Academic freedom has a long history of protecting unorthodox thinkers and contributing to the search for knowledge and truth. Unconventional ideas can later prove to be incredibly important. Unfortunately, we can’t know ahead of time which unconventional ideas will prove useful. Academic freedom – and the related concept of free speech – is part of the way a liberal society remains open to diverse views, to scientific inquiry, and to self-correction. This paper substantiates the claims that there is a serious crisis in higher education in this country. Canadian universities are political monoliths whose lack of viewpoint diversity contributes to serious problems on campus including a weakening of support for academic freedom, a hostile climate for those who disagree with left-leaning values, and significant levels of self censorship.
We conducted a survey from March 3 to 17 (administered by Leger) with the aim of understanding how the general public and professors themselves think about the role of universities and university professors in Canada today. Our survey shows that Canadian universities are seriously deficient in viewpoint diversity and have instead become politically homogenous institutions. Professors vote overwhelmingly for parties of the left and 88 percent self-identity as left-leaning, with only 9 percent voting for conservative parties (compared to 38 percent more generally). Further, it seems as though political skew is increasing in Canadian universities but a lack of good data prevents us from seeing by how much.
Organizations filled with like-minded individuals often fall prey to some of the most dangerous forms of conformity. They are likely to make significant errors in the absence of a diverse array of information, and the sameness of those within the organization leads to overconfidence by the majority and self-censorship by those who might be inclined to disagree. This leads to a climate that is hostile to those with minority political viewpoints.
When we asked if professors would be worried if their political opinions became known, almost 88 percent of left-leaning professors were either not very worried or not worried at all. However, when we looked to the right leaning political minority, the situation changed considerably: 44 percent were somewhat or very worried about facing negative consequences if colleagues, students, or others on campus learned of their political opinions. And 40 percent of right-leaning professors feel like they face a hostile work environment.
Ever hear of “The Long March Through the Institutions”? Got a goodly supply of sawdust in because eventually there’s going to be a bloodbath to clean up.
Those 98% vaxx rates at the universities are sweet.
The bloodbath will be more corpse disposal. Same with most of our media outlets. We were never going to win a war, but if it takes mass suicide on their part for us to win, I’m fine with that.
And that government bureaucracy is gone too…
Not a shot fired. Just injected.
This is why even Wexit will fail if we don’t take the schools back, from K to college.
Given our so-called education system, even if we manage to leave Canada, the next generation will vote in another version of Dear Leader within 15 years.
I agree. Taking back your schools is an acheivable, grass roots, everybody can get involved, project.
I do not know how to do it, but this ‘cleansing of the shire’ needs to be done.
The kneejerk leftist reaction is…”Of course Universities are left-wing…they’re full of intelligent people and intelligent people are going to be naturally left-leaning because they’re smart enough to know that progressivism is the intelligent choice.”
The structural nature of University tends to draw in left-leaning people. Since the rise of codified wokeness, however, there does seem to be a Jordan Peterson purge and general militancy that used to be in the closet.
Here’s the prescription the article offers for correcting this…
the creation of an Academic Freedom Act;
(stringing fancy words together to function as a kind of constitution isn’t going to have a practical impact.)
insisting that universities remain politically neutral in their public statements, hiring practices, and organizational structure and rules;
(They already think they do this. Progressivism is the water that they swim in.)
eliminating political loyalty tests from hiring, research funding, and other human resource decisions and bodies;
(This is fairly new and not that common. They think it eliminates Nazi’s from their midst.)
legislate that unions cannot discriminate based on politics in the defence of their members; and
(Good luck enforcing this. How would you ensure it?)
generally promote a culture of academic freedom.
(They think they already do this.)
Parallel institutions are the only way.
Kudos to Thomas Sowell, Jordan Peterson, McKitrick, Ball, who has just died, Lindsay Shepherd and those few like them for supporting our rights and freedoms in the face of the leftist pack.
Western democracies (their democracy) is run by the school board these days.. Obama’s hope and change opened those flood gates..
If you think? these power hungry political hacks are going to put themselves back into the communist bottle that spawned them.. You would be wrong..
