This study conducts a preliminary assessment of academic job postings at public universities across Canada to gauge the extent of discriminatory hiring and threats to academic freedom from diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).
Typically, DEI strategies rely on equity-based moral justifications or productivity-based rationalizations for diversity and inclusion. Both approaches are increasingly coming under scrutiny as they often heighten discord among groups while privileging those already doing well (in their finances and/or career) within marginalized communities to the detriment of lower- and working-class individuals throughout society.
To measure the prevalence and severity of DEI in academic hiring, we reviewed approximately 50 active, academic job postings from the largest public university in each Canadian province. The review was based on eight research questions that each gauge a different DEI strategy—from acknowledging DEI ideologies, to compelling intellectual conformity, to reverse racism (e.g., excluding white males from applying).
All 10 universities sampled—and 477 of the 489 job advertisements reviewed—employed some form of DEI requirement or strategy in filling academic vacancies. In other words, 98 percent of the academic postings directly or indirectly discriminated against candidates and/or threatened academic freedom.
Some noteworthy instances include the following:
Interestingly, the institution most likely to exclude candidates outright was also the least likely to employ any DEI strategies. At UBC, nearly one out of every five academic job postings explicitly restricted the job to a particular race, ethnicity, group identity, or other inherent trait. However, it was also the university least likely to call for specific DEI strategies; they were absent from 12 percent of UBC’s postings.
To rank and compare the universities in the aggregate, we created an index. To do this, we equally weighted each of the eight questions (i.e., DEI strategies), coded and tallied the results, normalized the data, divided the score of each university’s DEI measures by the maximum extent of each variable (to create relative values between zero and 100), and then ranked the universities by total score. For example, an institution without any evidence of DEI in its hiring process would score zero, while a score of 100 would signify having the greatest DEI prevalence in all eight measures.
The University of Toronto, with the highest score of 73.1, ranked at the top of the list; its academic job postings had the most discriminatory practices and/or were most threatening to academic freedom. Ranking at the bottom of the list with a score of 24.3, with postings conveying the least exclusionary practices and/or that were least threatening to intellectual autonomy, was the University of New Brunswick. However, it is critical to note that even the lowest scoring—i.e., “least bad”—university prohibited white males from applying to an academic job posting in the hard sciences.
These preliminary findings serve as a reality check on the state of higher education, in general, and Canada’s public universities, in particular, as it relates to individual merit, academic freedom, and equality of opportunity. A sober reassessment of DEI policies is strongly recommended, and further study is warranted. There are fairer and more reliable ways to increase the likelihood of innovative perspectives and to more adequately advance social and academic equality of opportunity. Preferable alternatives to identity-based policies are viewpoint diversity and merit-based recruitment and advancement—i.e., hiring and promoting based on skill and qualifications, regardless of unchangeable characteristics.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs (hereafter, “DEI,” but also known by the acronym EDI or a commitment to DIE) have grown immensely over the last decade throughout the West and especially Canada. There are many other descriptions used, from “affirmative action” and “employment equity” to less flattering—and arguably more accurate—terms such as race-, ethnic-, gender-based discrimination and race or gender quotas (albeit without hard targets). The latest acronym is ACB for “access, community, and belonging.” For the purposes of this paper, we will use the now common moniker DEI.
In the name of reversing the historical oppression of marginalized groups and improving outcomes, universities have enacted several policies around academic hiring that implement specific DEI strategies, such as selectively hiring academic faculty based on diversity quotas. This study seeks to conduct a preliminary investigation into the prevalence of DEI in the hiring practices of Canadian public universities by surveying academic job postings to collect a sample, begin indexing, and preliminarily rank universities by DEI pervasiveness in academic hiring.
