A
M A C D O N A L D - L A U R I E R
I N S T I T U T E
July 2025
P U B L I C A T I O N
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
ADVISORY COUNCIL
CHAIR
John Beck
Gerry Protti
Chairman, BlackSquare Inc, Calgary
President and CEO,
Aecon Enterprises Inc, Toronto
VICE-CHAIR
Aurel Braun,
Jacquelyn Thayer Scott
COO, Airesun Global Ltd;
President Emerita, Cape Breton University,
Sydney
Professor of International Relations and
Political Science, University of Toronto,
Toronto
Erin Chutter
MANAGING DIRECTOR
Brian Lee Crowley, Ottawa
Executive Chair, Global Energy
Metals Corporation, Vancouver
SECRETARY
Navjeet (Bob) Dhillon
Elizabeth Burke-Gaffney
Commercial Negotiator, Oil & Gas, Calgary
President and CEO,
Mainstreet Equity Corp, Calgary
TREASURER
Jim Dinning
Martin MacKinnon
Lecturer (part-time),
Cape Breton University, Sydney
DIRECTORS
Richard Boudreault, CEO,
AWN Nanotech, Montreal
Wayne Critchley
Senior Associate,
Global Public Affairs, Ottawa
François Guimont
Retired, Federal Public Service, Ottawa
Colleen Mahoney
Independent Researcher, Calgary
Simon Nyilassy
Founder, Marigold & Associates Limited,
Toronto
Hon. Christian Paradis
Co-founder and Senior Advisor,
Global Development Solutions, Montréal
David Schneider
Senior Investment Advisor,
Aligned Capital Partners, Victoria
Former Treasurer of Alberta, Calgary
Richard Fadden
Former National Security Advisor to the
Prime Minister, Ottawa
Brian Ferguson
Professor, Health Care Economics,
University of Guelph
Jack Granatstein
Historian and former head of the Canadian
War Museum
Patrick James
Dornsife Dean’s Professor,
University of Southern California
Rainer Knopff
Professor Emeritus of Politics,
University of Calgary
Larry Martin
Principal, Dr. Larry Martin and Associates
and Partner, Agri-Food Management
Excellence, Inc
Alexander Moens
Brian Flemming
Professor and Chair of Political Science,
Simon Fraser University, Greater Vancouver
Wayne Gudbranson
Senior Research Professor,
Johns Hopkins University
International lawyer, writer, and policy
advisor, Halifax
CEO, Branham Group Inc., Ottawa
Calvin Helin
Aboriginal author and entrepreneur,
Vancouver
David Mulroney
Former Canadian Ambassador to China,
Toronto
Peter John Nicholson
Inaugural President, Council of Canadian
Academies, Annapolis Royal
Barry Sookman
Senior Partner,
McCarthy Tétrault, Toronto
Sam Sullivan
Aaron Smith
Partner, Ernst & Young LLP, Nepean
CEO, Global Civic Policy Society,
Vancouver
Nigel Wright
Rob Wildeboer
Senior Managing Director,
Onex Partners, London, UK
RESEARCH ADVISORY
BOARD
Executive Chairman, Martinrea International
Inc, Vaughan
Bryon Wilfert
Former Parliamentary Secretary to the
Ministers of Finance and the Environment,
Toronto
Christopher Sands
Elliot Tepper
Senior Fellow, Norman Paterson School of
International Affairs, Carleton University
William Watson
Associate Professor of Economics,
McGill University
Contents
Executive Summary......................................................................................................
4
Introduction..................................................................................................................
7
University free speech legislation...........................................................................
10
Policy changes to university funding, research, and programming..................
14
18
Alternative or parallel institutions..............................................................................
Establishment of intra-university centres that promote
civil discourse and heterodoxy................................................................................
23
Strategic takeovers.....................................................................................................
28
Conclusion......................................................................................................................
31
About the author...........................................................................................................
33
References.....................................................................................................................
34
Endnote...........................................................................................................................
41
Cover design: Renée Depocas
Copyright © 2025 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. May be reproduced freely for non-profit and educational purposes.
The author of this document has worked independently and is solely responsible for the views presented here.
The opinions are not necessarily those of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, its directors or supporters.
Executive summary | sommaire
The post-secondary education system, once a bastion of open inquiry and debate, is
increasingly dominated by ideological conformity. Free speech is stifled, and critical
thinking is losing ground.
This decline isn’t just a cultural issue – it’s structural. Legal loopholes, weak
oversight, and institutional groupthink have combined to erode the very foundations of
free inquiry on campus.
In an ideal world, universities would self-correct – rolling back the rise of DEI
orthodoxy and welcoming a renewed spirit of intellectual inquiry. But the evidence, both
in Canada and abroad, makes one thing clear: change will not come from within. Reform
requires bold policy shifts and even the creation of parallel institutions that restore the
values universities once championed.
Key areas of action include:
•
Enforceable free speech laws: We must move past the 2010s approach, where
universities were asked to voluntarily adopt free speech declarations. The UK’s
Office for Students provides a working model of regulatory enforcement that
protects open expression on campus.
•
Public funding reforms: Governments must ensure that taxpayer dollars aren’t
used to entrench ideological hiring, training, and grant practices. DEI spending
should not be immune from scrutiny.
•
Alternative and parallel institutions: Non-governmental actors should be
encouraged to create new educational institutions that value rigorous debate
and encourage freedom of thought and speech. Examples include the University
of Austin, a private university founded in 2021 in response to concerns
over growing censorship and ideological conformity in the wider American
post-secondary system, and Peterson Academy, which eschews accreditation
and instead focuses on open inquiry and a well-rounded education.
•
Intra-university centres: The United States and Australia have begun an
interesting experiment: placing state-protected “centres” within existing
universities that are insulated from institutional speech suppression and backed
4
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
by either donations or direct state funding, unmediated by the host institution.
Canada should pilot this new and experimental approach.
•
Strategic takeovers: The transformation of New College of Florida under
the DeSantis administration shows how financially failing institutions can be
repurposed into beacons of free inquiry. In Canada, recent restrictions on
foreign students and the resulting loss of revenue for universities present an
opportunity for a similar experimental remaking of universities here.
These reforms are essential to a campus climate where faculty, students, and staff
feel equipped to question prevailing orthodoxies. Today, too many “go along to get along”
– trapped in a culture of silent compliance.
Government involvement is necessary to salvage the post-secondary system. But
supporters of open inquiry should also begin building alternative education options – in
case efforts to reform the mainstream post-secondary system are too little, too late.
Le système d’enseignement supérieur, autrefois bastion de recherches et de débats
libres, est de plus en plus dominé par le conformisme idéologique. La liberté d’expression
est réprimée, et la pensée critique s’affaiblit.
Il s’agit d’un problème non seulement culturel – mais aussi structurel. Les lacunes
de la loi et des mesures de surveillance, combinées au conformisme de groupe au sein des
institutions, ont érodé les fondements mêmes de la liberté de recherche sur les campus.