The left, the democrats allowed the academic groundswell to overtake them in 2008.. It was the day that democracy became their democracy.. Everything that followed after that was little more than a temper tantrum.. We are sill reeling under the weight of what the first black president did to our society.. Many seen it and treated it as a coup.. Especially academia who finally pushed down its walls..
Diversity of skin requires a dictatorship of the mind.. Nonsense begets nonsense.. Why is everything crazy?.. The school board is running the show.. The democrats rolled over for Obama while every campus on the planet cheered that they were finally free..
Guess who has wall around them now..
This is equally true in pretty much every institution. Academic, corporate, cultural, gov’t administrative, etc.
Wanna Clean up Universities, Schools & Govt in general..??
Fully decertify every Public Service UNION in existence…for starters
Belonging to a union is incompatible with professionalism. The first duty of a professional is to the public, not to a self-interest group that will place membership and union interests above the public well-being.
Robert
EXACTLY..!
Start treating schools of all varieties as paying institutions.
No more donations. No more students.
Start home-schooling or find an alternative form of education. Think of trades and skills. The world is long on finger-pointers and short on people who can build bridges.
People act as though they are powerless. Stop giving these places students and money. Even a twenty-five percent drop in money and students will be noticed.
Hum. My comments here at SDA seem to be not getting through lately. I’m trying this with rewriting my ‘required fields’ data to see if that makes a difference.
I’ve been noting for quite a while that caring , responsible parents should not allow their children attend university.
JIA – that depends upon what the children are headed for. A trade requires no uni. A business degree requires no uni (though some might argure that pedigree is important). STEM degrees often/usually require university.
For most of history a uni education wasn’t required. It still isn’t, but there is a lot of money to be made by saying that it is, and the dept spiral (and possibly future “you-owe-mes”?) that ensue are deemed less important.
Which brings up what may be a good question: for whom is it good if 20% of the population, neither the doers nor the decision makers, owe a lot of money to third-person actors? Might this be a long term vote harvesting strategy?
Great question and food for thought, JIA!
a 4+ year engineering degree gives you the opportunity to work essentially as an apprentice for 2+ more years in order to be able to write exams for your P.Eng
And there are few universities that allow you to do that degree in an unconventional manner.
No disagreement, JD. The central “school system” wants to control for 4+ years before you can escape its grasp. The additional years are workplace based, so not directly under their control.
This is great! There’s a thead I participated in on LinkedIn about diversity in working groups and how it leads to better overall decisions. I’ll add this factoid and ask if this now means that we should expect less from universities and government sponsored think-tanks as they no longer favour diversity of the most important kind: thought.
Universities are a joke now. The true sciences are being overpowered by the pseudo science of the sociology departments. The lunatics who run them like to believe they are dealing in “science”, but it’s nonsense. Universities should be the domain for nothing but TRUE hard science. Set up kindergartens for the social “science” faculties. They produce nothing of value. The tuition for the true science path should be cut in half and the tuition for the pseudo science rubbish should be tripled to pay for it.
I saw all of this in the 80’s at UBC. Thankfully, geology was almost as far from the social sciences departments as you could go and still stay on campus. Also astrophysics, electrical, metallurgical, geological, and bioresource engineering. Our own little science based group, with gallons of beer on the weekends. We did not miss the rest of the slacker departments, with a paltry 15 class hours per week.
I don’t know that I would agree about the BIOEs at that time, but the more hard sciences were harder for the horde to absorb, fully agreed.
De-funding universities should be one of the highest priorities of government.
Lockstep group-think is the mortal enemy of education. The Moral Man is dedicated to honest thought, and is always willing to step out of line and promote a fact-based position different from that of the majority. That is how society advances. Sadly, the Moral Man is banned from all institutions of higher learning. The only thing high in today’s institutions of higher learning is the student body.
treasonous commie professors…. start there with the noose
It would make more sense to start when people first enter school, not when they are almost done. The indoctrination begins in public childcare and continues through public and high school.
and they don’t call them countries anymore. they call they “member states”.