To its advocates, DEI attempts to address the underrepresentation of myriad minorities and assumes racism, historic or at present, as mostly causal or all-causal to economic outcomes. On the one hand there is a moral argument claiming that DEI strategies are necessary to overcome systemic discrimination against specific groups, usually referred to as “equity-seeking” groups. These equity-seeking groups typically consist of individuals identified as oppressed in an oppressor/oppressed binary. On the other hand, a second justification centres on economic factors that promote innovation within institutions. Proponents of the latter argument contend that expanding the diversity of a workforce allows for the incorporation of new ideas and improved market access among groups often ignored in corporate decision-making.1
However, the evidence suggests these programs promote reverse discrimination, fail to address inequality, and exacerbate divisions—all while relying on faulty or unverifiable evidence about their alleged efficacy.2 Commenting on the faculty of arts’ “equity-centred plan” at the University of British Columbia (UBC), a former president of several Canadian universities, Peter MacKinnon, stated:
[The equity-centred plan] is a political agenda, not an academic one. If implemented it would entrench a vision from which departure would not be tolerated; indeed assessment, merit, promotion and tenure would depend upon adherence to it. The agenda is incompatible with academic freedom.3
At least as early as 2017 the government of Canada began advancing quotas in academic hiring4 by implementing measures that link federal funding for universities with DEI initiatives.5 But outside its post-secondary initiatives, this is not a recent phenomenon. The federal government first introduced Gender-Based Analysis (GBA) three decades ago, in 1995, and has entrenched identity-focused policies in its employment policies ever since. Of note, the GBA program has evolved to include intersectional identities under the name GBA Plus.6
By 2019, taxpayer-funded Canada Research Chairs Program (CRCP) professorships i,7 were starting to be restricted based on inherent and group identities. For example, in May 2019 and as archived by the Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS),8 Western University’s CRCP postings were limited to female, indigenous, and scholars with disabilities. By about 2021, the government-driven DEI-tied funding of CRCP evolved further to include population-based institutional equity targets—to be implemented from 2021 to 2029.9
Of note, no DEI-based federal funding focuses on the inclusion of diverse perspectives. DEI does not include viewpoint diversity.ii,10 This, naturally, puts it at odds with education, especially at the post-secondary level. Since the founding of the first university in Bologna in 1088, the universitas has long been a community of teachers and scholars where—in the pursuit of truth, cultivating and advancing the heights of knowledge—rigorous debate is welcome.11 This rigorous pursuit of knowledge is why institutions of higher learning developed several tools to protect scholarly interactions, such as academic freedom, tenure of position, peer review, and the replication of studies. Accordingly, whether intentionally or not, DEI may arguably even undermine the historic purpose of a university’s mission.
[i] In 2000, Canada’s federal government launched the Canada Research Chairs Program (CRCP)—also known by any of its three agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)—to permanently fund 2,285 research professorships, with the aim of “[achieving] research excellence in engineering and the natural sciences, health sciences, humanities, and social sciences… to make Canada one of the world’s top countries in research and development.” As of March 2022, Canadian taxpayers contributed $311 million per year to the CRCP.
[ii] An example is the federal government’s Mosaic Leadership Development program for the public service that focuses on increasing representation from equity-seeking groups rather than promoting diverse opinions (Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, 2024). By contrast, Irshad Manji, writing for Heterodox Academy, argues in favour of “honest diversity” with an emphasis on varied viewpoints rather than identity-based diversity, as the latter promotes tribalism and “perpetual grievance” (Manji, 2020).
Today, the evidence suggests that universities are prioritizing activism over the search for truth, with DEI becoming an essential part of the strategic planning, policies, and practices at Canadian universities. By dethroning merit and rigour in favour of “relevance,” universities are rapidly abandoning the very tools that ensure the objectivity of research and openness of discussion.12 According to Universities Canada, a member-based organization of Canadian universities, 89 percent of universities in Canada refer to DEI in their strategic plans, 83 percent have implemented DEI in some form, and 51 percent of Canadian universities are developing, reviewing, and implementing DEI policies in faculty recruitment (Figure 0).13
A few Canadian scholars have begun exploring this shift to DEI-based academic hiring. Matthew Burgess searched CRCP positions across Canada and found that about 55 percent of them engaged in preferential or restricted hiring in 2023.14 Daniel Page refined Burgess’s data set and found similar results in the “hard” STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) across the same period Burgess reviewed. As early as 2019, Page began chronicling academic culling—“the active (intentional or unintentional) removing of plurality from universities through requiring compelled speech, or placing (new) barriers to academic appointments to serve ideological/political/religious purposes”—in computer science academic job postings at public universities in Canada. Page was the first to do this publicly in a STEM field, and his data sets remain public, active, and updated regularly.15
Page’s work sets an essential framework for data collection and classifying the prevalence and severity of DEI in job postings. His framework is as follows:
Using these terms and definitions, Page finds that the first restricted hiring in computer science academic job postings at a Canadian university occurred in 2019. Preferential hiring and DIE pledges emerged in 2021. Today, “At least 80 percent of Maclean’s Canada’s Best Computer Science Programs 2024 list has engaged in some of these exclusionary practices,” as have at least 80 percent of Canada’s top 15 research (U15) universities.16 Looking at only CRCP positions in STEM fields (excluding social sciences, health sciences, and medical sciences) from July 1 to December 31, 2023, 42 percent of postings were restricted hiring, 12.5 percent were preferential hiring, and 76 percent included DIE pledges.17
Does this culling of academics in Canadian public universities—“inclusion through exclusion,” to quote Page—extend beyond computer science and CRCP postings?