Dans un monde parfait, les universités s’amenderaient en favorisant le
renouvellement de la réflexion intellectuelle, inversant ainsi la montée de l’orthodoxie
DEI. Mais les faits, au Canada comme ailleurs, rappellent une chose : le changement ne
viendra pas de l’intérieur. Pour une réforme, il faut modifier radicalement les politiques et
même créer des institutions parallèles pouvant rétablir les valeurs autrefois défendues
par les universités.
Les domaines clés d’action comprennent :
•
Des lois à force exécutoire sur la liberté d’expression : Il faut aller au-delà
de ce qui s’est fait dans les années 2010, lorsqu’on a invité les universités à
adopter des déclarations visant à assurer la liberté d’expression. L’Office of
Students du Royaume-Uni offre un modèle d’application réglementaire pour
les campus.
•
Des réformes du financement public : Les gouvernements doivent éviter
d’utiliser l’argent des contribuables pour hausser l’idéologie au rang de
pratiques de recrutement, de formation et de subvention. Les dépenses en
DEI ne doivent pas y échapper.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
5
•
Des institutions de remplacement : Il faut encourager les acteurs non
gouvernementaux à créer de nouveaux établissements d’enseignement
favorisant les débats approfondis et la liberté de pensée et d’expression. Deux
exemples : l’Université d’Austin, institution privée fondée en 2021 pour contrer
la censure et les idées conformistes dans le large réseau des universités
américaines – et la Peterson Academy, qui privilégie un enseignement
rigoureux et une recherche libre sans décerner de diplômes.
•
Des centres intra-universitaires : Les États-Unis et l’Australie ont lancé une
expérience intéressante à l’intérieur des universités existantes : des « centres
» protégés des barrières institutionnelles à l’expression et financés – sans
interférence de l’institution hôte – par des dons ou par l’État. Le Canada
devrait mettre cette nouvelle approche à l’essai.
•
Des acquisitions stratégiques : La transformation du New College of Florida
sous l’administration DeSantis montre comment les institutions en difficulté
financière peuvent devenir des modèles pour la liberté de recherche. Au
Canada, les restrictions récentes touchant les étudiants étrangers et la
perte de revenus conséquente présentent aux universités une occasion de
réinvention expérimentale similaire.
Ces réformes sont cruciales pour instaurer un environnement académique propice
à la remise en question des orthodoxies dominantes par le corps professoral, la collectivité
étudiante et le personnel. Actuellement, beaucoup préfèrent éviter les conflits, coincés
dans une culture de conformité.
Le gouvernement doit agir pour protéger l’enseignement supérieur. Les partisans
de la recherche libre doivent également commencer à construire des options de
remplacement – au cas où les efforts de réforme du système traditionnel soient insuffisants
et arrivent trop tard.
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Introduction
Universities were founded as places of learning, governed by the pursuit of
truth. But now the vibrant intellectual culture is in a state of profound crisis,
plagued by ideology that seeks to promote conformity, infantilize students,
suppress free speech, and even, in its most extreme, reprimand those who
think differently. As a result, universities have abandoned their foundational
objectives – to be bastions of open inquiry and free expression.
Indeed, as countless op-eds, documentary films, papers, and podcast
episodes have attested, many universities and colleges have been transformed
into authoritarian environments where faculty, students, and staff are forced to
espouse leftist ideology in order to flourish in the system.
A key driver of this ideological conformity is the influx of diversity, equity,
and inclusion (DEI) practices and regulations that have infiltrated campuses
across Canada and the West. While often well-intended, efforts to prioritize
diversity in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and sexuality often ignore the most
important diversity of all higher education – diversity of thought.
As DEI initiatives become more entrenched, they fundamentally
change hiring practices and institutional composition, discriminating against
certain races or genders in the name of “equity.” This administrative overreach
extends throughout the system, impacting grant allocation and funding. As it
metastasizes, DEI ideology creates distinct chokepoints for members of the
campus community:
• they must express support for DEI during the hiring process;
• they must support it during regular workplace training sessions;
• and they must conform with complaints processes designed to root
out those who would oppose the reigning orthodoxy.
A failure to conform opens the door to punitive measures, a loss of
appointments or funding, and even possible litigation.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
7
Today, DEI is deeply embedded in post-secondary institutions. It is often
written into their mission, vision, and values (see Ontario Tech University
2025) and given dedicated space on campus, like DEI bureaus (see Western
University 2025).
Quota-based affirmative action programs are not new. However, their rise
to dominance is destroying the principles of merit-based hiring and academic
excellence that should be the basis of our post-secondary system.
Too many positions in academia, and especially high-level positions, are
being advertised solely for specially designated groups. Candidates are strongly
encouraged to self-identify, for instance, as “queer and two-spirited Indigenous”
simply to be considered for positions. Advocates of DEI policies claim that
the goal is to flatten historically prevalent hierarchies. However, in reality, the
policies use institutionalized discrimination, largely against White men, to invert
the hierarchies so that “under-represented” people are now overrepresented.
Unsurprisingly, studies show that DEI programs actually tend to increase
feelings of prejudice and bigotry, rather than inclusivity (Haskell 2024).
Such policies are inherently performative. Universities today place a heavy
emphasis on sensitivity politics and appropriate trauma discourse to police
such phenomena as “triggers” and “microaggressions” (AAUP Committee
on Academic Freedom 2014). Students, faculty, and staff can be punished,
demoted, or even fired if their speech or writing is deemed “traumatic,” “unsafe,”
“harmful,” or “violent.” Not only do these discourses cause both students and
instructors to self-pathologize; they also encourage self-infantilization and the
demand to be infantilized by others.
Unfortunately, these destructive DEI policies are thriving thanks to the
ideological capture of many university faculty and departments. For instance,
a survey of social science and humanities academics from Canada’s top 40
universities revealed that 73 per cent identify as left-wing, compared to a
mere 4 per cent who identify as right-wing. Among right-wing faculty, nearly
6-in-10 allege they face a hostile climate in their department because of their
beliefs. Only 9 per cent of professors espousing orthodox “progressive” views
say the same thing (Kaufmann 2021). The contrast is even more striking when
academics are polled on voting behaviour rather than political identity, with
88 per cent of Canadian professors voting for left-wing parties and 9 per cent
supporting parties on the right (Dummitt and Patterson 2022).
The severity of the pendulum swing to the left raises a fundamental
8
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
question: Are DEI policies a deliberate attempt to establish ideological
groupthink on university campuses?
The self-perpetuating nature of the problem exacerbates the hard swing
to the left by driving highly qualified people with non-progressive views to
choose careers outside the academic world. In the US, more than a third
of conservative academics and PhD students have been threatened with
disciplinary action for their views. Especially concerning, 74 per cent of
American college students support disciplinary actions for nonconforming
members of the campus community (Goldberg and Kaufmann 2023). Clearly,
the DEI agenda is breeding a culture of intolerance and ideological conformity
as universities gradually transform into echo chambers of dominant, socially
acceptable narratives.
