In the feature article entitled, “EDI: Under attack or empowered?,” authors Momin Rahman and Naomi Nichols edify those who would confuse the pursuit of policies of Equity/Diversity/Inclusion with surrender to a radical agenda of either excising able-bodied, privileged, white heterosexuals from professorships and research funds or of promoting the mediocre over the meritorious to satisfy idiotic, bureaucratic-mandated quotas.
The sociologists correct — splendidly — those who uphold myths of a race-blind and sex-neutral Ivory Tower or who score their biases as arias of “objectivity.” Their fine article neglects, however, to reference the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which, conceived amid a rebooted, reactionary America (under Reagan) and Britain (under Thatcher), sought to oppose both by nobly enshrining gender equality, Canada’s multicultural fact, and, most saliently, the just use of affirmative action measures to ameliorate past injustices, i.e., “to promote equality by passing laws or creating programs that aim to improve the conditions of peoples who have been disadvantaged ... ”
In Canada, EDI initiatives are not bizarre impositions upon contracts of hiring, promoting, funding, and grant-giving, but are constitutionally recognized means of ensuring equality of opportunity — for the qualified and the talented — across all locales of socio-economic interaction, including, of course, the Academy.
Proponents of equity, please note the fact! Indeed, if Conservatives (i.e., Ice-Cold Republicans) ever win power federally, and seek to dismantle EDI, they will first have to stack our Supreme Court with ideologues capable of misreading — mischievously — the Equality provisions of the Charter. As Malcolm X would say, “Understand this!”
George Elliott Clarke E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature, University of Toronto
