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Affirmative action and other forms of racial preference are pervasive in Canada’s public institutions. See, for example, the new project at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU). medical school admissions policy, which reserves 75 percent of its seats for Indigenous, black and other “equity deserving” groups, who can still be considered for admission in certain circumstances if their undergraduate GPA is below 3, 3 – an already low admission standard.

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There is already good evidence to suggest that race-based admissions policy is unwise, because the negative impacts of affirmative action in college admissions over the decades in the United States and elsewhere are well documented. But in addition to evidence of the general harms of affirmative action, new reports provide even more reason to believe that TMU’s medical school admissions policy will have the opposite effect. The most obvious downside: The quality of medical practice could be reduced as academic standards for admission are lowered and race and other irrelevant factors are considered instead of ability.

Indeed, a new US study of affirmative action in another sector – that of intelligence – suggests that this concern is well-founded. In an article In Econ Journal Watch, John A. Gentry of the School of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University describes the effects of affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion policies ( DEI) on the operational performance of 18 US intelligence agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency. , the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

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Like other federal agencies, Gentry writes, intelligence agencies “have constituted a framework of thriving DEI policies and programs, particularly since 2011, designed to favor privileged demographic groups in hiring, promotions, rewards and assignments.

What were the results? First, while the intelligence community has always emphasized apolitical public service, the introduction of DEI has inserted a political motivation into its procedures and activities. Second, teamwork has been compromised because “DEI’s authoritarian orthodoxy causes significant self-censorship by government personnel who do not support the DEI agenda.”

Third, many intelligence officials said that DEI had led to greater tolerance for poor management and operational performance in the name of protecting diversity. This undermined human intelligence collection. Intelligence analysis has likely been negatively affected for similar reasons. Finally, DEI-motivated activism has reduced public trust in intelligence agencies.

“Political proponents of DEI not only fail to understand that demographic diversity at the national level does not improve the performance of foreign-focused intelligence services, but they have significantly harmed the operational performance of the agencies,” concludes Gentry.

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Although Gentry’s article focused on the U.S. intelligence sector, it is not difficult to see how many of the same negative outcomes — such as politicization of the profession, self-censorship, and loss of public trust — could result from the insertion of racial quotas in admissions to Canadian medical schools and promotion of “social justice” on medical expertise in the medical profession in general.

More recent evidence that TMU’s affirmative action policies will backfire comes from a New York Times magazine. goodbye of the University of Michigan’s broad DEI initiatives. It concluded that “instead of improving students’ ability to engage with each other across their differences, the expansion of DEI at Michigan has coincided with an explosion of campus conflict over race.” and sex. » Students and faculty members at the school reported a less positive campus climate and were less likely to interact with people of a different race after the introduction of DEI programs.

The report is devastating because of the scale of DEI initiatives at the University of Michigan: the university has spent nearly $250 million since 2016 on DEI staff and programs. “Every academic department, unit, and office should have a DEI action plan,” Robby Soave wrote for Reason magazine. And “some 241 university employees work in DEI offices or have one of these keywords – diversity, equity or inclusion – in their job title.”

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When this latest article about the University of Michigan is added to the growing body of evidence on the negative impacts of affirmative action at universities, one cannot expect the medical school’s admissions policies to TMU are beneficial. Nor should this evidence give anyone confidence that other illiberal policies – such as race-based policies anti-poverty programsbased on race federal public procurement or a race-based approach justice system — would bring benefits to Canadians.

Treating people differently based on their race does not improve social harmony – or any other outcome.

National Post

Matthew Lau is a senior researcher at Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy and author of “Allegations of systemic racism in Canada: an evidence-based analysis.”

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