Jonathan Barazzutti: Crushing the campus consensus

Progressives have run roughshod over higher learning for too long, and only conservatives can check them.

(Graduates at the University of Toronto. Photo credit to Can Pac Swire.)

The past decade has seen the cultural ascendancy of social progressivism within the cultural ecosystem of the West. This ascendancy has spread across the cultural landscape of Canada, including, most importantly, the academy.

With this change has come a homogenisation of the views of academics, 88 per cent of whom vote for left-leaning parties according to a 2025 Fraser Institute report. In this environment, a substantial proportion of students across the political spectrum do not feel that they can speak their minds. According to another 2025 report, 37 per cent of right-leaning students and 30 per cent of left-leaning students fear formal consequences for expressing honest opinions in their classes.

The homogenisation and self-censorship that characterise academia in the modern age undermine the capacity for open dialogue and freedom of speech to flourish within Canada, hindering the ability for transformative societal improvement to occur.

Perhaps the most significant development beyond the censoriousness of modern-day institutions has been the rise in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, which are now embedded in virtually all major post-secondary institutions across Canada. These institutions sell racial grievance politics, promoting intergroup division at the expense of merit and competence, further undermining free speech. As a 2023 Heterodox Academy report notes, a greater number of DEI personnel per undergraduate at a university is related to higher levels of intolerance towards conservative speakers.

Many have advocated in opposition to the progressive hegemony of academia, believing that entering the institutions for the purposes of changing them from within is the best strategy. But the people who oppose those ends are standing at the gates and are in charge of hiring prospective academics and administrators.

While the struggle for the heart of universities is fundamentally an ideological one, on a material, substantive level, the challenge is one of personnel. In the absence of personnel already aligned with the objective of restoring merit and freedom of speech, or institutional incentives to force universities to act accordingly, it is exceedingly difficult to change the universities.

---

---

Some provinces have made efforts to try to address these issues, most notably Alberta and Ontario. In 2018, Ontario instituted a policy requiring every publicly funded post-secondary institution in the province to develop and institute a free-speech policy, with Alberta following suit in 2019.

But these policies have not done what they aimed to do. Alberta’s policy did not stop Kathleen Lowrey from being dismissed from an administrative position at the University of Alberta in 2020 over her views that transgender identity doesn’t trump biological sex for policy decisions. It did not stop Frances Widdowson from being fired from her position as an associate professor at Mount Royal University in 2021 for questioning whether the Canadian residential school system constituted genocide. It didn’t even allow Widdowson to be rehired when an arbitrator ruled in 2024 that her firing was disproportionate to her conduct.

Further, while some institutions, particularly in Alberta, including the University of Alberta and the University of Calgary, have begun to move away from DEI in their messaging, instead favouring slogans such as ‘access, community, and belonging’, these changes have not fundamentally affected the underlying structure of DEI and have instead cemented it under a different name.

The problem is that provincial governments have neglected to use hard power to address the failures of universities to live up to their ideals. In the absence of hard-line enforcement of free speech, meritocracy, and competent governance, post-secondary institutions will largely carry on as usual.

In fact, the present situation is even worse than a mere absence of enforcement. The Canadian federal government actively incentivises the promotion of DEI within universities, hindering universities in the process. For example, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) offers Dimensions Canada Grants valued at up to $100,000, which are designed to ‘help postsecondary institutions strengthen the competencies that they need to increase equity, diversity and inclusion’. Such initiatives further cement social progressivism as the only legitimate perspective to hold in the academy.

Many are uncomfortable with the idea of government involvement in universities to address their failures because of an intrinsic fear of intervention. But this ignores the present reality of universities, which are already largely propped up by government involvement. According to Statistics Canada, in the 2024–25 academic year, 43.1 per cent of university revenues came directly from government revenues. The purpose of this involvement should, ideally, be to support universities in their efforts to benefit the general public. The extent to which they succeed or fail in this effort should dictate how much government involvement and what kind of government involvement should take place.

There are some actions which it is not reasonable for the government to be expected to do. For example, due to the precedent set by the 1906 Flavelle Commission, it is not reasonable to expect the government to hand-pick administrators or professors to replace those who have served to undermine the aims of universities and who, in some cases, were themselves illegitimately hired through DEI policies. But several things can be done.

The simplest action to take is to defund DEI through changes in both fiscal decisions and regulations on universities. Florida has already done wonders in this regard. In 2023, Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill that officially prohibits public universities and colleges in the state from spending state or federal money on programmes or campus activities that advocate for DEI. Not only did the policy prevent state tax dollars from being spent on DEI, but it also prevented federal tax dollars from being spent on DEI. Controlling federal funding or other federal activities at the provincial level is not unheard of in Canada. For example, Alberta’s Provincial Priorities Act requires many provincial entities to obtain prior approval from the provincial government before entering into, extending, or renewing an agreement with the federal government. Thus, federal government reforms would not be required for an individual provincial government to block DEI funding to universities within its jurisdiction.

Beyond funding changes, provincial governments that have instituted regulations surrounding freedom of speech on campus must be more aggressive in enforcing their own rules. This should be done with measures including, but not limited to, tying funding to compliance with such policies. Universities are not invincible. As cases such as that of Laurentian University show, when a university goes under financially, it is willing to significantly restructure governance and operations to stay afloat. With many Canadian universities facing growing financial strain due to international student cuts, including the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, the University of Calgary, and Fanshawe College, this now presents an excellent opportunity to financially pressure universities into living up to their aims of promoting competent leadership, freedom of speech, and open debate.

Canadian universities ought to be seen as rich bastions of intellectual life. There is still ample opportunity to save them, but it will require a more proactive and aggressive stance than has been taken previously.

We can still save the universities, but only if we have the will to do so.

Jonathan Barazzutti is a researcher and incoming Master’s student at the University of Toronto. He has previously written for C2C Journal, City Journal, and the Fordham Institute, and has done consulting for the MacDonald-Laurier Institute, DeepAudit, and Maine Civic Action.

---

For more from Without Diminishment and its contributors, follow along on X, YouTube, and Instagram.

Without Diminishment is a project of the Without Diminishment Foundation, a registered non-profit in British Columbia. If you value the unique perspective we bring to Canada’s cultural landscape, consider supporting our work with a generous donation.