Students walk on campus at the University of Alberta in Edmonton in a file photo. Omid Ghoreishi/The Epoch Times
The University of Alberta is revising its hiring policies to eliminate requirements for diversity, equity, and inclusivity (DEI), but the changes must be ratified by the school’s board of governors to be officially implemented.
The move comes a year after the university’s president announced the post-secondary institution would be distancing itself from DEI, saying the framework to promote inclusivity was actually sowing seeds of division.
The current recruitment policy states that when two candidates possess similar qualifications for a position, hiring panels are encouraged to prioritize candidates from groups that are “historically under-represented” at the university.
Those groups include women, indigenous persons, members of visible minority groups, persons with disabilities, and those who identify with “under-represented sexual orientations, gender identity, or expression,” according to the policy.
A proposed recruitment policy submitted to the board of governors for approval eliminates that practice and removes mentions of the school’s commitments to address employment disadvantages, according to a CBC News report.
The Epoch Times contacted the University of Alberta for comment on the proposed changes but did not hear back by publication time. The Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta (AASUA) was also contacted, but declined to comment.
The university said in a statement to the CBC that the policy has undergone thorough consultations since last June.
“While the current policy includes aspirational language about fair recruitment and the removal of barriers, the university has found in practice that qualified candidates may still face barriers,” the statement said.
The university characterized the proposed policy as a measure to tackle that issue.
The policy change has been in the works for some time. University President Bill Flanagan announced the school would move away from its DEI policy last January in an op-ed for the National Post. He said the decision to move away from DEI practices was a result of consultations with more than 1,000 community members.
Flanagan said the university would replace the terms diversity, equality, and inclusivity with “access, community, and belonging” because the language of DEI had become “polarizing“ and was ”focusing more on what divides us rather than our shared humanity.”
“Universities must be places of diversity where ideas are exchanged freely, where challenging conversations across differences are embraced, and where intellectual growth flourishes,” he wrote. “It is not the university’s role to take ideological positions but rather to create an environment that encourages dialogue, mutual respect, and the pursuit of knowledge.”
Flanagan first became president and vice-chancellor of the University of Alberta in 2020, and was re-appointed to a second term in June 2024.
DEI and Post-Secondary
DEI hiring policies are used by many of Canada’s top universities, according to a study by the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.
The study analyzed the use of DEI policies in hiring across 10 major Canadian universities and found that 100 percent of the University of Alberta’s job postings mentioned DEI, while only about 10 percent of those postings specifically listed a candidate’s “contribution to DEI” as an asset.
The study noted U of A also did not require job applicants to fill out a DEI survey and did not require those hired to commit to it, unlike several other universities. The school also does not restrict hiring based on race or identity.
The study also ranked the institutions by their academic job postings “showing the most discriminatory practices and/or that were most threatening to academic freedom.”
The University of Alberta was at the low end of the discrimination spectrum, placing ninth with a score of 30 out of 100. The institution with the academic job postings showing the most discriminatory practices was the University of Toronto, with a score of 73.1, while the University of New Brunswick was the least threatening to academic freedom with a score of 24.3.
The move away from DEI in universities gained traction in the United States after President Donald Trump issued executive orders early last year calling for the end of such programs in the federal government.
The White House called DEI a form of “reverse racism” and said hiring should be based solely on merit. It has said institutions that fail to comply will be in violation of existing civil rights laws and will risk losing federal funding.
A number of U.S. universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Michigan, have since abandoned their DEI practices for hiring.