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Protecting Open Inquiry in Canada
At colleges and universities across Canada, HxA is working with our members and partners to improve the policies and the culture of higher ed to ensure the flourishing of intellectual freedom.
When you become an HxA member, opportunities to become more engaged open up. Build a Campus Community, attend member-only workshops, or host events on your campus. Opportunities to champion our principles arise throughout the year.
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All of us want our colleges and universities to be places of vibrant exploration, intellectual safe havens where minds can be free. Faculty and students across Canada should be able to research fearlessly and learn in environments that foster open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.
But those ideals are sometimes thwarted by the reality of constraints—constraints imposed by well-intended regulators, earnest advocates, and understandably nervous administrators. In many places, faculty report feeling overwhelmed by pressures to adhere to groupthink in their units and their disciplines. A majority of over 1,500 Canadian students surveyed by HxA in 2024 report being afraid to broach controversial topics and to express their ideas in class.
So, how do we make things better?
At HxA, we are working with our members and partners in Canada to reach for improvement, to fix problematic policies that stifle inquiry and expression, to free minds up to do the work they need to do. We are teaming up to start critical conversations about the problems and to foster solutions.
Canadian faculty have been taking the lead in this work, creating HxA Campus Communities at Simon Fraser University, McGill University, University of British Columbia - Okanagan, Laval University, Wilfrid Laurier University, University of Toronto, and McMaster University. On these schools’ campuses, HxA members are working together to support each other in efforts to tackle the undue constraints on inquiry and dialogue.
With over 500 HxA members across Canadian institutions of higher education, Canada is our second most member populated country behind the United States.
Do Canadian college and university students feel comfortable discussing controversial issues with peers? Do they feel free to disagree with their instructors during class discussions of political issues? To find out this and more, HxA partnered with College Pulse to administer our Campus Expression Survey to 1,548 undergraduate students across Canada.
Canadian students are reluctant to engage in discussions about sensitive issues. Over 54% reported reluctance to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, while 51% shy away from transgender issues, and 45% avoid political conversations altogether.
Our results suggest that there is a culture of fear about speaking up: 63% of respondents reported fearing at least one formal consequence if they expressed their honest thoughts and opinions in class. But, at the same time, a majority said they were in favor of limits on free expression as a means to protect people.
The results from the 2024 Canadian Campus Expression Survey raise important questions about how the climate of higher education institutions can foster environments that promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement for all students across Canada.
Our Campus Community Network brings HxA members on a single campus together to promote the values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement to improve research and higher education. These Campus Communities provide opportunities to work with peers to foster positive cultural change at the local level.
Campus Communities range in size, with each being led by 2-4 HxA member co-chairs. Some receive financial aid and other types of assistance from HxA. Experience tells us that, over time, these campus-based communities grow and develop in different ways, depending on the unique opportunities and challenges of each institution.
But in all cases, members work together to support each other in the work of showcasing and modeling the values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement. Many find this networking provides a critical basis for the work of improving institutional policies, practices, and culture.
What does the work of an HxA Campus Community typically look like? Co-chairs connect and convene HxA members of a campus, hosting monthly gatherings to plan, socialize, and share experiences and advice. Campus Communities also often host academic activities and practical workshops that align with the values of academic freedom and free expression. They work with institutional leaders to develop and improve the policies and practices that shape the intellectual culture of institutions. And they recruit peers to the cause.
HxA Campus Communities in Canada include:
Simon Fraser University
McGill University
University of Toronto
McMaster University
University of British Columbia - Okanagan
Laval University
Wilfrid Laurier University
If you are faculty or an administrator at a Canadian institution of higher education or are enrolled in graduate studies at a Canadian university, we encourage you to join HxA and then join your HxA Campus Community. Don’t see your institution on the list? Consider partnering with other HxA members on your campus to form a new Campus Community.
Note: Campus Communities are not necessarily officially sanctioned by their university.
HxA hosts nearly 30 HxCommunities that facilitate connection among HxA members who advance our principles and values within a shared discipline or academic setting.
The purpose of the Heterodox Canada peer community is to bring together people in a variety of educational institutions and positions, and in a broad range of disciplines, who are proponents of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement.
Heterodox Canada hosts a variety of events throughout the year, including their annual conference in collaboration with the McGill Campus Community. The two-day April 2024 conference about Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Canadian universities drew nearly 200 attendees.
Participants in the Heterodox Canada community must be affiliated with a college, university, or library in Canada as a graduate student or through current employment. Interested in joining? Fill out this form.
Meet the HxA members who are protecting open inquiry and academic freedom for academics across higher education in Canada.
Starting in Academic Year 2023-2024, Campus Communities at Canadian universities have been hosting Heterodox Conversations™️, which pair two scholarly experts with divergent viewpoints on a topic to showcase the epistemic power of academic dialogue and constructive disagreement in the shared pursuit of knowledge. Structured to maximize learning, these events showcase how academic conversations can work in a style that distinctly differs from competitive debates or one-sided lectures.
Interested in hosting a Heterodox Conversation™️? We’ll provide you an organizer’s guide and, if you need, also help you find speakers who will demonstrate the virtues of evidence-seeking, intellectual humility, and constructive dialogue.
Faculty and students recently sat down with HxA to share their experiences with cancel culture and peer reprisal to challenging the prevailing orthodoxy on campus and within their discipline. With the stifling of intellectual curiosity growing, and the independent status of universities being challenged, Heterodox Academy is working with academic insiders to change the culture and protect open inquiry across Canada.
Senior Researcher Nate Tenhundfeld discusses the results of the HxA and College Pulse 2024 Canadian Campus Expression Survey which shows a high rate of student reluctance to discuss divisive topics in class and a culture of fear of reprisal from peers. It’s time for us to cultivate spaces where every voice can be heard without fear.
HxA Member Renaud-Philippe Garner, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia in Okanagan, works at the intersection of ethics and politics, including studying collective identity and loyalty. He worries particularly about how dangerous it can be for faculty to swim against the tide. “If speaking truth to power means social death—losing your reputation, your job, your life’s work, in a way—then you set the bar for truth too high.”
HxA Member Alexandra Lysova, Associate Professor of Criminology at Simon Fraser University, studies intimate partner violence. She came to Canada from Russia after it became increasingly difficult to do her work in her home country. “For some of us who’ve seen the authoritarian regimes, the totalitarian regimes,” she explains, “we come to this country—of course it’s a huge contrast, of course we appreciate the freedom here—but when we are starting to lose that freedom, we feel it. And we’re very much alarmed."
HxA Member Brad Epperly, Associate Professor and Program Coordinator of Political Science at the University of British Columbia – Okanagan, describes the different sources of threats to academic freedom in the US and Canada, having worked in both countries. He describes how politics have warped the mission of the university, saying "there's a lot more people who have a view of it as a mission of achieving some sort of social or political end - and that concerns me."