DEI ideas and policies have already taken hold of Canadian K–12
education. Students entering the post-secondary system will have largely
internalized the DEI way of thinking, or at least become accustomed to it. This
paper explores how to restore free inquiry at the university level, but recognizes
that policy reform and cultural shifts are also gravely needed in elementary,
middle, and secondary schools.
Even as other jurisdictions outside of Canada have come to recognize
serious problems with free speech and inquiry in their university systems,
Canada remains committed to its current path. A course correction is long
overdue and Canada must follow the lead of pro-free speech jurisdictions that
promote freedom of speech and freedom of academic inquiry in the context of
the pursuit of truth, rather than activism.1 A multi-pronged policy approach
will be needed to address these serious issues of labour, law, and culture. This
paper puts forward a set of public policy changes to attempt to save the postsecondary system.
Five areas worthy of exploration are 1) university free speech legislation;
2) policy changes to university funding, programming, and research; 3) the
creation of alternative or parallel institutions; 4) the establishment of intrauniversity centres that promote civil discourse and heterodoxy; and 5) strategic
takeovers of existing institutions.
The time to act is now. Free inquiry in Canadian universities must be
restored. Only then can universities be restored to their former glory as highly
respected institutions that promote learning, critical thinking, rigorous debate,
and free speech.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
9
University free speech legislation
When critics first noticed a sharp rise in ideological intolerance on campuses in
the 2010s, policy-makers in North America largely opted to let the universities
handle the problem themselves. Unfortunately, many post-secondary
institutions were quite comfortable with the trend towards conformity and the
erosion of free speech.
Many – but thankfully, not all. In 2014, the University of Chicago issued
a declaration, sometimes known as the “Chicago Statement” or “Chicago
Principles.” The document clearly explains why post-secondary institutions
must champion freedom of speech and open inquiry:
… education should not be intended to make people comfortable,
it is meant to make them think… it is not the proper role of
the University to attempt to shield individuals from ideas and
opinions they find unwelcome, disagreeable, or even deeply
offensive… the University has a solemn responsibility not
only to promote a lively and fearless freedom of debate and
deliberation, but also to protect that freedom when others
attempt to restrict it (University of Chicago 2014).
Since 2015, a US-based group, the Foundation for Individual Rights
in Education (FIRE), has conducted a nationwide campaign to encourage
universities and colleges to adopt this statement or one like it (Lukianoff
2015). More than one hundred institutions, including Princeton University,
Columbia University, Georgetown University, and the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, have since signed on.
Such statements undoubtedly encourage greater free speech on campus.
But they do not have the same enforceability “teeth” as legislation. There are
no hard consequences for non-compliance, and they do little to dismantle the
powerful cultural, labour, and governmental systems that primarily regulate
academic speech day-to-day.
So, while the Chicago Statement and others like it are encouraging, more
must be done to ensure the principles they espouse are put into action at the
campus level.
Conservative provincial governments have attempted to solve the
enforceability problem. In 2018, Ontario Premier Doug Ford tasked the
10
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Higher Education Quality Council of Ontario (HEQCO) with overseeing
free expression violations on Ontario campuses. However, this body does not
enforce a universal set of government-mandated policies. Instead, the Ontario
government ordered each college and university in the province to develop,
implement, and comply with an institutional free speech policy. In other words,
HEQCO enforces a patchwork of related policies developed by post-secondary
institutions, not the government.
Universities then issue an annual report to HEQCO, summarizing
the complaints they have received. Members of the university community
may complain directly to HEQCO, and if their complaints are not resolved
through internal university processes, they are referred to the Ontario
Provincial Office of the Ombudsman. “If institutions fail to comply with
government requirements to introduce and report on free speech policies,
or if they fail to follow their own policies once implemented, the ministry
may respond with reductions to their operating grant funding, proportional
to the severity of non-compliance,” a backgrounder introducing the policy
states (Ontario Premier’s Office 2018).
Education should not be intended
to make people comfortable,
it is meant to make them think.
Under this legislation, two detailed and often lengthy, investigations –
one by the institution and the other by the Ombudsman’s office – are required
before a violation can be declared. Thus, students in one-year master’s programs
and faculty on one-year or four-month contracts will almost certainly already
have experienced substantial adverse consequences before the investigative
process could possibly conclude, especially given how elaborate and slow a
foot-dragging institution might make its policies.
In 2019, Alberta introduced similar legislation, including annual
reporting requirements and university-authored, rather than governmentauthored, standardized free speech policies. While this legislation is likely
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
11
better than its absence, critics note that, by themselves, such laws do not
meaningfully mitigate the primary loci and sources of speech and inquiry
suppression in the first place. University of Calgary Political Scientist Ian
Brodie explains:
Threatening to cut funding unless a board of governors adopts
some statement or other encourages institutions to focus on
narrowly complying with the edict while continuing to resist
the spirit of free speech… The top-down approach, ordering
campuses to secure campus free speech, secures the strictly
legal compliance from boards of governors – and little else
… Believing that a government can force any post-secondary
institution to change its ways by top-down edict underestimates
the durability of university and college cultures in the 21st
century. (Brodie 2021)
Brodie instead argues that governments should engage directly with
students and faculty by conducting surveys and receiving complaints. This
approach removes the “good faith” and “voluntary compliance” elements that
give post-secondary institutions the “out” they need to make only superficial
efforts at compliance. Ultimately, self-policing is an ineffective model, because
it lacks meaningful enforcement measures.
Inviting institutions to come up with their own policies also opens the
door to different types of speech restriction, says Queen’s University Law
Professor Bruce Pardy:
Directives that call upon each university to develop its own
policy invite policies that instead restrict speech… The law’s
default position is that anyone can do or say anything unless
there is a rule that says they cannot. No rule means no restraint…
Therefore, the best policy about the content of speech on a
university campus is to have no policy. (Pardy 2020)
An appropriate “no policy”-style policy would then look something like:
The speech of professors, students and visiting speakers at this
university is subject to the laws of the province and of Canada,
which automatically apply. The university imposes no other
limits on the content of their expression. (Pardy 2020)
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Regulatory intervention should focus on forms of violation of free
speech, not the permissible forms of speech. Rules, then, should prohibit and
adequately penalize disruptions and obstruction such as pulling fire alarms to
end a lecture, refusing to stop speaking over a professor, excessive noise, etc.
framed in terms of a “right to learn” principle. In addition, universities should
be prohibited from “heckler’s veto” disincentives (e.g. imposing security fees
upon event organizers hosting a controversial speaker because protesters
threaten to disrupt the presentation).
Most importantly, such laws should be regulated by the state, not by the
university through administrative law. This is an especially salient point. Current
laws target individual “wrongdoers” in universities and view universities as
partners with the state in handling violations. However, it is the universities
themselves that need regulation more than the students and faculty.
