31 December 2024
I was reading Canada’s National Post and came across an article on a subject that is pretty close to my heart, the state of universities in Canada. Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was discussing the need to end wokeness in Canadian universities, which have largely become an ideological monoculture and leverage threats of defunding to course correct. To deal with the problems at Canadian universities his plan is to ‘defund universities with a woke, antisemitic agenda.’
To start, Pierre Poilievre gets it right about Canadian universities being an ideological monoculture, one that truly has run right off the woke cliff. There are an untold number of studies that show Canadian university professors are almost entirely left on the political spectrum…and getting ‘left(er?).’ Conservative professors, always a minority in Canadian universities have been virtually eliminated from a faculty increasingly (and quantifiably) hostile towards dissenting views. Additionally, we continue to see absurd proposals like Ryerson’s medical school recruitment (Sorry, it’s Toronto Metropolitan University now), which was objectively racist, become the norm for Canadian universities.
This woke worldview has absolutely become tied-up with a revolting antisemitism that has no place in Canada. Canadian campuses are rife with racism that targets Canadian Jews as somehow responsible for the state of affairs in the Middle East and a campaign of intimidation and harassment is somehow justified as aimed at ‘legitimate’ political targets. This is not only racist and repulsive, but it’s also just stupid. This is, I think, the greatest indictment against Canada’s universities today.
I have always considered myself a moderate liberal. Like most folks of my political inclinations in Canada, I feel politically homeless as the mainstream Left has run headlong off a cliff into radicalism and extremism at odds with everything Canada stands for and I hold dear. I have never voted conservative but like most Canadians will in the next election. It’s for this reason I write this. I don’t agree with many things Pierre Poilievre says but in general we have common ground. I think he’s done a reasonable job at identifying many of the big systemic issues facing Canada that need correction, but it’s here where we part ways. His solutions are at times, respectfully, a bit shortsighted and simplistic.
Defunding universities is part of an attitude and approach taken to academia by Conservatives that is actually what brought us here, it’s the cause of the problem. I am going to borrow from Dr. Jordon Peterson precisely because he is such a central figure in Canadian conservative political thought. He once argued on Joe Rogan, and I agree with this assertion, that it was the conservative retreat from academia that surrendered the battlefield to the Left. It was in this uncontested space that the woke radicalism we confront today was able to fester and grow uncontested.
I can recall being an undergrad and watching Prime Minister Harper push Canada towards a greater focus on trades. Now he wasn’t wrong, Canada is the most educated country in the world and there is an imbalance, something I think is naturally correcting itself through market demands. However, underneath that practical motivation it always felt like there was a level of contempt for academics that was both misguided and unjustified. I say unjustified because we should not dismiss people who dedicate their entire lives to studying a subject, the idea that those working in the ‘ivory towers’ of academia are disconnected from the real world is totally dishonest. I say misguided because disengaging from the ideological fight isn’t really a viable solution, as we have come to learn.
What Pierre Poilievre and conservative Canada are now discovering is that most, if not all, of the most influential positions in Canadian society are occupied by university educated individuals. It goes far beyond doctors, scientists, and lawyers, that is an idiotic understanding of university education. Journalists, public servants, corporate workers, social workers, etc etc ad nauseum, all those involved in setting policy are almost without exception the product of universities. For this reason, the conservatives have a serious vested interest in reengaging in ideological battle within the academic space. Defunding it is just another form of disengagement that only surrenders the ground and solves nothing.
To borrow again from Dr. Peterson (I paraphrase) it’s very easy to tear something down, to break something. It is far more difficult to maintain or build something. This is why I have such a problem with Pierre Poilievre’s approach to the CBC. Now to be clear, any objective observer would have to conclude that the CBC is massively biased towards the left and against conservative politics. Where I have a problem is with the idea that since it has been damaged, we should throw it away, especially at such a delicate turning point for Canada.
Prime Minister Trudeau has spent a decade in an all-out assault upon Canada’s institutions and historical foundations as irredeemably racist, it must all be purged. There are several worrying questions surrounding this. What are his motivations for one, but more importantly what will replace it? No society can function without a core identity and set of ideals built upon a national mythos that can act as a center of gravity, a guiding star. Without it what results is what we have now, a balkanized country, pockets of individuals. A house divided cannot stand and Trudeau’s ‘post-national state’ was the most offensively stupid idea I have ever heard a Canadian politician utter…that is a very high bar.
If Pierre Poilievre is serious about fighting off the woke attack on Canada and Canadian identity, repairing the CBC is the logical place to start. Dismantling it only accelerates the process. Anything worth doing is going to be hard it’s the hard thing, the hard path that provides the riches and rewards. Repairing the CBC, restoring it to what it was of my youth, a globally respected news outlet, which promoted Canadian identity through, heritage moments and things like the ‘log drivers waltz’ and ‘paddle to the sea’ is how you build a national mythos, that is how you combat the woke assault.
Canada as a country and as an idea is under attack ignoring the problem or trying to eliminate the lines of attack is not going to save us. That has been what the illiberal Left has been doing, defending and canceling dissent, it’s undemocratic and un-Canadian. This fix requires conservatives to get back in the game so that universities are a place of genuine diversity, a diversity of ideas. Instead of defunding universities the conservatives need to increase funding and take a greater interest in seeing to it that this funding promotes real academic discourse. It must be made contingent upon the university demonstrating a commitment to these ideas, that they can show a diversity of ideas are being supported, moreover that they are not just an activist institution engaged in tearing down the state. Why, after all should the state fund an intuition bent upon sowing chaos and destroying the state?
I doubt anyone of import will read this but if they do I urge them to reconsider their methodology. Eschew simple solutions and strive for depth, nuance, complexity. Engage in the ideological battle where it matters, the university, not bloody twitter. It’s high time Canada takes its identity and the microphone back from those set upon destroying it. At this moment in history, it just so happens that the responsibility for that falls on the underrepresented conservative movement. All things require balance, right now Canada lacks equilibrium, and conservatives will have to step up and reengage to fix it. I hope they will choose the hard path and opt to be the solution instead of just the other side of the problem.
Feature Photo: Toronto police charge Black Lives Matter protesters, splattered paint on statues at the Ontario legislature and Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada. July 2010. Wikimedia Commons, 2024.
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