A new paper released by a Canadian think tank suggests the vast majority of Canadian professors identify as left-leaning on the political spectrum, while 40 percent of professors on the right said they face a “hostile work environment.”

The findings were published by the Macdonald Laurier Institute on Sept. 15 in a paper [pdf] entitled, “The viewpoint diversity crisis at Canadian universities: Political homogeneity, self-censorship, and threats to academic freedom.”

To gather data for the study, researchers surveyed professors as well as the general public from March 3 to 17.

Among professors, 87 percent described their political views as left-leaning, compared to 9 percent who characterized themselves as right-leaning.

Just over 76 percent of professors surveyed said they voted for the Liberals or NDP in the 2021 federal election, with another 11 percent voting for the Green Party or Bloc Québecois, totalling 87 percent support for left-leaning parties. By comparison, around 60 percent of the general public voted for these parties in the last election.

Meanwhile, only 9 percent of professors voted for the Conservatives or People’s Party, compared to around 39 percent of the general public.

“Our survey shows that Canadian universities are seriously deficient in viewpoint diversity and have instead become politically homogenous institutions,” said the report’s authors, professors Christopher Dummitt and Zachary Patterson. Dummitt is a professor of Canadian history at Trent University and Patterson is an associate professor at the Concordia Institute for Information Systems Engineering at Concordia University.

Self-Censorship

When surveyed on whether the professors would be concerned if their political opinions became publically known, almost 88 percent of left-leaning professors were either “not very worried” or “not worried at all,” whereas 44 percent of right-leaning professors were “somewhat” or “very worried” about facing negative consequences if colleagues, students, or others on campus learned of their political opinions.

Forty percent of right-leaning professors said they feel like they face a “hostile work environment.”

Among the right-leaning professors, 57 percent said they have censored themselves in universities out of “fear of negative consequences” while 34 percent of all professors admitted to self-censoring due to fear of repercussions.

“This level of fear and hostile climate should raise a red flag about freedom of speech at universities,” the authors said.

“[P]rofessors provided a range of examples and scenarios in which they have kept silent on topics from changing the way they teach, and avoiding topics altogether, to even changing their research career in order to avoid possible negative repercussions.”

In addition, between 32 percent and 34 percent of professors said they would be willing to limit academic freedom and “cancel” their colleagues “out of a commitment to their political views on social justice.”

Recommendations

Dummitt and Patterson said that the campus “monoculture” diminishes the quality of education and that external intervention is necessary to reverse the trend.

“Organizations filled with like-minded individuals often fall prey to some of the most dangerous forms of conformity,” the authors said.

“They are likely to make significant errors in the absence of a diverse array of information, and the sameness of those within the organization leads to overconfidence by the majority and self-censorship by those who might be inclined to disagree.”

In their recommendations to address the issue, the authors suggest an “Academic Freedom Act” to tie provincial funding for post-secondary institutions to their adherence to fundamental principles that protect academic freedom.

They also suggest measures to enshrine institutional neutrality on partisan or controversial issues, the elimination of political loyalty tests from research funding and hiring, legislation that prevents unions from discriminating on the basis of politics, and the promotion of a culture of academic freedom at universities.

“We need to trust that universities are places where different perspectives can be aired openly and collegially, fostering the highest quality debate on pressing issues,” the paper said.

The paper also said that the professors viewed the purpose of university somewhat differently from the public.

Half of the public surveyed ranked “preparing students for the workforce” as the top priority and another 29 percent placed it second. Meanwhile, 76 percent of professors ranked workforce preparation as a third or fourth place priority and favoured “educating students” and “research.” “Social justice” was the lowest priority for both the public and professors.