This is clearly evident when one examines the “free speech” policies of an
institution like Ontario’s McMaster University, as excerpted here:
While recognizing the imbalances in power that exist within our
community and the disproportionate impact such imbalances
have upon marginalized groups and individuals, McMaster
aspires to be a place where respectful, meaningful discourse
and discussion can occur, where all voices have an opportunity
to be heard, and where diverse viewpoints can be advanced and
deliberated in a spirit of inclusiveness and academic integrity.
(McMaster University 2025)
The weaselly terms “disproportionate impact,” “meaningful discourse,”
and “inclusiveness” walk back a commitment to free expression.
One must look outside of Canada to see genuinely efficacious academic
free speech legislation. The UK’s 2023 Higher Education Freedom of Speech
Act creates an Office for Students that functions as the sole universal regulator
of campus free expression. Furthermore, it gives students and faculty legal
standing to file suit against universities that violate their free speech rights
without requiring either the mediation of university administrative procedures
or shunting all complaints through the Office for Students.
Upon the 2024 defeat of the Sunak Conservative government, which
had enacted the law, the Starmer Labour government halted implementation
shortly after taking office (UK Government 2024).
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
13
Because Canadian constitutional law reserves primary responsibility
for education policy to the provinces, this paper favours the enactment of
legislation similar to the UK’s but at the provincial level. Such provincial
legislation should:
•
•
create provincial bodies capable of receiving complaints from
individuals whose rights have been violated; and
mandate annual or biennial academic freedom audits of provincial
colleges and universities that assess less “actionable” factors such as
self-censorship and discrimination in hiring and promotion.
Rather than withholding institutional funding, such legislation would
claw back state funding from non-compliant institutions through large and
punitive fines. In this way, fairness can be better ensured through judicial rather
than administrative oversight.
Policy changes to university funding, research,
and programming
There has always been a complex relationship between the power of state
decision-makers outside academic institutions and those in universities
managing university funds, which typically comprise several components:
(a) direct state subsidies, (b) tuition fees, (c) funds extracted from endowments
and real estate portfolios, and (d) donations from alumni, corporations, and
the public.
Although governments often talk about “university independence” when
they want to avoid taking sides – or when they covertly agree with universities’
woke agendas – the fact is, governments already enjoy substantial freedom
to attach “strings” to the public funding they disburse to post-secondary
institutions. Universities and colleges do not have an unfettered right to spend
public money any way they please – or to continue receiving that funding
ad infinitum (Speer 2023).
An example of this is targeting funding to increase the number of doctors
and nurses being trained each year. However, Eric Kaufmann, a Canadian
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
political scientist at the University of Buckingham, argues that governments
should also employ “negative targeting,” i.e. banning the use of public funds in
ideologically driven programs that promote, say, critical race or social justice
studies (Kaufmann 2023).
So long as governments use reasonable criteria to assess the programs they
fund, there is nothing odd or untoward about prohibiting funds for activities
that run counter to the spirit and intent of higher education, which is of course
open inquiry and freedom of expression.
In other words, taxpayers’ dollars should not be used to fund activism
or ideological indoctrination on campuses, but rather, legitimate research and
the advancement of knowledge. Note, this would not prohibit universities
from offering courses on or researching topics like gender ideology – but
it would ban them from squandering public money on these types of
“activist” fields.
Reforming or abolishing DEI practices and programming
In the academic job market (and beyond), many postings require that the
applicant declare support for certain ideological positions in order to be
considered for employment. They must declare support not only for DEI but
for related ideas such as “decolonization” along with making a self-declaration
of various so-called marginalized identities on the basis of gender, race,
and sexuality.
Furthermore, DEI policies also allow complainants to file grievances over
what essentially amounts to hurt feelings. In the current Orwellian environment,
“thoughtcrime” is enough to warrant censure and even dismissal. Faculty and
staff are often required to undergo repeated mandatory DEI training and utter
affirmations of support for the ideology (in other words, compelled speech).
The result is a fear-filled campus with self-censoring staff ruled by overbearing
DEI true believers who are incentivized to hunt down and root out opponents
of the ideology.
Kaufmann (2023) reminds us that these supposedly equity-seeking or
ameliorative DEI policies are fundamentally about discrimination on the basis
of colour, creed, sexuality, and political affiliation.
The only answer is to force post-secondary institutions to return to simple,
merit-based systems that prohibit discrimination, full stop.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
15
While some US universities, such as MIT, have voluntarily dropped DEI
policies, government mandates have been necessary to eradicate DEI ideology
from many other institutions. Since 2023, North Dakota, South Dakota,
Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Alabama, Iowa, Idaho, and Utah have all enacted
legislation in an effort to eliminate DEI ideology at post-secondary institutions
(Cantin-Nantel 2024; Bryant 2025).
On January 20, 2025, the day President Donald Trump took office for
his second term, he signed an executive order terminating all DEI jobs, offices,
programs, and performance requirements, as well as “equity-related” grants
or contracts, within the US federal government. The executive order does not
directly defund DEI efforts at universities, but it affirms previous state-led
efforts and may cause universities and colleges to reconsider their emphasis
on DEI. But it is state-level legislation that is making the biggest difference in
academia.
In Canada, endowed chairs, which provide many permanent, senior,
tenure-track jobs, are funded not only by major donors but also increasingly by
the federal government through the Canada Research Chair (CRC) program.
DEI ideology is especially pernicious in these positions, because the federal
government has increasingly tied CRC funding to DEI-driven research. For
instance, the CRC program regularly sets “equity” targets, explicitly excluding
male and White candidates from applying for Chair positions (Snow 2025). In
turn, university administrators, increasingly focused on obtaining CRC money,
consequently need to maintain enthusiasm for DEI (Cantin-Nantel 2024).
Funding and research
In Canada, the Tri-agency of federal granting bodies consists of the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Natural Sciences
and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), and the Canadian Institutes of
Health Research (CIHR). Their combined budget is $3.95 billion and growing
(Snow 2025).
The Tri-agency Institutional Programs Secretariat has “equity targets” for
its prestigious Canada Research Chair positions (state-funded professorships),
to boost “underrepresented” groups, so universities now commonly bar
heterosexual able-bodied white males from applying (Burgess 2024). By
December 2029, women and gender minorities must make up 50.9 per cent of
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
all Canada Research Chairs. Further, 22 per cent of the Chairs must be people
of colour; 7.5 per cent must be people with disabilities, and 4.9 per cent must
be Indigenous. In 2019, then federal Minister of Science Kirsty Duncan signed
an addendum that bound the Canada Research Chair program to the myriad
DEI targets (Canada Research Chairs Program 2019).
Equally concerning is the restriction on and targeting of agency grants for
research. For instance, in 2023, SSHRC awarded 30 grants of up to $30,000
each for the “Shifting Dynamics of Privilege and Marginalization” program,
with the application description noting that “our colonial past, racism, and
slavery continue to shape processes of marginalization and privilege today.” In
2022, SSHRC awarded $19.2 million in funding for 46 grants of up to $450,000
for its “Race, Diversity, and Gender Initiative,” to study questions like, “Which
mechanisms perpetuate White privilege and how can such privilege best
be challenged?”