Building on Burgess’s and especially Page’s work, this study further explores academic hiring procedures at public universities across Canada to measure discriminatory hiring and threats to academic freedom driven by adherence to DEI. Our procedure was to review, code, and assess vacancy notices from the largest public university in each province. Please see Appendix A for a full description of our methodology, including limitations, sampling, data coding and collecting, weighting, and indexing.
Among the tools that universities use to promote DEI strategies, the most general—and the one with the least discriminatory potential—is a generic statement mentioning or promoting DEI policies or ideologies, which was evident in 477 of 489 postings, as shown in Figure 1. Seven of the 10 universities surveyed included a generic DEI statement in all job postings reviewed between May 2023 and April 2024. Note that our sample pre-dates the University of Alberta’s official shift from DEI to “access, community, and belonging” (ACB). But as Jamie Sarkonak and others have noted, verbiage and acronyms have changed, but not actual policies.18
The content of these statements ranges from a simple acknowledgement of support for DEI, to encouraging certain groups to apply, to claims of systemic racism in society targeting specific demographics.
Whether these statements are largely performative or actually lead to preferential hiring would require further analysis of those hired in response to these postings, which is beyond the scope of this study.
However, while these general statements are seemingly benign—as they do not specifically limit applications to selected demographics nor require applicants to demonstrate their support for DEI—they create the potential for discriminatory hiring and restrictions on academic freedom.
Likewise, another relatively generalized approach in academic job postings is to state that a job applicant’s contribution to DEI is “an asset.” As with generic DEI statements, contribution statements do not prevent specific demographics from applying. However, tilting the scales in favour of DEI contributors opens the door to discriminatory practices and, at a minimum, stifles open inquiry. Whether such statements result in operational discrimination depends on the weight given when comparing candidate qualifications.
Compared to the generic DEI statement, the contribution statements range significantly across institutions, with most universities rarely requesting these sorts of declarations. Figure 2 shows that the University of Toronto included contribution statements on 100 percent of its postings while six of the universities used them in 10 percent or less of their postings. McGill and the University of PEI required them in just two percent of their postings. Overall, contribution statements were included in 22 percent of all postings surveyed.
A more specific and potentially intrusive application of DEI hiring policies involves direct questions, surveys, or statements in which the candidate must demonstrate or commit to supporting DEI. From an operational standpoint, these do not limit the demographic that can apply for the job, but they do have a potential discriminatory impact to the extent that they may be determinative in choosing a candidate. From an academic perspective, candidates can see these requirements as intrusive or even coercive, especially those who oppose such statements on scholarly grounds. For example, a scholar studying the efficacy of DEI policies whose work has found them to be illiberal, ineffectual, or even harmful to equity-seeking groups would be compromising their academic integrity to support or commit to DEI strategies. In addition, they may well be limiting their career advancement if DEI policies are assumed and defined to be an unqualified net positive for universities or the country as a whole.
