September 2002
The following two letters
and editorial were published in the National Post.
1. René Durocher,
executive director of the Canada Research Chairs Program, has embarrassed
himself and demeaned female scholars by advocating the politicization of
appointments to these prestigious chairs. Referring to the fact that 15%
of the chairs have been awarded to women, he said: “We have been talking
to the universities and telling the presidents they must improve the situation.”
Without explicitly claiming
discrimination or providing any evidence, he irresponsibly implies that
discrimination is at work in that university selection committees are bypassing
deserving women in favor of less deserving men. If he does not mean to
suggest discrimination, then what is the problem he wants the university
presidents to improve?
Instead of expressing pride
in how successful the Research Chairs program has been “in improving Canada’s
research capacity …reversing the brain drain, as well as attracting international
research stars,” Durocher confused achievement with entitlement, violated
university autonomy and willingly sacrificed academic freedom for sex-based
social engineering.
Canada Research Chairs should
be appointed through the normal academic processes, using well-established
criteria for judging research excellence of individuals. Imagining the
quality of the chairs could be improved by taking into account the sex
of the candidate is not a harmless fiction, but a recipe for mediocrity,
exactly the opposite goal for which the chairs program was instituted.
Canada’s university presidents
should speak out loudly against any attempts by Mr. Durocher to interfere
with how research chairs are selected.
Clive
Seligman, President, Society for Academic Freedom and Scholarship, June
1, 2002.
2. At least since the
federal employment equity bill of 1986, Canadian universities have used
not only merit but also sex in competitions for tenure-stream faculty positions.
The more academically prestigious Canada Research Chairs (CRC) have, however,
been protected against this sort of sexist discrimination; they are awarded
solely on the basis of outstanding research performance. Now Rene
Durocher, the director of the CRC program, proposes that the nature of
the genitals of outstanding researchers be a criterion for selecting CRC
competition winners, and that universities not meeting “targets” (i.e.,
quotas) be financially penalized (“Women awarded only 15 per cent of federal
research chairs, May 29, 2002).
Academic research excellence
may seem rather arcane and esoteric to many tax-paying Canadians, so let’s
consider a hypothetical example from a field with which more are familiar:
professional basketball. Suppose that the NBA Commissioner had instituted
a skin-color, “employment equity” requirement that stated that all NBA
teams must aim to recruit a “representative” percentage of white players,
and that, some years after instituting this recruiting policy, the Commissioner
now complained that not enough white players had been selected as MVPs
and/or members of All Star games. Suppose further that the Commissioner
proposed to penalize teams and All-Star selecting committees who did not
meet their “targets”. How long would such a Commissioner keep his job?
John
J. Furedy, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, May 30, 2002.
3. Social engineers
have their eyes on the $900-million Canada Research Chairs Program that
the federal government founded two years ago. Its purpose is to create
2,000 research chairs at Canada’s universities by 2005. To date, 500 chairs
have been funded by Ottawa and 15 per cent of them have been awarded to
women. This is too few according to the Humanities and Social Sciences
Federation of Canada, a group that represents over 24,000 Canadian academics.
The $900-million fund, 80
percent of which is destined for research in the sciences, is supposed
to add lustre to Canada’s poor research and development credentials, reverse
the brain drain and help universities attract the world’s best minds. Rightly,
Ottawa told universities to award the chairs on merit alone.
Wendy Robbins, the vice-president
for women’s issues of the federation, thinks this is a mistake. “Women
researchers,” said Dr. Robbins in an interview, “ask different questions
than men and we need to make sure that way of looking at the world is protected.”
She is demanding that Ottawa make the grants dependent on universities
meeting quotas for female appointments.
We have gone down this road
before. Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, which
will support 8,700 university researchers in Canada in 2001-2002, diverts
$2.7-million a year exclusively to women. It does so because of a phantasm
called “systemic discrimination,” which believers say prevents women from
getting ahead in sciences. In his letter to the editor today, René
Durocher, executive director of the Canada Research Chairs program, promotes
the same mischief, implying discrimination exists without any supporting
evidence.
All this retards the promotion
of science. The goal of the Canada Research Chairs Program and Natural
Sciences and Engineering Research Council should be the promotion of good
science, without the taint of social engineering. The only “fair share”
that male and female researchers are entitled to is the share they win
based on merit.
Editorial, June 1, 2002.
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