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Jamie Sarkonak: DEI in universities can be defeated. Just look to Alberta

The premier merely had to signal hostility to DEI, and the U of A drafted a new hiring policy. Imagine what could get done if DEI was actually penalized

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On Jan. 26, the University of Alberta embarked on the process of ridding diversity, equity and inclusion from its hiring policy, at least in name. Identity is still a core part of the school’s ethos, but this is still a step in the right direction; the proposed change would have been unthinkable in 2021.

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It’s little developments like these that give me hope in the future of Canada. Yes, progressive backwardisms are deeply embedded everywhere, but untrenching them is easier than you might think. It just takes having the guts to wield carrots and sticks.

Jamie Sarkonak: DEI in universities can be defeated. Just look to Alberta Back to video

This little proposed policy change from my alma mater is a perfect example of what happens when conservatives decide to deploy only a fraction of their power.

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You see, it was just in September that Premier Danielle Smith sent a mandate letter to each minister outlining marching orders for the coming months. Justice Minister Mickey Amery received instructions to “review and reform hiring practices in Alberta public institutions to ensure they are based only on merit, competence, and equality of all persons, rather than on DEI ideology.”

No legislation has come from this yet, but the warning shot must have rung loudly in the ears of university administration. Their attempt in early 2025 to distance themselves from DEI by rebranding it as “access, community and belonging” failed; discriminatory policies remained on the books, and the school remained part of the diversity-quota-bound Canada Research Chairs program.

Today, the university is still running race-restricted job competitions; it’s currently searching for an Indigenous faculty member in kinesiology, and a job posting for a new counselling psychology professor states a preference for “applicants with a strong record of clinical supervision and work with equity-denied communities.” It is also home to an “anti-racism lab” tasked with brewing up “decolonial and antiracist policies and practices” for universities — really, an activist outpost parasitizing the school to give academic legitimacy to its unserious work.

Those are just a few examples of progressive ideology maintaining its hold, and it’s consistent with the self-stated purpose of the University of Alberta’s current recruitment policy. It says that each job competition should be seen as a means to advance DEI, which should also be a factor in deciding who gets to sit on hiring committees and which candidates get shortlisted.

Various procedures under the recruitment policy specify more deployments of DEI into hiring. One rule states that selection committees for vice-provosts can include a DEI “expert” as a “non-voting resource,” a clear addition of bias to the mix; another says that deadlines for faculty dean candidate searches can be extended if not enough non-white, female or disabled candidates apply.

Meanwhile, the recruitment policy directly states that where there’s a tie between two similarly qualified candidates, “the final hiring decision will favour the selection of person(s) historically under-represented at the University, especially in the discipline, field and/or employment or job category of focus.” That’s systemic discrimination in its most real sense: as a rule, the game requires the player to always favour a certain kind of candidate.

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There’s no question that measures like these sabotage the university’s public image. A December study by Brad Epperly and Geoffrey Sigalet of the Macdonald Laurier Institute found that “learning about the demographic-based hiring practices common in Canadian universities decreases popular trust in the research these universities produce.”

“Once Canadians learn about university hiring practices, supermajority support for university diversity policies falls to a minority position, dwarfed by those who disagree or are neutral to these policies,” they wrote.

“These results tell us that if a person is on the fence when it comes to diversity practices in academia, exposure to information about demographic-based hiring pushes them off the fence, leading them to a position of moderate opposition to these practices; similarly, this information causes someone moderately opposed to change to strong opposition, and someone moderately supportive of these policies would cease being supportive.”

On that note, it was a step in the right direction when, at the University of Alberta’s general faculties council meeting last month, the administration revealed its plan to remove its discriminatory tiebreaker rule. Even the student union president, Pedro Almeida, supported this measure because he feared university funding would be cut.

“While we acknowledge that the province itself faces fiscal pressures, we should also be honest about another possibility: that the U of A is being deliberately targeted for the current iteration of (DEI) language it has implemented,” he said in the consequential meeting.

“We need the footing to protect the university’s ability to do meaningful equity work without jeopardizing the resources and public confidence required to sustain it.”

Actual victory is still a long way away, to be clear. Aside from its ideologically skewed practices outside of hiring, the U of A’s draft DEI-less policy still endeavours to find the “broadest pool of qualified candidates” for a given search, which is language that allows for unwritten, backdoor diversity mandates in practice. It also emphasizes the need for a “barrier-free” environment for candidates, which can also be a problem, as DEI believers see a lack of diversity training for hiring panels as a barrier.

It’s also noteworthy that the student union president supported the new policy — not because he wanted to see an end to discriminatory DEI, but because he hoped that taking it underground would allow the school to quietly continue its DEI work without disruption from the province.

Also, keep in mind that the federal government effectively considers white, straight, male, able-bodied applicants to be barriers to other applicants. Because the university takes federal dollars and follows the federal Employment Equity Act, it’s very possible that it will continue to discriminate to uphold its commitments to Ottawa. Without penalties, don’t expect behaviour to change.

So, hold your applause for the university for now, but watch in anticipation for the spring. The DEI-neutered draft policy will come before a committee of the university’s board of governors in March, and from there will have to get final approval from the board to take effect.

Nor should you be generous with praise for the province just yet. It’s no secret that for years the feds have interfered with provincial jurisdiction by using research funding policies to push universities across the country into adopting activist, intellectually compromised, discriminatory policies. The UCP have been aware of this for at least a couple of years now. They can adjust the legislation for higher education, and they even gave themselves the tools to deal with politically tied federal funding last spring by passing a bill that allowed them to block Ottawa dollars from reaching provincial entities. This power went unused, however.

That said, we can clearly see that an action has produced a reaction. The mere possibility of oncoming legislation had the university cleaning up one source of discriminatory policy with haste. Now imagine what more would change if actual consequences entered the picture. Think of how public institutions would scramble the moment they’re told that everyone from hiring managers to executives faces big fines for denying opportunities on the basis of race.

Conservatives often fall victim to hopeless thoughts that mountains can’t be moved, when they don’t even try with pebbles. Don’t get caught in the demoralization spiral, because change is a lot easier than doomsayers would have you think.

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