Questionnaires
Universities typically use DEI surveys to gauge a candidate’s views on DEI policies or demonstrate how their research might advance DEI goals. Overall, we found a wide variation amongst the institutions in their use of such surveys. Figure 3 shows that two universities, McGill and the University of Saskatchewan, required all applicants to complete a DEI survey. Memorial and the University of Manitoba required questionnaires for half their postings. Conversely, the three universities sampled from the Maritimes only required DEI surveys on two percent to four percent of postings. The University of Alberta did not require DEI questionnaires for any applications. Across the entire sample, 38 percent of postings required the completion of DEI surveys.
Essays
Fully 26 percent of job postings required candidates to submit their own written DEI statement or essay. While this requires a more active contribution from the candidate than a survey, it also provides a greater degree of flexibility—a statement or essay enables candidates to present nuanced views—such as whether a DEI lens is appropriate to their specific area of study.
Figure 4 shows, again, considerable variation across institutions. Leading the pack, nearly two in three UBC job vacancy notices required a candidate to complete a DEI statement or essay. On the other end of the spectrum, the University of New Brunswick is the least likely to require a DEI statement or essay, with this prerequisite appearing in just 2.5 percent of its job postings.
Explicit commitment and contribution
A more aggressive approach than requiring candidates to submit DEI statements is to call for the scholar to commit outright to DEI as a doctrine—essentially, undertake a loyalty oath or purity statement—or to demonstrate how the scholar will contribute to DEI strategies. An example is a University of Toronto advertisement for an Assistant Professor in Economics, posted on September 20, 2023, which states:
Candidates are also expected to show evidence of a commitment to equity, diversity, inclusion (EDI), and the promotion of a respectful and collegial learning and working environment demonstrated through the application materials.
Such commitments are controversial both for their invasiveness to the principles of academic freedom and for their seeming irrelevance in certain fields. Consequently, they are less common than other measures.
As Figure 5 illustrates, UBC (26%) was the most likely to require an explicit commitment to DEI as a policy doctrine; the University of Toronto came in narrowly behind it at 24 percent of postings. Six institutions required commitments from 10 percent or less of vacancies. The University of Alberta did not require DEI commitments on any of the postings in our sample.iii On average, 11 percent of job postings required a candidate to commit to DEI. This number is comparatively lower than the averages for postings requiring DEI surveys (38%) or DEI statements/essays (26%).
As Figure 6 shows, a similar proportion of postings required candidates to contribute to DEI (in some form) as demanded that candidates commit to DEI (Figure 5). Again, this was most prevalent at the University of Toronto (36%) and UBC (32%)—and by a considerable margin. On the opposite end of the scale, the University of Saskatchewan and the University of New Brunswick were the only institutions that did not require proof of DEI contributions on any postings. The average was 12 percent—nearly identical to the 11 percent asking for a commitment to DEI. Again, scholars are likely to express their opposition to the intrusive nature of an insistence that DEI contributions are a requirement for academic postings: hence, the relative paucity of the use of these measures.
[iii] While the data collected in our study found that the University of Alberta had no postings that required candidates to commit to DEI, this institution has implemented DEI statement requirements and commitments in postings dated since our period of data collection. An example includes a posting for an Assistant Professor from November 2023 that requires candidates to demonstrate, “teaching that incorporates a focus on underrepresented communities, the development of inclusive pedagogies, or the mentoring of students from underrepresented groups.” It is notable that the posting refers to mentoring of underrepresented students because mentoring is one DEI strategy that may have more positive and longer-term benefits.
Public universities have two final strategies in DEI-based hiring that either prioritize or restrict candidates based on inherent traits or group identity. These postings go beyond simply encouraging scholars from equity-seeking groups to apply. Instead, these postings state outright that either specific groups will be prioritized or others will be completely excluded.
Preferential hiring
Figure 7 shows that one-tenth of postings at both the University of Toronto and the University of Saskatchewan engaged in preferential hiring by stating they were prioritizing applicants based on race, ethnicity, or other inherent or group identities. Three universities did not have any preferential hiring in our sample: the University of New Brunswick, UBC, and McGill. Of all postings across all universities, 3.9 percent demonstrated preferential hiring.