These types of research projects,
so clearly tied to DEI ideology, are
corrosive to the principles of open
inquiry and legitimate research.
These types of research projects, so clearly tied to DEI ideology and
blatantly demanding certain predetermined conclusions, are corrosive to the
principles of open inquiry and legitimate research. And this thumb-on-scale
approach seems only to be intensifying: case in point, a recent $446,000
grant awarded for “Queering Leadership, Indigenizing Governance: Building
Intersectional Pathways for Two Spirit, Trans, and Queer Communities to
Lead Social and Institutional Change.”
These granting agencies should be focused on supporting knowledge
production and research excellence, not equity targets and activism disguised
as inquiry. All DEI targets, programs, and criteria within the Tri-agency
federal agency system should be eliminated, as outlined in the next section.
The Tri-agency should also be de-politicized to strengthen public confidence in
Canadian research and academia in general (Snow 2025).
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
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The role of government
Provincial governments can and should act in a similar manner to US states
with respect to public universities, introducing legislation prohibiting
the following:
• ideological discrimination in hiring;
• requirements for individuals to affirm specific ideological positions
to obtain jobs or credentials; and
• the acceptance of research grants that mandate preordained
conclusions.
The federal government also has a role to play, especially with respect to
research funding. The government should:
•
•
•
conduct a comprehensive audit and inquiry into whether the Triagency system is sufficiently committed to free inquiry to continue
dispensing federal funds. If this audit finds that the personnel,
culture, and structure of the Tri-agency system is not salvageable,
create a new granting agency founded on a legal commitment to free
inquiry and diversity of opinion;
remove all identity group and ideological requirements from the
Canada Research Chair system; and
remove all identity group and ideological requirements from the
Tri-agency granting system.
Alternative or parallel institutions
As accredited institutions debase the currency of their degrees, employers
and others may become more interested in the “branding” rather than
formal accreditation of institutions, courses, and instructors. Indeed, there
is a proliferation of online instruction outside conventionally accredited
institutions, often performed by current or former university faculty. For over
a decade, web platforms such as Coursera, Udemy, and Masterclass have been
offering video-based learning and micro-credentials.
Accreditation is a complex process; often, the state is not the sole or even
primary legitimating actor. While institutions, as a whole, are accredited by
government, governments are highly reliant on the expertise of individuals
18
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
from accredited institutions. And governments are especially deferential to this
expertise when it comes to institutions they do not directly fund.
More significantly, individual departments within universities must be
periodically re-accredited and this process takes place entirely outside of direct
state supervision and is conducted by academics from the same or a similar
department in an accredited institution. If a department does business in a
radically different or even adversarial way to other departments of its ilk at
adjacent accredited institutions, there are substantial additional and possibly
insurmountable barriers to accreditation.
While the accreditation process may be a closed loop controlled by
activists, a number of alternative institutions are springing up – institutions
that are being set up to thrive with or without accreditation.
The most substantive and large-scale efforts to create alternative universities in the past decade and a half have taken place in the United States, at Ralston
College, the University of Austin (UATX), and the Peterson Academy.
Ralston College, UATX, and Peterson Academy
Ralston College is a private, donor-funded liberal arts university based in
Savannah, Georgia, that has been given degree-granting powers by the State
of Georgia, although it is not yet accredited – highlighting the gap between
state recognition and “peer” recognition. During the fifteen years since its
incorporation, it has primarily subsisted on donations and by offering nondegree programs, such as a Latin summer school in Italy. Since its recognition
by the State of Georgia, it has begun issuing Master of Arts degrees in the
Humanities, starting in 2022, hoping to gradually expand its programming
both at the undergraduate and doctoral levels.
In 2023, the New England Commission of Higher Education (NECHE)
– one of the US’s seven recognized regional institutional accrediting
organizations – determined that Ralston College is eligible to proceed with
an application for candidacy for accreditation within two years. However, it is
by no means a foregone conclusion that the college will succeed, or be treated
fairly by NECHE in these efforts.
However, based on the number of applications the college receives, the
current lack of accreditation is posing no barrier to student recruitment. The
MA program, which seats only 24 students per year, receives applications from
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19
more than a thousand potential students per year, a higher application rate than
similar programs at the vast majority of accredited institutions (Katz 2023).
Why is the college so attractive to students? The answer is likely found in
its explicitly reform-oriented and critical mission statement:
to revive the conditions of a free and flourishing culture
by providing transformative, rigorous education in the
humanities. Our fundamental commitments are to truth,
freedom, beauty, and fellowship… The College exists to share
the riches of humanistic inquiry with students enrolled in its
degree programs and more broadly with all those who seek
truth with courage. (Ralston College 2024)
The University of Austin (UATX), which describes itself as a university
“committed to freedom of inquiry as the precondition for the pursuit of
truth,” was founded in 2021 in direct response to academic “cancel culture”
and escalating demands for ideological conformity at universities (University
of Austin 2025). To a greater extent than Ralston, UATX describes itself in
ways more directly adversarial to present-day academia. For example, one
of its first non-degree summer programs was entitled “Forbidden Courses,”
where students delved into subjects such as the invasion of ideology into
evolutionary biology.
As with Ralston, UATX has begun offering degrees prior to accreditation,
beginning with a BA in Liberal Studies. While not offering BSc degrees, it
does offer a BA with a concentration in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics (STEM). In addition to pursuing full accreditation in future, the
university is creating a financial model that does not rely on public funding,
though it is building institutional infrastructure that will render it eligible to
seek public funding in future. Like Ralston, it is seeking accreditation, in this
case via the Middle States Commission. It has raised nearly US$200 million
from 2,400 donors (Kelly 2023).
UATX is supported primarily by a politically conservative donor
base (Rawlings 2024), but its constitution prohibits it from taking political
positions and engaging in activism at an institutional level (Ferguson 2023).
This constitution also includes a permanent institutional panel whose purpose
is to guarantee free speech rights of students and faculty through internal
quasi-judicial procedures.
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
While UATX and Ralston conduct their programming in-person, the
next initiative we will explore – Peterson Academy – is online-based. The two
in-person institutions seek to replicate traditional universities, but the Peterson
Academy delivers courses in a format more akin to platforms like Masterclass
with pre-recorded streamed video classes.
Peterson Academy’s viability is in many ways directly related to the
declining reputation of mainstream academia. As mainstream universities
become more “woke,” more and more students are looking outside traditional
academia for their education. The rise of Masterclass and similar online
educational platforms is in turn legitimizing the pedagogical approach of
these platforms.
If the current woke trend continues
to grip traditional academia,
the number of independent
educational institutions will increase.
With the slogan “Education, Devoid of Ideology,” Peterson Academy
offers a catalog of classical liberal-oriented online courses in science, finance,
psychology, health, politics, and the humanities for US$399.99 (C$547) a year.
Each self-paced course is eight hours long, composed of pre-recorded lectures.
