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All about class.
*important caveat that said TT job was secured via an internal hire where two other grads of the same school…
Excellent questions! Re question 6, I have actually already invented a new punctuation mark. I can’t type it here, as…
29. Should competitive examination questions obey Betteridge’s Law?
It’s likely that Notre Dame will return to a policy of requiring GREs next year (this year they’re officially optional…
Would love to see what a successful answer (in the view of the All Souls’ examiners) looks like.
That list of questions has a beauty to it, I swear.
The letter here concerns a search in computer science. I don't know what the relevant law is governing the use of such statements in Canada; in the U.S., they are pretty clearly instances of unlawful viewpoint discrimination (despite the shoddy arguments of some dissemblers to the contrary!).
Those knowledgeable about the relevant Canadian laws are invited to comment.
On the law, there's little here that's problematic. In most of Canada, academic freedom in Canada is a negotiated right established via collective agreements between a faculty union and its Board. Should the Board (or in this case, a hiring committee acting as an agent of the Board) violate the collective agreement, a member could file a grievance. See here for a helpful summary of the situation. https://www.aaup.org/article/academic-freedom-canada-labor-law-right#.Yt_2dezMKrc
McGill is a relative exception. It has no faculty union and thus no collective agreement. However, the Quebec government recently passed Bill 32. Were a hiring committee to require that candidates adhere to a specific political viewpoint, that might be construed as violating their freedom under the law "to critique society, institutions, doctrines, dogmas and opinions". http://m.assnat.qc.ca/en/travaux-parlementaires/projets-loi/projet-loi-32-42-2.html
But ultimately, all this is beside the point. The language in the job ad flagged by SAFS is fairly unremarkable by Canadian academic standards and is extremely unlikely to raise many eyebrows up here, whether by other faculty or in a court of law. Rightly so, to my way of thinking, though I expect other readers may feel differently.
Just to add to what Jeffrey Sachs said above, with respect to the worry expressed about preferential hiring at the end of the letter: preferential hiring is explicitly allowed under §15.2 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Indeed, you'll find a fair few job ads with that kind of language every year, including in philosophy. As Jeffrey Sachs said, it's fairly unremarkable.
It is quite common in Canadian academia for there to be various types of targeted hires, based on equity grounds. I'm a labour lawyer with a faculty union in Nova Scotia, and there are reasonably frequently postings where various underrepresented groups are given preference (African Nova Scotians, Indigenous Canadians, scholars with disabilities, etc.). That's not at all out of the ordinary.
What has changed in recent years, though, has been the push toward making types of statements of principles part of the institutional life of the university. The most notable of these would be the land acknowledgement. These take various forms, but generally involve acknowledging the local Indigenous land tenure, the history of the treaty relationship (or, if there was no treaty, an acknowledgement that the land is "unceded") and sometimes statements that call for "land back," which means what you think it means.
In my own field of law, we saw a big push a number of years ago to make it mandatory for members of the profession in Ontario to make and have available on demand a "statement of principles," which the regulator could inquire about. In the original formulation, you could be punished if you refused to produce a "statement of principles," and a few lawyers in Ontario did have professional disciplinary proceedings started against them when they refused to comply. This caused quite a big backlash that led to a slate of (mostly right-wing and rural) lawyers running on a "StopSOP" platform: http://stopsop.ca/. They were successful and removed the requirement about three years ago.
I raise all of these examples to point out that the intellectual climate in Canada is one that is really quite open and supportive of these types of requirements. I rarely express my disquiet with this in public, because doing so is a good way to invite social sanction, or to get lumped in with political extremists on the right.
I've been a militant trade unionist, democratic socialist, and have been a card-carrying member of the NDP since my early twenties. But there are few folks on the Left up here who object to institutional requirements to pledge fidelity to the cause du jour.
Jeffrey Sachs and Michel Xhignesse are mistaken. For one thing, there is genuine legal concern about preferential hiring here. As the letter notes, the policy "suggests that being a member of one of the designated groups weighs in an applicant’s favour". Preferential hiring is permitted under Section 15.2 of the Charter for Canadian citizens and permanent residents, but not on racial lines. (As Canadian academics well know, the requirement to prefer Canadian applicants is easily and regularly bypassed). However, several provincial human rights codes now expressly state that preferential treatment for hiring purposes (namely, for BIPOC) is permitted. These code provisions have nevertheless yet to be tested in the federal courts under a Charter Section 15 (or Section 7) challenge. On the other hand, McGill is in Quebec; so, as to the Charter's application there…
Regarding Quebec's Bill 32, it would be interesting to see what the province's courts would do with a challenge to the EDI application requirements. It is NOT a foregone conclusion. Obviously, it is no longer shocking that most anglophone philosophers are incapable of recognizing that mandating expressions of fidelity to EDI dogmas constitutes a specific political viewpoint.
"Preferential hiring is permitted under Section 15.2 of the Charter for Canadian citizens and permanent residents, but not on racial lines."
This is simply false. Here is the text of §15 (including subsection 2):
"15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
(2) Section (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."
For those actually interested, see for example (at paragraphs 40-41):
https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/7952/index.do
As I said, preference CANNOT simply be given on racial lines; it must be for the alleviation of historically disadvantaged groups, e.g., it CANNOT be for racial diversity's sake alone. We'll see how those provincial code provisions fare vis-a-vis Section 15 in the coming years, and whether it must concern the amelioration of disadvantage suffered IN Canada. (Note how, in the Canadian context, this could conceivably cover racial discrimination and disadvantage historically suffered by Italians, Poles, Greeks, etc.). This is important in the context of academic hiring, as the pertinent provincial code provisions are now regularly utilized NOT to ameliorate conditions for disadvantaged groups in Canada, but as covers to hire people from elite classes/upper castes from across the globe.
