On diversity, equity, and inclusion

The motivation for writing this piece is a job advertisement for a position with British Columbia's Office of the Human Rights Commissioner. It included the following statement: 

"We are striving to build a diverse team that has LIVED EXPERIENCE WITH HUMAN RIGHTS. To complement the diversity of the BCOHRC team, PREFERENCE MAY BE GIVEN TO APPLICANTS WHO ARE Indigenous, Black or People of Colour, people with diverse gender identities or expressions, sexual orientations, and/or, people with disabilities." (1, my capitals). 

The Canadian Human Rights Act states: 

"The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, genetic characteristics, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered." (2) 

To be sure, historic injustices must be redressed, and diversity, equity, and inclusion measures are important instruments. That said, we must be smart about it. I see three fundamental problems. 

1. THE PROBLEM OF OBSERVATION AND INFERENCE IN DISCRIMINATION INQUIRIES

The Canadian Human Rights Commission defines discrimination as "an action, behaviour, decision, or omission that treats a person or a group of people unfairly and badly for reasons linked to personal traits, such as their race, age or disability." (3)

Unfortunately, this definition muddles the steps of scientific inquiry. In science, we proceed: Facts first, causes later (4). Consequently, if the hypothesis is "Discrimination has been committed.", the two questions we must address are these: 

1: Has a person or a group been treated unfairly? 

2: Is the cause for the unfair treatment based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, etc.?

Unfortunately, both observation and inference are hard problems: The workplace is full of noise. The signal may be weak. The perpetrators may be unaware or uncooperative. The victim's perception may range from hypersensitive to impervious. 

"Because you are [black / a woman / old], I won't [hire / promote / reward] you." 

Of course, blatant discrimination is easy to detect, to infer, and to punish. But not all bigots are idiots. Consequently, they will discriminate against whoever offends their sensibilities, but will have learnt to formulate their explanations in acceptable, pseudo-objective terms (5):

"Oh, he graduated from a university in Africa and doesn't have relevant Canadian work experience (6)."

"Oh, they don't possess the appropriate people skills for the job."

"Oh, the successful candidate has much better Excel skills than she does."

Keep in mind that with very little training 80% of the jobs can be done by 80% of the people 80% of the time. And keep in mind that we have only imperfect instruments (resumes, cover letters, interviews, reference letters) to measure the often microscopic differences between applicants (7). And keep in mind that we rarely test for the 20% of expertise that will make a difference in job performance. 

Honest people will be falsely accused of discrimination. Bigots will get away with real discrimination. And no amount of D.E.I. rituals will prevent that (8), but smart D.E.I. may. 

2. THE PROBLEM OF UNPROTECTED PERSONAL TRAITS

I am Caucasian. I sound like Arnold Schwarzenegger. I am white. I am an atheist. I am 60 years old. I am male. I am straight. I am cisgender. I am married.

I DON'T KNOW whether one or more of these traits have ever hurt or benefitted me (9). But note that at least with British Columbia's Office of the Human Rights Commissioner these my traits may well put me at a disadvantage (1).

I am a Kantian. I am an introvert. I speak up against injustice and stupidity. I do not lie or pretend. I do not engage in bullshit activities (10).

I DO KNOW that these traits have hurt me. Because of them, I have been rejected in hiring competitions, have been ignored for promotions, have been laid off, have been sacked. 

Is this discrimination? Do I have "LIVED EXPERIENCE WITH HUMAN RIGHTS" (1)? 

No, the personal qualities for which I suffered injustices, society chooses not to protect (2). Of course, the problem is that you can change your introversion, your sense of justice, and your honesty about as much as you can change your being black, female, or gay. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does protect your "freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression" (11), but the Canadian Human Rights Act (2) leaves you exposed when you exercise this freedom. 

Consequently, while the Canadian workplace has become diversified in terms of traits defined under the Canadian Human Rights Act (2), it has remained quite uniform and intolerant. Yes, everybody looks different, but everybody mostly thinks the same (12) and mostly acts the same (13). 

And society is paying the price. Serious problems remain unaddressed and unsolved.

3. THE PROBLEM OF PRIVACY

The Canadian Privacy Act states: 

"The purpose of this Act is to extend the present laws of Canada that protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information about themselves held by a government institution and that provide individuals with a right of access to that information." (14)

It is a weak statement. If you are not jeopardizing the human rights of somebody else (15), your private life is nobody's business, not the government's, not anybody's. 

Which brings me back to the original job advertisement: "PREFERENCE MAY BE GIVEN TO APPLICANTS WHO ARE ..." (1) What if you are indigenous, and gay, and have a disability that doesn't affect your work, but you prefer not to disclose any of it. 

You are confronted with a dilemma: Either you stand by your right to privacy and potentially be disadvantaged. Or you abandon it. No institution should ever force you into this situation.

When all is said, shouldn't we judge each other, not on the traits we did not choose and cannot change, but on the merits that are due to our efforts? It's an old idea. It's called meritocracy. 

