At MLI’s August 2025 Rethinking Higher Education conference, the second of three panels – titled Restoring Merit in Higher Education and Teaching Critical Thinking in an Age of Polarization – tackled the factors that are blocking university reform and how to overcome them.
In particular, the panel discussed various equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) policies at Canadian universities, and their impact on higher education. The panel also touched on the need for more research and reporting on topics like the practices of various granting agencies and the kinds of research projects they fund.
The panel, moderated by Trent University history professor Christopher Dummitt, featured:
- Paige MacPherson, associate director of education policy at the Fraser Institute. MacPherson said it’s hard to find common ground on education policy when there is disagreement about fundamental issues like whether there is a “reality-based truth” or only personal truth. She also pointed to a lack of knowledge-rich curriculum in K-12 education – like provincial history curricula that are neither chronological nor content-based. She said this lack of knowledge base is an impediment to preparing students to pursue truth at any level of education.
- Waller Newell, political science professor and co-director of the Centre for Liberal Education and Public Affairs at Carleton University, discussed obstacles to higher education reform. He said most faculty and administration are not on board with reform, and may seek to hire more like-minded people and circumvent government attempts at reform. He said there are also challenges to launching new universities in Canada, but enrichment courses from third parties to influence students before they enter university could help.
- Zachary Patterson, an associate professor of geography, planning, and environment at Concordia University, said the de facto mission of the Canadian university is antithetical to the university’s real mission: truth seeking. In Canada, that’s been replaced by a mission focused on equity and decolonization, resting on the belief that all knowledge is socially constructed by oppressors. He said Canadian youth go through a university system that is “hostile to the foundational institutions of Canada that have made it peaceful, orderly, and well-governed.” This includes hostility towards freedom of speech, free enterprise, the rule of law, and family, with few professors prepared to defend these foundations.
- Dave Snow, associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Guelph, said his study of the key federal granting agencies that fund most research in Canada found that there had been a rise in “activist EDI” language in the titles of grants, but that these agencies were not fully captured. He said more research is needed to determine if these agencies are upstream or downstream of the shift towards more activist academic research. He said the answer to this question will provide insight into whether overhauling these granting agencies is a solution to addressing the rise in activist research projects.
