In a letter published in To have to and addressed on January 17 and addressed to the leaders of Quebec universities, the Minister of Higher Education, Pascale Déry, took a public position after the cancellation by McGill University of the conference of British professor Robert Wintemute. This gay activist, specialist in human rights, had indeed been accused by a hundred activists of having transphobic opinions. The Minister then rebelled against the spirit of censorship that motivated this decision and called on rectors throughout Quebec to apply Bill 32, which is intended to protect academic freedom.
Aware of the importance of “certain social struggles”, Minister Déry nevertheless weighed the exercise of this freedom against the objectives of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI), likely to ensure “the ‘equal opportunities’ for all and to increase the ‘representativeness of target groups’ (women, Aboriginals, visible minorities and the disabled) in institutions. Between the two, Pascale Déry even admitted that there could sometimes be “difficult arbitrations”.
Has the fundamental problem been properly posed by the minister?
We know that since 2017, all Quebec institutions have been subject to a federal EDI action plan, introduced through the Canada Research Chairs Program. At first glance, this state intervention seems as necessary as it is beneficial since it is a question of correcting the inequalities of the scholarly milieu. In fact, this very restrictive measure is an opportunity for Ottawa to interfere in the jurisdiction of Quebec. As for the universities, they respond perhaps less out of a love of justice per se than for financial reasons. They would obviously lose millions of dollars not to comply.
Moreover, the question is not limited to research. We are currently witnessing a real social phenomenon around EDI. From the City of Montreal to Radio-Canada, via Meta and Google, there is no administration or company in North America that does not pride itself on having its own EDI policy. If these plans serve a progressive line of action, inspired by the theses of the moment on gender and “race”, the effectiveness of the formula depends firstly on its status as an inclusive message.
This process, well known to communication agencies (advertising or political), is used to rally vast and mixed audiences. Indeed, who would per se oppose “diversity” or “equity”? If these terms carry the adhesion of all, it is that each one can hear there what he wants. How do you define diversity, for example? Is it about social diversity? Linguistics? Religious? Ethnic ? As we can see, each of the notions that make up the acronym EDI is elastic and vague as desired.
However, if it were necessary to assign a precise source to the EDI, it is on the management side that we would find it. During the years 1990-2000, the notion of diversity experienced unprecedented growth, from business schools to private companies. This was the consequence, among other things, of the mixed results of the policies ofaffirmative action in the United States and the Canadian employment equity program. The “equity”, “diversity”, “inclusion” model has therefore been developed and extended to public administrations, the media, the world of education and culture. It gave birth to a service economy in which firms of EDI strategists and advisers prosper today.
It is in this context that a veritable anti-racism market has flourished with its workshops to raise awareness of unconscious biases, the effectiveness of which has nevertheless been disputed many times. Pamela Newkirk thus recalls that at the beginning of the century, the turnover of the EDI industry already amounted to 8 billion dollars in the United States. Since the creation of Black Lives Matter and the #MeToo movement, jobs in this field have taken off, even though the qualification and expertise for this kind of position remain very obscure.
At McGill University, however, we have fervently adopted this model. Within the team led by the Vice-Rector of “Equity” Angela Campbell, positions have continued to grow in recent years. In addition to the expected and necessary services (in mental health, sexual violence, etc.), staff are offered training on inclusive leadership and micro-aggressions, a very controversial notion. There are also various resources: pseudoscientific bibliographies on discrimination (Robin DiAngelo), a calculator capable (it seems) of detecting your gender bias, not to mention a yoga site intended for so-called racialized people…
The considerable funds allocated to all these initiatives divert the university from its fundamental missions. As for equity, diversity and inclusion, don’t they deserve better than this business of virtue?