Courses are accompanied by AI quizzes to test knowledge upon completion,
though quizzes and essays are not mandatory. The academy also includes its
own social media network.
Like a conventional university, Peterson Academy’s designers anticipate
that four years of instruction on the platform should produce a competency
equivalent to a bachelor’s degree (Peterson Academy 2024). The academy
currently has approximately 30,000 students/subscribers (Shepherd 2024).
Unlike Ralston and UATX, Peterson Academy is more pessimistic about
accreditation, stating, “We are not currently accredited. We are pursuing
accreditation in a number of jurisdictions. However, we are not willing to
compromise the technical merits, originality, or quality of our education
to meet the requirements of any ideologically compromised ‘expert’ body.”
Similarly, rather than actively seeking state support to issue degrees, Peterson
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
21
Academy issues credentials to students who complete ninety or more eighthour online courses.
Peterson Academy’s legitimacy derives from the credentials and
credibility of individual instructors, many of whom are current or past
faculty from high credibility institutions such as Harvard, Oxford, and
Cambridge. Peterson Academy is fundamentally pessimistic about whether
universities can be saved as credible, credentialing bodies. Consequently, it
is seeking and conferring legitimacy in different forms. It is also taking a
unique tack when it comes to fundraising and remuneration. For instance,
instructors are paid an initial fee and then receive a per-view fee for students
taking their courses (Kelly 2023).
Canadian civil society and provincial governments all have roles to play
in creating and supporting parallel and alternative institutions. The reality is
that even tiny organizations are capable of delivering diverse course lineups
and instructors. The recruitment of instructors is, in many ways, easier than
imagined. Many universities treat teaching for non-profit organizations as
academic service that counts towards one’s movement up the tenure track.
That means academics in elite institutions have extra incentives to donate their
time and expertise, first because it improves their prospects for promotion
and, second, because teaching for alternative institutions may afford them
opportunities to express and explore ideas they could not research in their day
jobs due to free speech restrictions and self-censorship.
If the current woke trend continues to grip traditional academia, the
number of small independent educational institutions will certainly increase.
Their growth – whether through mergers or strategic alliances – should be
encouraged and supported by government, as well as by citizens who believe in
the value of free inquiry in society.
Provincial governments should take the lead by creating institutions like
UATX or Ralston. Humanities-focused institutions are far less expensive to
establish, run, and maintain than large public lab-centred universities. The
creation of small liberal arts institutions would not be outside the financial
competence of even small provincial or territorial governments and such
institutions could absolutely be justified as meeting the needs of students not
served adequately by the current public system. Furthermore, such institutions
could also be justified as economic development and diversification projects in
remote, rural, or depopulating communities.
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Establishment of intra-university centres that
promote civil discourse and heterodoxy
In some cases, it is possible to create bastions of freedom at traditional
universities, without having to establish parallel institutions. Pro-freedom
faculty can launch intra-university centres that promote civil discourse,
heterodoxy, and liberal education curricula. By offering both degree and nondegree programming, these centres of free thought and open inquiry could
help intellectual diversity to flourish.
It is estimated that there are more than a hundred such centres in the
current US university system (Kaufmann 2024a; 2024b). Take the School
of Civic Leadership at the University of Texas at Austin, which focuses on
teaching civics. Its dean explains, “Although it is not a value-free social science,
neither is it partisan. If anything, it is pre-partisan. Before we can develop
a reasonable outlook on the policy issues of the day, we must first acquire
knowledge of the character and basis of the political institutions we have
inherited and must now steward as Americans” (Dyer 2024).
Canadians are laggards when it comes to domestic civics education, as
polling continues to show (Wudrick et al. 2024). This has knock-on effects
in that Canadians’ ignorance of civics makes it more difficult for them to
engage in rational political discussion, resulting in an increase of tribalism
and foreclosure of public debate.
This presents an opportunity for provincial governments, the nonprofit sector, and individual large donors to target funds for the creation of
civics education departments and centres at Canadian universities, to educate
Canadian students about the fundamental rights and responsibilities that come
with being a citizen of this country. Given the harmful impact of this lack of
knowledge on Canadian society, it would be entirely reasonable for provincial
governments to mandate that bachelor’s degrees conferred in their jurisdictions
include the successful completion of a basic Canadian civics course.
Canadian offerings in civics education
Like our elementary and secondary school systems, Canadian post-secondary
education lags far behind the US in teaching civics. But the same is not true
of classical humanities and liberal studies education. Some universities, such
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
23
as Vancouver Island, Carleton, Simon Fraser, and St. Thomas, offer bachelor’s
degrees in liberal studies, humanities, or Great Books. The University of King’s
College offers a one-year intensive program in the great texts of the humanities.
Unfortunately, in place of robust university-level civics education
programs, Canadian universities focus on the teaching of a nebulous and
academically dodgy concept known as “leadership.” Leadership programs
at Canadian universities are generally not merely uninformed by the liberal
democratic traditions of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill
but by oppositional traditions and theories of democracy (see Wilfrid Laurier
University’s BA Leadership, or Royal Roads University’s MA Leadership).
Like our elementary and secondary
school systems, Canadian
post-secondary education lags far
behind the US in teaching civics.
This fall, McMaster University in Hamilton will launch a new fouryear degree program that will be, in effect, Canada’s first attempt at offering
a US-style civics program (McMaster University 2025). But there is reason
for skepticism. The primary donor to the program, the university’s former
chancellor, clearly expressed what he hoped to accomplish with his $50 million
donation (Laux 2024) – to create the kind of programming we see from civics
centres in US universities. However, cultural, institutional, and governmental
pressures may result in the program being taught by faculty who do not support
its mandate – especially since applicants for faculty positions must officially
declare their support for DEI (Chronicle Careers 2023).
While individuals like the University of Lethbridge’s John von Heyking
are publicly campaigning for government to create the kinds of centres for
humanities and civics that are beginning to receive substantial state backing
in the US (Von Heyking 2024), this work is largely undertaken by individual
academics with conservative leanings. Canada is far behind the United States, or
even Australia, as we see below, when it comes to the civil society infrastructure
needed to move forward with these initiatives.
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Civics and Humanities education in the larger Anglosphere
In Australia, the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilization, a branch of the
Ramsay Foundation, has successfully endowed programs at three major
universities (Queensland, Wollongong, and Australian Catholic). Because
these $50 million endowments are understood as “partnerships,” the endowing
body can exercise a degree of ground-level control and oversight that enables
students to obtain traditional humanities degrees in Western civilization.
By engaging in more of a ground-level partnership than a traditional
university endowment and then binding these partnerships with the centre’s
mandate, these islands of free speech and inquiry are better protected from
ideological capture by the host university and also consciously responsive to
the political exigencies of the present, as explicitly stated by the centre:
At a time when the ideas of democracy, the rule of law, the
scientific method, freedom of speech and religion, and the rights
and dignity of the individual, are being called into question, a
liberal arts education will immerse you in the serious study of
how these hard-won ideas emerged over millennia. (Ramsay
Centre 2025)
In the US, we see a more governmentally driven approach to humanities
and civics education. Ohio, Florida, and Arizona are among the thirteen states
whose legislatures have provided special earmarked funding to create centres
for this kind of education within pre-existing public universities (Quinn
2024). These projects began in the 2010s with the Arizona legislature creating
the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership within Arizona
State University.
