The 'Monocultures' of Canadian Universities

"Allocating funding to scientists based on their race or sex works against the interest of science and the nation."

"It leads to rather monstrous consequences like saying there are too many Asians on this committee', or too many Asians are getting funding, or too many Jews, or too many Sikhs, or too many Arabs." 

"As a cognitive scientist, I can attest that the human mind is vulnerable to many biases and fallacies. the strongest is the 'my side' bias, the conviction that my tribe or coalition or party is correct and that a rival coalition is ignorant or evil or both."

Harvard cognitive scientist Steven Pinker

Harvard University professor Steven Pinker, testifying before a parliamentary committee on Sept. 15, 2025. Canadian Affairs

 

Basic science in Canada is being eroded by diversity mandates practised in the country, and in the process discrediting the academic system, according to Professor Pinker, who delivered his opinion in testimony recently to a House of Commons research committee.  Dr. Pinker ranks as one of the world's best-known Canadian academics, and his testimony amounted to a broad critique of diversity quotas. Such quotas originally dated to the 1970s in the United States, and in recent years have become standard practise in Canadian universities, from admissions to hiring, to grant-funding.  

 

"Universities should stanch the flood of DEI officials, expose their policies to the light of day, and repeal the ones that cannot be publicly justified." As it happens, the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy revealed in a February report that race-based quotas have become a universal practice of Canadian universities in screening for candidates based on race or sexuality. Candidates are also required to file 'diversity statements' expressing an intention to adhere to 'anti-race' policies on campus.

 

His own Harvard students, explained Dr. Pinker, when faced with mandatory diversity statements, looking to be hired for a research position, fill them on occasion using ChatGPT, the AI program. "They could not honestly fill them out; it would go against their conscience to say things that they knew were not true, but they knew they would be blackballed and eliminated from a job if they expressed their true opinions." 

 

Toronto Metropolitan University   Photo by Ernest Doroszuk /Toronto Sun / Postmedia

 

Program sets have been set aside at multiple Canadian universities, for members of a specific race. Last year, Toronto Metropolitan University, as example, opened its medical school with a requirement that 75 percent of all admissions be restricted to Black, Indigenous and other 'equity-deserving' applicants. Many identity-based policies have in fact been driven in Canada by federal order. Canada Research Chairs, as an example, come with a proviso requiring universities to meet firm hiring quotas on race, sex and ability in the disbursement of over $300 million in annual funding. 

 

The formula is laid out to ensure that 50.9 percent of funds must be allocated to females, 22 percent to 'visible minorities', and 7.5 percent to 'persons with disabilities'. In addressing the Commons committee, Dr. Pinker asserted the unreasonableness of the expectation that every single branch of science is to have an ethnic mix, directly proportional to the general population. Under the guise of 'looking' diverse, universities increasingly have become 'monocultures' shunning and punishing dissenting opinion.

 

The result invariably is the opposite of a healthy intellectual culture where biases can be attacked and criticized by colleagues with varying viewpoints. "One person can point out another's errors and the whole community can be more rational than any of the individuals in it", he explained. Dr. Pinker has become an outspoken critic of the "social justice monoculture" prevailing at North American universities. He co-founded the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, comprised of a group pledged to endorse free speech and diversity of viewpoints.

 

Dr. Pinker published a five-point plan in the Boston Globe on how to "save Harvard from itself", when multiple Harvard campus groups openly endorsed Palestinian terrorism in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 atrocities in southern Israel when thousands of Palestinian terrorists stormed into farming communities, raping and slaughtering. Dr. Pinker called for the university to 'disempower' DEI.

 

UBC psychology professor Azim Shariff also testified before the Commons committee; his  research led to a 2024 study which found that trust in institutions is lost when politics  align with individuals' personal biases. Science is meant to be objective, not subject to manipulation to have it reflect an ideology or a view based on preconceived social or cultural views. When personal views intersect with science what results is rejected by free and rational minds.

 

Toronto Metropolitan University's new School of Medicine will open in Brampton, Ont., in September 2025. The school will reserve 75 per cent of its enrolment slots for "equity-deserving" students. Photo by Peter J. Thompson / National Post

"We found that the perceived politicization of institutions -- the extent to which institutions were perceived as allowing their political values to impact their work -- was associated with lower trust toward those institutions as well as lower willingness to support and defer to their expertise."

"Canada, unfortunately, has a reputation for having a somewhat politicized academy."

"Politicization in science, it's like bacteria in an operating room. There's no way you'll be able to get rid of it entirely, but you do want to do as much as you can to remove it, and I don't think you should trust any surgeon who's not trying to do that."

Azim Shariff, psychology professor, University of British Columbia