The author is a professor of literature in Montreal, editor-in-chief of the journal Argument and essayist. He notably published These words that think for us (Liber, 2017) and The prose of Alain Grandbois. Where to read and reread The Travels of Marco Polo (Note bene, 2019).
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) has just reviewed the criteria for awarding its undergraduate scholarships. Awarded until now to undergraduate students who obtained very high grades so that they can learn about research during the summer, these BRPC grants (undergraduate research grants) can now also be granted to black or indigenous students without such criteria of excellence being taken into account in their case.
Worse, one can read in full on the NSERC website: “At SSHRC [Conseil de recherches en sciences humaines] and CIHR [Instituts de recherche en santé du Canada], USRAs are currently reserved for black student researchers. After the Canada Research Chairs prohibited to white men, here are the scholarships awarded on racial criteria!
Some may see this as progress and claim that diversity is an asset in research, that it greatly improves the ability of researchers to diversify their approaches and not allow all sorts of biases or angles to persist. dead. Alright. But why then stick to the only skin color and promote only “black students and research students”? The notion of diversity should in this case encompass many other criteria than the supposed “race”: for example, national origin, social origin, professional and educational background, etc.
We can therefore rather see a hypocritical desire on the part of the federal granting agencies to artificially inflate the number of black researchers in universities and other organizations that do research.
Why “hypocritical”? Because such a racial criterion suggests that no black person could obtain this scholarship on the basis of their grades alone, which is terribly insulting, even deeply racist. Moreover, this can only have the disastrous consequence of drawing suspicion in the future on all black scholarship holders, whether or not they have obtained these scholarships thanks to the excellence of their results. This is one of the most obvious perverse effects of any positive discrimination, especially when it is practiced in such a crude way. The other is to arouse the understandable resentment of all those who will no longer have access to these scholarships because they do not have the right skin color.
Act upstream
Why “artificially”? Because if, indeed, there are few black researchers in these fields, it is upstream that we must act if we really want to change things; by improving, for example, the education provided in all schools, in all neighborhoods, and also by allowing better access to university studies. Positive discrimination always intends to do without any major social reform by adopting, downstream, cosmetic measures intended to mask the inequalities that persist and for which it serves as a kind of excuse, even an alibi.
Because it is obviously easier, and above all less costly, to arbitrarily promote a few members of minorities than to try to ensure that, in our society, everyone, regardless of their social origin or the color of their skin, has the same chance of achieving excellence by acquiring high-level skills.
Unless, of course, we simply want to redefine the meaning of the word “excellence”. Here again, it is indeed easier to change the definitions of words than to modify reality.
On this subject, a programmatic statement taken from the University of Ottawa website may give us a hint. ” [P]To continue to compete with other major research universities, he says, the University of Ottawa must establish a competitive and comprehensive recruitment strategy for hiring Aboriginal faculty. […] Such a strategy, adds this statement, will ensure that the University will continue to be among the leaders in research. It is therefore understandable that the recruitment of Aboriginal professors is necessary for this university to maintain its excellence in the field of research.
But what we do not understand is why the hiring of Aboriginal researchers would offer such a guarantee. The explanation is given in two other sentences of the same statement: “This strategy is directly linked to national research funding, as the Tri-Councils are increasingly interested in Aboriginal-focused research, led by Aboriginal scholars in partnership with indigenous communities. For the University to have access to these types of research funds, it must increase its number of Aboriginal researchers. »
Thus, the circle is complete: in today’s “competitive” university, “excellent” research is research that receives funding; an “excellent” research student is a student who obtains a research grant; and this, of course, whatever the criteria which allow the obtaining (or the refusal) of these subsidies and these aids. Federal money guarantees this new definition of “excellence”, and it doesn’t matter that it is completely tautological.