Choosing a new path now could save our cherished universities from critical failure.
Equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) are three of the terms that are at the spear-tip of an admirable collective moral effort to right historical social injustices and to bring about a more balanced, fairer world for everyone.
Nevertheless, despite these well-meaning intentions, there has been in recent years an uncritical adoption of this ideological framework across institutions and organisations in the Anglosphere that has led to widespread overreach and the chilling of free speech and open enquiry, most notably in higher education.
The assertions made by EDI, which rest on a form of cultural neo-Marxism blended with Postmodernist standpoint epistemology, are that all white people are inherently racist, all men are patriarchal misogynists, all women, people of colour and other marginalised groups are victims of oppression, biological sex categories no longer define gender such that even questioning the possibility of transgenderism is tantamount to genocide, words can cause physical harm, and absolutely everything needs to be decolonised, everywhere and immediately.†
These are contentions that, whilst appearing reasonable to most people in moderation, by donning a cloak of superficial common-sensical desirability—such as working towards removing barriers to individuals’ personal development and achievements—when taken to their current levels of activism, in fact promote division and tribalism, and are not grounded in a rational epistemology that relies on evidence. For us scientists, therefore, it is not possible to accept many of the claims that are made in pursuit of EDI, for instance the various ongoing attempts to prioritise innate physical characteristics and group affiliation over merit in the professorial hiring process.
In contradistinction, the fundamental mission of a university is to promulgate excellence in the pursuit of truth, which in the language of science refers to the objective universal truths that underpin these subjects. Since EDI initiatives are a practical application of poststructuralist thought that denies both the innate rights of the individual to personal freedom on the one hand and the universality of scientific laws and principles on the other, weighing all matters in terms of subjective truth and pledges of allegiance to identity groups, it has become largely irreconcilable with the tenets of scientific enquiry.
Whilst certain aspects of universities’ current EDI initiatives should be embraced, such as efforts to encourage participation in science by underrepresented groups and to remove barriers to entry, a more pressing priority is the need to privilege excellence and merit in all of these institutions’ pathways to advancement, since a failure to do so will herald an inevitable decline in the calibre of researchers they are able to retain, as top talent is actively recruited elsewhere based on purely meritocratic principles.
Therefore, I join with others from among the professoriate to urge our University to recalibrate its EDI activities and aspirations, consulting broadly across the diverse range of opinions held by its faculty to create instead a more well-balanced and inclusive set of goals that hold fast to the primacy of merit and achievement, champion robust open debate, and advocate for equality from all quarters in the pursuit of academic excellence.