Restrictive hiring
Restrictive hiring tends to fall into two categories. The first expressly connects demographics to the role. For example, a posting for a candidate to research and teach in the field of black literature or indigenous knowledge might restrict applications to candidates from the black or indigenous community, respectively. These postings demonstrate a clear discriminatory impact; however, they are rationalized by the nature of the role itself—expressing an immediate connection between the subject matter and the candidate. The rationale behind these postings tends to rely on “standpoint epistemology,” which presumes that only a member of a certain demographic can understand and convey the experiences of that group.
An example of this is a “Creative Writing: Black Speculative Writing (tenure-stream)” posting at the UBC faculty of arts on November 1, 2023, which stated:
Creative Writing is seeking an established or promising Black speculative writer with a focus on the Black diaspora and an interest in cross-disciplinary collaboration. Expertise in media or games would be an asset, as would expertise in issues of disability, gender, carcerality, and/or climate change.
Pursuant to Section 42 of the BC Human Rights Code, this search will be restricted to qualified Black scholars. We welcome applications from Black scholars who may also identify as Indigenous (First Nation, Métis, Inuit) Peoples, multi-racial persons, persons with disabilities, women, and/or members of 2SLGBTQIA+ communities.
Other postings restrict applicants for the purpose of increasing representation from perceived under-represented groups. This can be seen in a University of Saskatchewan “Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Digital Mental Health” job opening, posted on October 2, 2023:
[To] address the under-representation of members of the Four Designated Groups (women and gender minorities, members of a racialized minority, Indigenous persons, and persons with disabilities). This position is restricted to individuals who self-identify as a member of any of the four designated groups.
Figure 8 presents the total share of exclusionary postings across the universities sampled. Six of the ten institutions had postings that restricted candidate selection to certain races, identities, or groups. At UBC, such exclusions—i.e., explicit discrimination—were present in nearly one out of every five academic job postings. Across Canada, on average, 3.3 percent of postings discriminated against candidates based on natural, uncontrollable factors or group identity, such as race. Notably, four institutions of higher education did not have any outright exclusionary postings: McGill, University of Alberta, University of PEI, and University of Toronto.iv,19
The findings are concerning. New discrimination in the name of reversing past prejudices will not right past wrongs. Moreover, restrictive hiring goes well beyond the aforementioned rationalizations. Perhaps the most egregious example in our sample is the exclusion of white males from applying to the department of physics at the University of New Brunswick’s “Tier 1 NSERC Canada Research Chair in Quantum Sensors for Space” job opening. Posted on May 2, 2023—and still up on UNB.ca as of January 15, 2025—it stated:
[O]nly applicants who self-identify as members of gender equity deserving groups (including cisgender women, transgender women, transgender men, two-spirit, and non-binary) and/or as racialized individuals will be considered for this opportunity. We encourage those with intersecting identities to apply (for example, women who identify as racialized individuals, Indigenous, and/or persons with disabilities).20
It is difficult to reconcile such clear discrimination with good intentions. But even if well-meaning, such discriminatory practices have great potential to dilute research and teaching quality, as applicants are chosen for surface-level traits divorced from merit. In other words, there is a high risk that the applicant pool will be narrowed to the point where some of the most capable and qualified are ineligible.
The issue at stake is not that any cohort—which can be defined in a multitude of ways from colour to ethnicity to gender and beyond—lacks people with necessary skills or talents. The issue is that barring and banning a large swath of people from a position is not only de facto discriminatory but narrows the competitive pool of applicants and thus the potential for excellent outcomes. To phrase it another way: The assumption by DEI proponents is that past or present discrimination is what led and leads to unequal outcomes (when cohorts are compared with each other in various fields), but there is no necessary cause-and-effect relationship (as is assumed). A recent immigrant cohort from country “X” will necessarily find itself under-represented in certain fields that require years of service, language skills, certification, networks, and other attributes vis-a-vis deeply rooted cohorts. Myriad other reasons for outcomes also matter. Consider education: One cohort may have higher incomes, as in the case of Canadians of East Asian ancestry, because on average they have higher education levels. The same holds true when comparing the income differences between indigenous and non-indigenous Canadians; after controlling for education, the disparities fade almost entirely.21
In summary, when they were seeking to fill academic vacancies, all 10 Canadian public universities sampled—and all but 12 of the 489 job advertisements—employed DEI strategies. In other words, 98 percent of academic postings from these universities directly or indirectly discriminated against non-minorities and/or threatened academic freedom.
