US President Donald Trump threatened to terminate the financing of some universities, unless they grant his demands to change the ideological politics, similar to a promise that Pierre Poilievre made for Canadian post-secondary schools.
So far, however, the conservative guide has been in relation to details about the type of measures he could take.
Trump’s demands that triggered the conviction about interference in academic freedom made the headlines this week after the White House stated that they were more than 2.2 billion US dollars in scholarships and contracts of $ 60 million to Harvard University.
This happened after Harvard President Alan Gerber refused to meet the Weiße House demands, and said in a letter that the university “does not submit its independence or give up its constitutional rights”.
Poilievre has now also threatened to decide universities about what he perceives as their ideological seam. In a Christmas Eve -tweet on X, which was previously known as Twitter, Poilievre said that he would “remove wokism and fight anti -Semitism”.
“Get an end to the bright ideology”
This tweet was linked to a telephone interview in which he gave Winnipegjewishisreview.com, in which he was quoted that he would not tolerate and “all be removed with an anti -Semitic agenda”, including universities, federal financing and all museums financed by the federal government.
He confirmed a similar promise on March 26 when the party released its platform in Quebec and said that a conservative government would “put an end to the introduction of Woke ideology in the public service of the federal government and the assignment of federal research funds”.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers (Caut) made the promise to publish an explanation of “alarm” about Poilievres to interfere with the allocation of federal research financing.
“It is worrying that a leader of a political party in Canada would try to dictate how research funds are granted,” said David Robinson, Executive Director of Caut. “We have seen the effects of this political interference south of the border where the Trump government started a complete attack on the universities and the scientific community. This type of cultural war in American style has no place in Canada.”
Starting with Columbia University, the Trump Administration has attributed post-conceptual institutions in the United States to the treatment of the propalestinic protest movement of the students who broke the campus last year after Hamas’ attack by Hamas in Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.
Trump has referred to the protests of anti -American and anti -Semitic, accused universities of the bunch of Marxism and “radical” ideology and promised to end federal grants and contracts at universities that do not agree to the claims of his government.
On April 3, the White House issued a list of claims to Harvard, which included a ban on face masks, restrictions on campus protests and a review of the prejudices of the academic departments. About a week later, these demands for leadership reforms, changes to the registration guideline and an end to the recognition of certain student organizations were expanded by the university.
The school president said Harvard has already carried out extensive reforms to combat anti -Semitism, but many of the government’s demands do not relate to anti -Semitism and instead are an attempt to regulate the “intellectual conditions” in Harvard.
The roots of ‘wok’ ‘
Poilievre has not published any details of his proposed plans, but he still seems to take lessons from the USA with threats for the development, said Patrick McCurdy, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Ottawa.
“I would take it as seriously as he doubled and seriously is to remove his threats to remove the CBC,” said McCurdy. “It’s something that people should pay attention to.”
McCurdy was also part of a research study in which the development of the anti-wich discourse in debates within the House of Commons from 2019 to 2023.
Hansard Records’s examination showed that in 2019 there were only two mentions of the word “Wacht”. By 2023, the use of the word by the conservative rose to the 63 -fold, whereby Poilievre was responsible for 33 cases this year.
As McCurdy found in a recently published article that he jointly wrote together for political options, the term “wok” in the African experience of racist violence is rooted and originally meant aware of the racial justice. Progressive then accepted it in order to include broader social injustices related to feminist, LGBTQ+ and intersectional concerns, he said.
Since then, however, the word has been co -opted as a derogatory term against some that promote such social justice concerns and are accused of being fixed or authoritarian in questions, including identity policy and justice, diversity and inclusion (EDI) guidelines.
McCurdy’s article with the title The many dangers of Pierre Poilievres War against ‘Wachenargues that his policy, such as the development of universities, is only “a exploitative strategy that is intended for fears and resentment, shifting of divisions and legitimizing extreme positions in mainstream policy.”
A “threat to academic freedom”
“I would be interested in reading how he could suggest … (and) how this militates against the freedom of researchers, academics and universities,” McCurdy told CBC News in a telephone interview. “It is certainly a threat to academic freedom.”
In the past, the conservatives have spoken to remove universities through their campus policy. During his leadership campaign in 2017, Andrew Scheer said that he would be federal financing of universities who did not maintain the freedom of speech, “concluded the debate to close the debate and did not endure any different points of view”.
This came in response to cases in which anti-abdominal and pro-Israelic events were rejected by the university site after protests broke out.
Poilievre would later rework a similar promise during his leadership campaign of 2022, in which he said that if the universities wanted to keep their federal research grants, they must protect academic freedom and guarantee freedom of speech on campus. He also said that he would appoint a “freedom of speech” to ensure that the universities pursued these principles.
Universities should promote the debate and not suppress. As a prime minister, I will defend freedom of speech on campus.
If universities want to keep their federal research grants, they have to protect academic freedom and guarantee freedom of speech on campus.
With regard to its current political promises, the conservative party did not respond to questions from CBC messages in which further details were asked. In an interview that was published by the English -language media on April 8th Jewish news syndicate, The candidate of the conservative party, Neil Oberman, who runs in the Quebec riding Mount Royal, said he supports the reduction in financing at universities who do not do enough to combat anti -Semitism on their campus.
“(Universities) does not receive a single cent from the federal government if they clean up their plot,” he said.
Stéphane Sérafin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Ottawa, which is of the opinion that Woke -ideology is a problem at the universities, said that the liberal government has very aggressively encompassed for ideological requirements for research, the EDI initiatives.
But he said he was not sure what exactly thinks Poilievre.
“I would assume that at least they would remove the type of EDI requirements that were added to this research fund. In addition, I can only speculate.”
Sérafin asked whether a conservative government would add requirements that correspond to its ideological preferences or whether it would simply decide the universities.
“Does he want to develop everything or does he just want to address certain programs?” Sérafin asked Poilievre’s intentions.
“He is never explicitly presented to how this would be done,” he said. “It is like one of these problems in which the devil is really in detail.”