More immediately relevant than the Charter is human rights legislation. First, with respect to viewpoint diversity, few provincial human rights statutes include protection for 'political belief' as it is generally termed.
Second, when it comes to race or gender etc based hiring, although human rights legislation prohibits discrimination based on an array of protected grounds, including race, gender etc., the legislation also typically includes a provision stating that, if the discrimination is pursuant to a special program (such as affirmative action) then this discrimination is not a violation of the legislation. In the case of employment, see s.24 https://canlii.ca/t/2fd#sec24
See here for the Human Rights Commission's explanation of the requirements to qualify for this exception: https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/policy-preventing-discrimination-based-creed/8-defences-and-exceptions
It doesn't seem to me that most Universities or departments should satisfy those requirements but I'm not aware of any human rights complaints being brought against this types of practices.
[Note to BL: I am a legal academic in Canada and concerned about potential backlash over this issue. I would therefore like this comment to be posted only if it can be posted anonymously]
There are number of things wrong with what has been posted by Jeffrey Sachs, Michael Xhignesse and Anon Canadian Lawyer.
The legality or constitutionality of the preferential hiring measures being discussed has never been tested and is open to serious challenge. The Charter and various human rights codes allow for "positive discrimination", but the use of such measures must be justified. Employers are not permitted to target particular demographic groups in the absence of any reasonable basis for believing them to have been disadvantaged in the relevant context, or by adopting measures that have no relationship to the disadvantage suffered. The fact that one group has, somewhere in the past, been disadvantaged does not imply that it has experienced the same disadvantage in a different context. This is a serious problem for the measures being discussed, since data from Statistics Canada shows that "visible minorities" (the official term for non-white individuals) are overrepresented at the faculty level relative to their share of the labour force (note: most academics of my acquaintance are completely unaware of this, having been taken in by the prevailing groupthink). This undermines any claim that university hiring processes systematically disadvantage such individuals. Needless to say, attempting to justify such a measure based solely on the demographics of a single department would be absurd in the absence of any direct evidence of discrimination, although I daresay some of the crowd behind these measures believe that mere "underrepresentation" is enough to establish discrimination.
I think it is quite clear that EDI statements are intended as a form of viewpoint discrimination, whose purpose is to weed out individuals who show insufficient concern for, or deference to, a cluster of political objectives. To my knowledge, no attempt has ever been made to demonstrate that such statements are necessary or even beneficial in promoting the kind of learning environment students are legally entitled to enjoy. In my experience, they are political gestures by the faculty intended to signal that it is alive ("woke", one might say) to the concerns of a certain very vocal and strident subset of the academic community which demands its pound of identity-politics flesh. It is true that the language at issue is "fairly unremarkable", but that is because of the groupthink that has settled over academic circles, particularly in Canada, and because of the intimidation brought to bear on those who challenge them. The unions have thus far not attempted to grieve any of these policies because they tend to be run by those most concerned with "social justice", not because of any absence of legal grounds to do so.
Finally, the claim that opposition to Ontario's "statement of principles" came solely or even mostly from right-wingers and "rural folk" is simply absurd. This statement was opposed by large numbers of lawyers from across the political spectrum on the basis that it amounted to forced political speech. As readers of this blog will surely know, there are large segments of the "traditional" left (in which I include myself) who are deeply uncomfortable with the current brand of identity politics.
Jeffrey Sachs' description is right on the money. There is no real legal issue here. I'm not fond of these statements, but this is pretty milquetoast stuff. There is also actually Course Lecturer union at McGill, but it does not include full-time faculty.
Johnny Eh Macdonald's legal judgment is suspect, given they implied Quebec would use the notwithstanding clause to bypass the Charter to defend affirmative action. Which is insane, given Quebec's recent use of the clause has been to tramble on minority rights.
Whether the implementation of particular measures survives a legal challenge is a distinct issue from the general question of whether preferential hiring is legal, or whether race is an allowable basis for it (as our pseudonymous Prime Ministerial friend above claimed), which the Charter explicitly allows.
Since you yourself go on to acknowledge as much, it's hard to see that there was _anything_ wrong with what I posted. Or did I misquote the Charter?
And for the record, I am _not_ a Michael.
"Johnny Eh Macdonald's legal judgment is suspect, given they implied Quebec would use the notwithstanding clause to bypass the Charter to defend affirmative action. Which is insane, given Quebec's recent use of the clause has been to tramble on minority rights".
It is rather McGill Course Lecturer's judgEment which is suspect (one does not offer legal judgments on philosophy blogs). This, as (1) I merely intimated that the Charter would be irrelevant (hence defending the policy on Charter grounds in that province might prove futile) and (2) subsequently suggested that, regarding Bill 32, Quebecois courts would NOT necessarily defend "affirmative action" policies. Your misinterpretation is bizarre, not just erroneous, given the politics lying behind this…
"Whether the implementation of particular measures survives a legal challenge is a distinct issue from the general question of whether preferential hiring is legal, or whether race is an allowable basis for it (as our pseudonymous Prime Ministerial friend above claimed), which the Charter explicitly allows."
That wasn't the distinction drawn. You made a general claim, which I not only showed constituted an exception but also that the category alone was insufficient: race must be coupled with claims of ameliorating passed discrimination. I then noted that the scope was untested, e.g., WHERE the past discrimination must have been suffered. (This, alone, shows where challenges to the constitutionality of the provincial codes will rest). I also provided a citation to one of the pertinent cases explaining as much, since, as anyone with legal training knows, reading the text of a constitution alone is insufficient to understand what the its rules actually are and mean.
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