Interestingly, the institution most likely to exclude candidates was also the least likely to employ any DEI strategies in its postings. At the University of British Columbia, nearly one out of every five academic job postings explicitly restricted the job to a particular race, ethnicity, group identity, or another inherent trait. However, 12 percent of their postings showed no evidence of DEI strategies. Likewise, the University of New Brunswick had arguably the most egregious example of discrimination—the department of physics’ CRCP position—but ranked near or at the bottom for most of the DEI variables.
Hence, in order to rank and compare the universities in the aggregate, it was necessary for us to create an index. To do this (see Appendix A for a detailed methodology), we equally weighted each of the eight questions (i.e., DEI strategies), tallied the results (Appendix B), and then normalized the data (Appendix C) to arrive at a total relative score from zero (i.e., no DEI) to 100 (i.e., greatest DEI prevalence on all eight measures). (See Appendix D for a complete list of all 489 job postings.)
Table 1 presents the aggregate results. Ranked first, the institution with the academic job postings showing the most discriminatory practices and/or that were most threatening to academic freedom is the University of Toronto, which scored 73.1. Ranked last, with postings conveying the least discriminatory practices and/or that were least threatening to academic freedom, is the University of New Brunswick, with the lowest score of 24.3.
In conclusion, this study finds that all the Canadian public universities we surveyed explicitly support and promote DEI strategies in academic hiring. The tools they use to promote DEI policies in academic hiring range from acknowledging DEI ideologies to compelling intellectual conformity to outright reverse racism—such as excluding non-visible-minority applicants based on race and ethnicity. Only two percent of vacancy postings did not contain any form of DEI ideology.
These preliminary findings serve as a reality check on the state of Canada’s public universities in relation to individual merit, academic freedom, and equality of opportunity. We strongly recommend a sober reassessment of DEI policies. Further study is also warranted. For instance, it should be investigated whether this reverse discrimination is most prevalent in the largest public universities or equally severe in other post-secondary institutions, such as private universities, community colleges, etc.
Should Canadian taxpayers fund public institutions that claim to serve the public interest but favour one race over another? Moreover, if the goal is to encourage and increase diverse perspectives—including giving voice to historically excluded groups—while advancing social and academic opportunity, it is likely impossible to achieve this with discriminatory policies. At a minimum, viewpoint diversity and merit-based policies (regardless of one’s surface characteristics) are preferable alternatives to identity-based diversity.
Please see PDF for appendices.
David Hunt, MPP, BBA, is the research director at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy. His work has been presented at various levels of government and academic conferences, appeared in major media, and used as evidence in court. Hunt holds a Master of Public Policy from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Business Administration (with distinction) from Kwantlen Polytechnic University where he was the Dean’s Medal recipient.
Collin May, LLB, MTS, DEA, is a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and the former chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission. A lawyer and adjunct lecturer in Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary, May holds degrees in law (Dalhousie University), a Masters in Theological Studies (Harvard), and a Diplome d’etudes approfondies (Ecole des hautes etudes, Paris).
Ven Venkatachalam, PhD, is a senior economist at the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and empirically anchors our work in data and statistics. He is an economic and social researcher with expertise in a number of areas including economic and fiscal policy, international relations, trade, energy, governance, education, immigration, tourism, and NGO matters. Venkatachalam has consulted for governments, NGOs, and private sector organizations across Asia, Europe, Canada, and the United States.
Alex Emes, BA, collected the raw data for this study. Emes is a recent graduate of St. Thomas More College at the University of Saskatchewan, where he achieved the highest grade-point average of all economics graduates.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the multiple reviewers and publicly acknowledge the considerable insights that Prof. Daniel Page lent to an earlier draft. Many, if not most, of the best ideas are his; all errors or omissions belong to the authors. We are also indebted to the research assistance of Danny Randell and Misheel Batkhuu, who both brought not only a sharp mind but a most-pleasant demeanour and joy to their work.
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