EDI in admissions and hiring: the case against

This article is part of our Prof v. Prof summer debate series, where academics take opposing viewpoints on hot topics in higher education. Read all the articles from the series here. 

Since the mantra “EDI”— the acronym for “equity, diversity and inclusion”— has become entrenched throughout universities and has given rise to a new bureaucracy of so-called “experts,” the fact remains that none of the proponents of this expression, which conflates words having very different meanings, has ever clearly explained what these terms actually mean. This rhetorical strategy, which I call “efficacy through ambiguity,” consists precisely in leaving the terms undefined so that everyone can hear in them whatever they wish and adjust their content according to circumstances. Thus, every interest group will understand that “diversity” applies to itself: sexual diversity (men/women), so-called “racial” or “ethnic” diversity, and even “religious” diversity, in accordance with the views expressed by Amira Elghawaby, the former special representative appointed by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to combat “Islamophobia.” Despite this carefully maintained vagueness, one rarely hears of economic and social diversity, perhaps because the advocates of “diversities” are, to borrow French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s expression, more often “héritiers” (“inheritors”) than “boursiers,” that is, first-generation scholarship students.  

According to some, this “diversity” should even extend to less visible and traditionally private characteristics, such as sexual preferences, forgetting that in 1967 Canada’s Minister of Justice, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, declared that “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Speaking of justice, one may seriously wonder whether requiring a professor, as a condition of employment (or of getting a grant), to express views on matters related to EDI is not simply illegal under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, since freedom of expression and freedom of conscience also include the absolute right not to express oneself on particular issues for personal reasons. 

Let us now ask what the notion of an “inclusive university” could possibly mean, since it oddly suggests that universities were not already inclusive. The expression is in fact misleading, because it is perfectly obvious that the university is an exclusion machine: every program rejects applicants who have not attained the required standard; and once admitted, professors often fail students who do not meet the objectives of the course and who may then be excluded from the program. But, no doubt, some will reply that inclusion means something else… 

Read also: EDI in admissions and hiring: the case in favour

Let us turn, finally, to “equity.” A reading of the many texts promoting this notion reveals a very frequent slippage, from one sentence to the next, from “equity” to “equality” and even to “parity.” Yet it is obvious that a demand for “parity” may actually generate substantial inequity. Consider a department whose faculty consists of 30 per cent women and 70 per cent men. The prevailing discourse on “parity” would require that this proportion be brought to 50 per cent women. But if the actual recruitment pool in that discipline is itself composed of 30 per cent women and 70 per cent men, achieving parity would imply an obvious inequity considering the real composition of the candidate pool. In ethical terms, genuine equity consists in reflecting the actual distribution of qualified candidates who meet the requirements of the position. 

Another fundamental problem with EDI rhetoric is that it confuses different levels of intervention. The best way to increase the likelihood of access to university is to act upstream: (1) ensure that everyone has access to high-quality schools and colleges; and (2) provide scholarships to those who are socially and economically disadvantaged so that they have the means to complete the university education that interests them and for which they possess the necessary qualifications. That said, it is evident that career choices are complex and influenced by many subjective and objective variables. It is therefore unrealistic to expect that the proportion of individuals in every academic discipline and at every stage of the academic career (assistant, associate and full professor) should mirror their proportion in the general population. The only possible way to achieve such a supposedly “ideal” outcome would be to select candidates at random, but even then the result would reflect not the general population but the greater or lesser presence of certain groups in one discipline rather than another. What should be surprising is not the non-parity distribution of people across different occupations — which is in fact the rule, as statistics on the male/female distribution across sectors of employment in Quebec over the last twenty years clearly show — but rather that these elementary sociological and demographic considerations are never taken into account by EDI policies, which intervene at the wrong end of the chain. 

Nothing in the foregoing constitutes an argument against equity, diversity, or inclusion per se. Moreover, the rhetorical strategy that seeks to discredit any rational criticism of EDI policies by associating it with “conservative voices” or by warning “against mounting resistance to EDI policies,” merely confirms the inability — or strategic unwillingness — of these self-appointed champions of virtue to define the content of these catch-all terms. Yet the first requirement of any genuinely ethical discourse is to ensure that the words it employs are sufficiently well defined to support rational policies and, above all, not be manipulated by moral entrepreneurs who, under the banner of “social justice,” seek only to advance their own ideology or corporate interests. Without such conceptual clarity, which is itself a form of intellectual honesty, we move closer to the Orwellian world in which “war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength,” and, we might add, falsehood is truth.