This article originally appeared in the National Post.
By Peter MacKinnon, January 3, 2025
The Netherlands’ Leiden University is one of the top-ranked in the world, so when one of its senior law professors takes the trouble to offer an international perspective to a science committee of the Canadian House of Commons, we should pay attention to his words.
Professor Yuan Yi Zhu’s advice to Canadian students who are not left wing is to keep their views to themselves until they secure funding: “[w]ithin Canadian academia there is a monoculture where, if you deviate even very slightly from what is fashionable and what is commonly accepted by your peers, not only will you be ostracized, but often you will not be able to have an academic career in the first place.”
He continued, saying that federal research funding contributes to the problem by targeting identity over excellence in certain cases, as well as its expectation that applicants “promote specific ideological objectives such as (DEI).”
Evidence that Professor Yuan is correct has been mounting for years. The federal Liberal government has promoted and has sometimes required adherence to the agenda of which he speaks; and many of our universities have willingly, or at least quietly, gone along with it, lending their names to the pursuit of social justice issues; a Macdonald-Laurier Institute study identified an overwhelmingly left-of-center professoriate including 30 per cent who would “cancel” colleagues who did not agree with their views on social justice. Many of these professors’ students fall silent rather than challenge orthodoxies presented to them in classes. The list of findings goes on.
What is to be done? There is a short-term and long-term answer to this question. A prospective change of government in Ottawa should reverse the present government’s agenda that has been imposed on the sector, and provincial governments should insist that their universities focus on excellence and the search for truth, not on progressive or social justice goals. Failure of any institutions to do so should be reflected in funding decisions.
The longer-term answer points to reforming public university governance. Since the last major changes made during the 1966 Duff-Berdahl Report, our universities have grown in size by orders of magnitude; faculty members in most of them have joined unions, thereby altering the dynamic of internal relationships; many senates have become dysfunctional or have been sidetracked from their academic decision-making role by faculty unions; student councils use member fees to support causes that are an affront to some of those obliged to pay them, including York University’s Federation of Students which released a Statement of Solidarity with Palestine which included expressions such as “so-called Israel” and “so-called Canada.” On some university boards, arms length oversight by external members is compromised by flawed appointments processes, or by internal members (faculty, staff, union and student) more committed to constituency interests than to the welfare of the university as a whole.
Governance Reform in 2025 does not require a Royal commission but it does require systematic answers to pointed questions: how do we strengthen statutory governance bodies, boards and senates? How do we ensure that freedom of expression and academic freedom prevail over institutional and personal politics? Should we insist that fees collected by students or on their behalf be used for student services, and not for political causes inimical to the interests of some that pay them?
Universities Canada and provincial university bodies can help answer these and other questions, but governments must be satisfied that they are being addressed in ways compatible with the public interest and with the historical missions of universities.
Everyone in our universities, and governments responsible for them, should be chilled by the diagnosis of Professor Yuan, and should ask themselves if there is truth in his words. If their answers are yes, as they should be, they must commit to reforms that are necessary for their institutions to survive and again command wide public support.
Peter MacKinnon has served as president in three Canadian universities, and is a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
