At Alberta university, more proof we’re watching DEI die in real time

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DEI is dead.

Meta, the world’s largest social network, just decoupled from “diversity, equity, inclusion.” At the University of Alberta, president Bill Flanagan also shut down DEI at his institution. “It’s about excluding, or highlighting what divides us, rather than what unites us,” is how he described DEI’s effects to me on a Zoom chat a few days before Meta’s announcement.

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After months of consultation with faculty, staff and students, Bill launched the new year with a bold announcement: The U of A is replacing its spin on DEI with a new mandate focused on building access, community and belonging.

Back-pedalling on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives is gaining traction in the private and public sectors, particularly in anticipation of president-elect Donald Trump’s return to Washington. Trump threatens to terminate funding and accreditation of post-secondaries if “woke cultural warriors” don’t dismantle diversity mandates. College administrators are waking up to the new fiscal reality.

While no one is threatening to defund the U of A, or any other post-secondary institution in Canada, I’d like to think the pendulum is swinging back in the direction of meritocracy. Yet there’s a temptation to attribute this course-correction in Edmonton to mere wordsmithing — an attempt to tone down social justice slogans to appease a growing anti-woke crowd.

This is the perfect conversation to have with Bill, the philosopher-cum-law-dean leading one of Canada’s preeminent research universities through a particularly stormy time for higher education.

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“Access, community and belonging, for me, is a more powerful term than diversity,” he says. “You might have a diverse community — where there is not a sense of belonging and not a sense of community — and you will not have succeeded.” In fact, Bill tells me, “you might have a diverse community that’s very divided and there are no conversations across divides.”

Attempts by anti-Israeli campaigners to take over university campuses last spring is a graphic example of how diversity can divide. When the U of A campus was targeted, Bill had the fortitude to call in the Edmonton police to dismantle the protesters’ occupation of the school’s main quad and restore safety (rather than seeking an injunction or trying to negotiate with angry protesters). Outraged members of the university’s own faculty called for the president’s resignation; retired justice Adele Kent independently reviewed the situation and declared the decision “reasonable.”

“My primary obligation is the safe functioning of the university,” Bill asserts, in defence of his decision. “We have a very vibrant summer program for school kids,” he explains. “At noon hour, the quad is full with over 1,000 schoolchildren playing soccer, having fun, eating their lunch, and their safety is my responsibility.”

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Bill’s an Alberta boy with prairie sensibilities, raised by parents who were teachers in the small towns of Stony Plain and Lacombe. In 2020, he returned home to head up U of A after an illustrious education (a BA in English and philosophy from Carleton, a JD from University of Toronto, more legal education at University Paris-Sorbonne, and an LLM from Columbia) and career, including, most recently, a 14-year tenure as dean of law at Queen’s.

U of A didn’t issue any statement on the conflict in Gaza, I note to him, when there was a lot of pressure to do so. “That’s not the role of the universities to weigh in,” Bill answers with a shrug. “Governments have foreign policies. Ottawa has a foreign policy. The University of Alberta does not have a foreign policy and should not have a foreign policy.

“Over time, (universities) became much more comfortable with issuing statements on all manner of topics,” he continues, “and I think it was a bit of a wake-up call.” Weighing in on a contentious political issue might stifle rather than foster discussion, he contends: “Our role is to make space for these conversations, these difficult conversations, these uncomfortable conversations, these challenging conversations.”

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He’s a thoughtful guy, and obviously well-intended, but Bill’s aspirations do sound a wee bit warm and fuzzy. The last thing students need is more of the mollycoddling that phrases like “making space” conjure up.

Whatever’s happening in the world will be happening on campus, he counters, and many of these issues are deeply felt and contentious. The university wants to do everything it can, including honing intellectual rigour, to foster a sense of community and belonging. “We’re going to go right to the heart of this conflict,” Bill declares, “and have a conversation about it.”

What about merit, how does that fit into this new strategy? “Merit is obvious,” he quips, the university has always been committed to academic excellence and research impact. Noticing my raised brow, he elaborates, talking about roadblocks to access, financial barriers being the most easily understood. U of A commits over $40 million a year to assist undergrads and another $26 million for grad students. In a pure meritocracy, he reasons, the university would be completely blind to financial needs of students.

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And, he assures me, the university is not talking about quotas. “I think the question of quotas can rapidly become very divisive,” he says, “and you’re now really focusing on what divides people rather than what unites them.” Yet how exactly the school’s going to build a sense of “belonging” — for example, among the 2,000 Indigenous students on campus who want to see Indigenous faculty — remains to be seen.

The era of elite intellectuals living in ivory towers is over, and this 64-year-old presiding over the U of A knows it. Bill’s unafraid to say out loud what most academics only whisper: there is declining public support for post-secondaries. And that translates into a steady decline in financial support. Which begs another unanswered question: can he pull the plug on federal funding that comes with DEI conditions?

“A lot of this decline was made up by growth in international students,” he explains. “This has all come to a crashing halt with the recent changes in Ottawa.” And he asserts, it’s not unique to the U of A, it’s not unique to Alberta, nor is it unique to a political party. “I tell my colleagues this all the time because they just think all we need to do is get a new government and our life will be beautiful, and I’m thinking ‘no’.” To remain competitive, universities must generate income. At U of A, revenue levers include international students, developing properties within the institution’s land trust, and an on-campus enterprise office that serves as the front door for industry engagement.

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There’s no doubt, Bill’s leading the university in a new direction. Admittedly, it’s going to take time; DEI tentacles run deep and in some quarters on campus, the mandate still reads the same.

But I’ll take him at his word. In 2021, he reorganized the university faculties to save on admin costs; last year, he didn’t hesitate to call in the police to remove encampments; and he isn’t delusional about government and public support for post-secondaries. He isn’t afraid to lead change.

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