The case of the Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education is
especially noteworthy when it comes to the role of government in these centres.
The conservative lobby group, Council on Public University Reform, used
substantial funds not to endow a centre or chair but instead to lobby the Florida
state legislature (Bailly 2023). The ultimate result was $3 million in start-up
funding in 2022 and an ongoing funding commitment; the centre will start its
four-year degree programs in autumn 2025. The program very much brands
itself as non-partisan and unaligned, with the goal of “depoliticiz[ing] higher
education,” by focusing on “pre-partisan concepts … upstream from politics,
like citizenship” (Quinn 2024).
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
25
In Ohio, we see something even more comprehensive and state-directed,
with the passage of legislation in July 2023 to establish “intellectual diversity
centres” at five of the state’s public universities, backed by initial start-up
funding of $24 million. Interestingly, this project has been primarily framed
as a history education intervention. “There is nothing like it, at this scale, in
any other state,” Ohio senator Jerry Cirino, a key proponent, stated (Cirino
2025). “The bill is needed because ideology is replacing the lessons of history
on campus.”
The value of free speech and inquiry is woven into narratives of the
American Revolution and Early Republic. This intervention is also noteworthy
in that the centres are consciously and explicitly understood to be adversarial
to the culture of the universities in which they are situated. Measures to protect
their autonomy from the larger university administration are clearly laid out in
the legislation establishing them (Vedder 2024).
A Canadian policy approach
There are obvious advantages to placing centres similar to those in Australia
and the US in Canadian universities, foremost among them the positive effects
of exposing students enrolled in orthodox and intolerant programs to students
in programs that prize free speech and inquiry. Done correctly, liberalization
could become contagious and begin shifting university culture back towards a
more balanced, de-politicized state.
Given the novelty of these types of centres outside of Arizona, there is
insufficient data for even educated guesses how they might change the social
and institutional dynamics in the Canadian university system. However, the
American experience should be carefully studied to better predict and mitigate
any issues that may arise.
These uncertainties should also be carefully examined by establishing
a single centre in each province’s public system, through direct state action.
Whether this is a federally initiated program, a set of provincial programs,
or some hybrid of the two is a matter of practical consideration with
minimal structural impact on program delivery. Legislation creating these
programs should:
•
26
provide start-up funding and ongoing financial support through
the centres’ early years;
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
•
provide the centres unambiguous exemptions from university-wide
policies contrary to the centres’ function, i.e., exemptions from DEI,
affirmative action, trigger and content warning requirements, anti“misgendering” policies, anti-“hate speech” policies, and reduced
academic standards based on claims of disability or identity.
It is important to note that there are already extracurricular clubs and
societies on some Canadian campuses that aim to promote free inquiry. For
instance, the Runnymede Society, founded by the Canadian Constitution
Foundation in 2016, funds student-run chapters and hosts on-campus
speaking events to promote intellectual diversity in the Canadian legal
academic sphere and profession. They do so by inviting speakers from across
the ideological spectrum to discuss the principles of constitutionalism,
fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. For open-minded students in
Canada’s law schools, this is surely an oasis for free thought. These forums
can also serve as spaces to form connections that later lead to further
change-making. Clubs and societies dedicated to intellectual diversity and
heterodoxy undoubtedly help to create a culture of free inquiry on campus.
Runnymede Society events in 2025 include a “Freedom of Religion” panel
at the University of Toronto, and a “Free Speech in the Classroom” panel at
Western University.
The Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship (SAFS) has been
operating nationwide since 1992, and has three local chapters specific to Brock
University, McGill University, and University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier
University. The non-profit group opposes “measures such as speech codes, extralegal tribunals and so-called anti-hate legislation that may infringe on the right
and responsibility of the academic community (faculty and students) to teach
and do research on controversial subjects” (SAFS 2025). To that end, SAFS
lobbies university administrations and government agencies when it believes
academic freedom or the merit principle have been compromised. SAFS also
organizes lectures that occur on campuses.
Otherwise, there is a dearth of free speech clubs or initiatives on Canadian
campuses. In fact, they likely peaked in the 2010s, as it is difficult to identify
any other “free speech club”-style organizations actively hosting on-campus
panel discussions or speaker series in Canada.
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Strategic takeovers
The New College of Florida precedent
Within both the public and private post-secondary systems, there is considerable
evidence of institutional failure and collapse. Declining enrolment is about
to become a more serious problem within the Canadian system as new rules
reducing foreign student visas will cease to mask the substantial erosion in
confidence in many public universities. Furthermore, private universities
sustained primarily by foreign enrolment will also face major financial
challenges, or even collapse in the months to come.
This dire situation also presents opportunities for provincial governments
to model the DeSantis administration’s strategic takeover of New College
of Florida following its collapse in 2023 (Moody 2024). Appointed by the
Government of Florida, the college’s new board immediately cancelled DEI
programs and shuttered the Gender Studies department.
The DeSantis administration succeeded in transforming the college
by appointing a majority of reformers to the board of governors, led by
Christopher Rufo, a free speech activist and writer. This caused substantial
churn in university faculty and staff, with two-thirds of faculty departing
over the course of two years through a combination of tenure denial, contract
non-renewal, resignation, and early retirement. These reforms resulted in a
significant increase in enrolment, with the college moving from decline to
the largest student intake in its history by creating new athletic teams and
recruiting for them (Baker 2024).
While a turnaround like New College’s should have been possible
through rational self-government processes without substantial state
interference, the reality is that the same anti-free speech culture that shuts
down criticism, debate, and free inquiry has also corrupted university
senates and boards of governors. Unfortunately, such is the crisis in higher
education that institutional guardrails designed to prevent this kind of
decline in liberty and intellectual rigour have largely collapsed, necessitating
state intervention. Critics who have assailed the takeover (Young 2023)
as “illiberal” are overwhelmingly supporters of the illiberal status quo and
supporters of formerly democratic processes being stacked in their favour
(Rufo et al. 2023).
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Rufo et al. have been accused of suppressing speech and prioritizing
ideological ends over education, just in a rightward rather than leftward
direction. Critics point out that even if we agree with the outcomes Rufo is
pursuing, we should not want the government to interfere with institutional
independence (see Khalid and Snyder 2023).
In response to accusations of authoritarianism, Rufo counters that “state
legislators and boards of trustees have the right – and the duty – to redirect,
curtail, or close down academic programs in public universities that do not align
with the mandate of the taxpayers who generously support them” (Rufo 2023).
We should indeed ask: isn’t it acceptable to decide after some time that
a field of study isn’t actually meeting the standards of scholarly inquiry, or
doesn’t fit with the revised mission of a post-secondary institution? While
gender, sexuality, and feminism should most certainly be explored, discussed,
and debated in the classroom, why must each be its own degree?
