. That’s why I really wanted them to know where I stand in this debate,” explains Pascale Déry in an interview with our Parliamentary Office.

Recently, British law professor Robert Wintemute’s lecture at McGill University was canceled because students spoke out against his views as transphobic.

Laval University also found itself in controversy after white males were excluded from the hiring process for research positions for violating the federal criteria for equity, diversity and inclusion of Canada’s research chairs.

Inclusion versus injustice

In her letter, the minister also writes that these federal guidelines should not lead to “any form of discrimination or injustice”. “However, the equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) requirements set by the federal government for Canada’s research chair programs tend to limit certain rights and lower the primacy of the notions of competency and excellence,” he laments.

Quebec can’t force Ottawa to change its program, but the minister is considering other ways to help research chairs who would be penalized if they refused to comply with federal requirements. “I’m looking at all the possible options,” said Pascale Déry, adding that she had asked her ministry to receive different scenarios.

Criteria revised in Quebec

Pascal Déry also asked Quebec’s chief scientist to revise its evaluation grid for awarding Quebec Research Funds so that the EDI criteria are no longer dominant but complementary.

Last fall, four university researchers denounced the use of this analytical grid, like that of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, for awarding scholarships to master’s and doctoral students.

“Over the past year, we have seen how some of them have multiplied in their files the evidence of their civic commitment: calling themselves representatives of sexual diversity, making compost at the end of their garden, accompanying the aging family members in a Résidence Soleil …” the researchers wrote in an open letter published in La Presse.

Furthermore, “these criteria subject researchers to orthodoxy, even window activism, from the start,” they added.

Quebec’s chief scientist responded with an open letter of his own, assuring that the guidelines were only intended to improve research projects where necessary. No candidate was discriminated against on this basis in 2021, assures Rémi Quirion.

“However, we remain sensitive to the fact that candidates may challenge the EDI and ODD sub-criteria. Therefore, we will make arrangements with our evaluation committees so that these sub-criteria cannot in any way disadvantage a scholarship application,” he wrote on December 8.

Read the letter the minister sent to the university directors here.

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