Some are uncomfortable with the level of government involvement in the
New College takeover, but we ought to give Rufo et al. a chance to demonstrate
that they can successfully reform a “woke” university into a legitimate, rigorous
liberal arts institute. Experimentation is necessary when a large segment of
people are looking for change.
Similarly, university self-governance rights must, in the public system,
be balanced against the state’s interest in meeting the educational needs of all
its citizens, not just those of a particular ideological bent. Once a university
receives public funding, it becomes democratically accountable in two ways,
first to its senate and board of governors but, secondly, to the state legislature
that funds it based on an agreement that it will help meet key citizen needs
(Rufo 2023).
Canadian opportunities
The drawdown of student visas, something on which there is now a crossspectrum policy consensus in Ottawa, is a certainty that will cause substantial
system shocks, especially in Ontario, British Columbia, and Alberta. At the
University of British Columbia (UBC) for instance, international students
accounted for 27 per cent of total enrolment in 2022, but 60 per cent of
tuition revenue, as foreign students pay fees eight times higher than those of
their domestic counterparts (Xiong 2024). With recent Canada-wide caps on
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
29
international student visas, the country’s post-secondary institutions could
each face millions of dollars of annual revenue losses. In 2023, the Canadian
government issued 650,000 international student visas. In 2025, it will
be 437,000.
The impending crisis requires provincial government action, and will
undoubtedly generate demands for government bailouts of public and private
institutions. No matter what, provincial governments will be called upon to
address immediate enrolment and financial shortfalls and the structural decline
underpinning them. The question is whether provincial governments will take
the opportunity to acquire, consolidate, and reform private institutions and to
attach substantial strings – as well as, if necessary, non-consensual reforms – to
bailing out and stabilizing public institutions.
Publicly owned universities are the property of the public, not merely
their current students and faculty. Their funding and state support is
contingent on them meeting the needs of the public as a whole, not simply
members thereof with whom the institution has a direct financial relationship.
Canadian universities can and do already experience substantial direction
from government, overriding senate and board decisions, such as the Ontario
McGuinty government’s Graduate Expansion Program in 2007–12, when all
public universities were ordered to triple their PhD and MA intakes, irrespective
of capacity and advisability.
University board governance varies from province to province, with
greater state control and more direct appointment from east to west. This
is primarily conditioned by historical circumstances, i.e., universities
predating state funding. But these “self-perpetuating oligarchies,” in the
words of internationally recognized education expert Alex Usher (2016), are
a consequence of history and culture, not the law. While some provincial
governments deliberately constrain their appointment power (Government of
Alberta 2024) to help maintain universities as independent institutions, profree speech governments are beginning to acknowledge that lifting or reducing
those constraints can be a reasonable response to the crisis (Markusoff 2024).
Governments that support academic free expression and inquiry
need legislative framework to set requirements for impending bailouts
and restructuring should the international student crackdown cause one or
many post-secondary institutions to become insolvent. Such a framework
should include:
30
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
•
•
•
•
a means of auditing how successful new administrations are at
restoring free speech and inquiry, such as reductions in complaints
of censorship and reprisal and polling to determine levels of selfcensorship;
increases in domestic enrolment (without lowering admissions
averages) and, in the event of no such increase, plans for downsizing
and merging institutions;
reduction of administrative and non-instructor staff; and
retirement and severance packages for faculty and staff likely to
sabotage restructuring efforts.
Provinces should pass laws to allow the emergency removal and
replacement of boards at institutions, even those not needing immediate
bailouts, if they violate legal standards or principles of free speech and
inquiry. It seems absurd that provincial governments not only enjoy but
use, with some frequency, their power to fire entire school boards elected
by thousands of voters in local general elections (CBC News 2025), but are
reluctant to utilize the same powers to fire university boards elected by much
smaller numbers of voters.
Conclusion
It is heartening to see the efforts underway at various universities to restore
a culture of freedom of inquiry. Champions of free and open inquiry are
establishing intra-university centres that encourage heterodoxy and civil
discourse. Governments are passing legislation that bans universities from
requesting written commitments to DEI. Pro-open inquiry alternative upstart
universities are seeking accreditation. Governments have also written bills that
offer recourse to censored students, visiting speakers, and faculty. Governments
are listening to independent researchers, columnists, and think tanks and
taking cues on reform.
The only problem? These actions are not happening in Canada.
Reflecting upon the five actionable areas reviewed in this paper, it
becomes clear that government intervention is a deciding factor in all of
them. If we want Canadian universities to truly welcome free expression and
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
31
open inquiry, governments will simply have to lead the way by prohibiting the
censure of speech on campus with statutes like, “Universities may not restrict
the content of expression of their faculty, students, or visiting speakers.”
Legislation will also be needed to reform or abolish DEI in research, hiring,
and programming. Alternative institutions of higher education can be created
and offer courses, but accreditation bodies provide recommendations to
provincial governments. Academics at a Canadian university could feasibly
open up a “Centre for Civil Discourse” or “Institute for Civic Studies”; it
would certainly be a welcome measure – although no academics have publicly
stepped up to the plate. A Rufo-style board takeover can happen in Canada,
but only with revised legislation.
The solutions offered in this paper are reasonable, and attainable.
But the challenge is immense. Thanks to the multi-decade and ongoing
transformation of our universities and colleges into centres of leftist
indoctrination, change will, at first, likely be incremental. Even in the reddest
of US states and most conservative Canadian provinces, academia as a whole,
but especially the social sciences and humanities, seems to disdain free
expression and open inquiry – seeing it as a direct threat to its inflexible and
unquestionable orthodoxy.
Given the scale of the problem, we have no choice but to pursue every
possible option in parallel and make future strategic decisions based on the
efficacy of our strategic interventions. Our approach must be fearless. If we
don’t act now, even the kinds of moderate reforms we see in the United States
will remain distant for Canadians.
32
CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
About the author
Lindsay Shepherd is the author of Diversity and Exclusion:
Confronting the Campus Free Speech Crisis and A Day with
Sir John A. She holds an MA in Cultural Analysis and Social
Theory (Wilfrid Laurier University). She is the 2025–26
president of Civitas Canada.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
33
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities
Endnote
1
Throughout the paper, academic freedom and freedom of speech are used
in the university context. ‘Academic freedom’ is protected by legislation
and ensures that scholars are free to express their ideas without risk of
official interference, censorship or professional disadvantage, in the
pursuit of truth in the academic context. ‘Freedom of speech’ refers to
the right to express ideas without censorship or restraint. The latter is
broader in scope, and is protected by the Charter of Rights in Freedoms,
in Canada.
Lindsay Shepherd | July 2025
41
GOOD POLICY
is worth fighting for.
WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING ABOUT MLI
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CRISIS OF CONFORMITY
The urgent need to restore open inquiry and free expression in Canada’s universities