That said, if applied thoughtlessly, meritocracy also has its downsides (16). 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) https://bchumanrights.ca/about-us/careers/career/manager-research-aug-2025/: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(2) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/fulltext.html: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(3) https://www.chrc-ccdp.gc.ca/individuals/human-rights/about-discrimination: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(4) T. C. Chamberlin (1890), The Method of Multiple Working Hypotheses. Science (old series) 15: "Laudable as the effort at explanation is in itself, it is to be condemned when it runs before a serious inquiry into the phenomenon itself. A dominant disposition to find out what is, should precede and crowd aside the question, commendable at a later stage, "How came this so?" First full facts, then interpretations."

(5) Whether we like it or not, all we all have prejudices, and we are a good at hiding them, often even from ourselves. 

(6) According to 2025 World University Rankings, Morocco's Mohammed VI Polytechnic University ranks 401 - 500, the same rank as Canada's University of Guelph, University of Manitoba, and York University (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025).

(7) In my life, I chaired 19 hiring committees. For ten of them, I adopted Kahenman's candidate selection procedure, which is as close to objectivity as you can get. See: D. Kahneman (2011), Thinking, Fast And Slow: 232. 

(8) In 1997, when I was a Ph.D. student at the University of British Columbia, I served on a search committee for an endowed chair at the Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences. One female applicant was invited for no other reason than to satisfy the ideas of U.B.C.'s Equity and Inclusion Office. I was furious and for two reasons: First, because of the disrespect shown towards the person (the female applicant) and the group (women). Second, because of the injustice inflicted upon the fourth-ranked candidate.

(9) We all have only limited access to the physical world. 

(10) H. G. Frankfurt (2005), On Bullshit.

(11) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/const/page-12.html: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(12) I. L. Janis (1971), Groupthink. Psychology Today (Nov 1971): p. 44: "The main principle of groupthink, which I offer in the spirit of Parkinson's Law, is this: The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making ingroup, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against outgroups."

(13) E.g. S. Asch (1951), Effects of group pressure on the modification and distortion of judgments. In Groups, Leadership and Men: Research in Human Relations: 177 - 190. S. Milgram (1963), Behavioral Study of Obedience. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 67: 371 - 378. D. Lovallo and D. Kahneman (2003), Delusions of Success. Harvard Business Review (Jul 2003): 56 - 63. D. Kahneman, D. Lovallo, and O. Sibony (2011), Before You Make That Big Decision. Harvard Business Review (Jun 2011): 50 - 60.

(14) https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-21/page-1.html#h-397177: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(15) https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights: Accessed: 10 Sep 2025.

(16) M.D. Young (1958), The Rise of the Meritocracy. 

Higher education: The things we do and fail to do

The original title of my article was "Higher education: The things we do and fail to do". The editors changed it to "Preparing good citizens and workers means treating students as adults", which is lame.

https://www.timeshighereducation.com/blog/preparing-good-citizens-and-workers-means-treating-students-adults 

How complacency is failing Canadian university students

The original title of my article was "How complacency is failing Canadian university students ". The editors changed it to "We need to seriously rethink the concept of final exams", which misses the point.

http://www.universityaffairs.ca/opinion/in-my-opinion/need-seriously-rethink-concept-final-exams/  

The fish that were there (but didn't exist)

In 2001 and 2002 I was a postdoctoral fellow with AquaNet, one of the Networks of Centres of Excellence. AquaNet sponsored "39 research projects devoted to improving the country's aquaculture industry" (1). It's Board of Directors consisted of partners from academia, government, and industry.

For us at the University of British Columbia the question was this: When Atlantic salmon escape from B.C. fish farms, what are the chances that they establish viable populations on the Pacific coast? This question can be broken down into chances of breeding success, of juvenile survival, and of adult survival. I explored the question whether juvenile Pacific salmon and juvenile Atlantic salmon show different susceptibilities to predators.

For my experiments, I had to simulate a small creek in the laboratory. I set up three experimental arenas, large oval channels filled with water about 60 cm deep, pebbles and rocks of various sizes on the bottom. In April, I stocked each tank with 20 juvenile Pacific salmon and 20 juvenile Atlantic salmon, all about 30 mm long. I also stocked two of the tanks with two predators each, two adult steelhead trout of about 50 cm.

Twice a week I went into the lab, fished out all the juveniles from the experimental arenas, measured their length, weighed them, put them back, and restocked those juveniles that had been eaten by the steelheads, or gone missing otherwise.

The experiments did not go well. Yes, steelheads ate juvenile Atlantics slightly more frequently than Pacifics, but they didn't eat them frequently enough to infer a statistically significant difference (2).

In early July I abandoned the experiments. I left the experimental arenas intact, however, and informed the laboratory staff to feel free and help themselves to the steelheads for their summer barbeques.

When I returned in early October (3) to clear the arenas I was surprised to see that in one arena eleven juvenile salmon had survived and grown in length to about 12 to 14 cm. Nine of them were Pacifics, two were Atlantics.

That's when it struck me.

I immediately made my way to the principal investigator. He also directed experiments investigating spawning ground competition and food competition. The Pacifics had always won against the Atlantics.

"We have looked at the problem the wrong way," I said. "The issue is not how well the average Atlantic performs against the average Pacific, but how well the fittest Atlantics perform against the unfittest surviving Pacifics. The problem of invasive species is not an ecological problem. It is an evolutionary one."

The principal investigator looked at me for a while and then leaned forward at his desk.

"Michael," he said without menace. "We will have an AquaNet progress meeting before Christmas. Some of the directors will be there. What you have to understand is that nobody in AquaNet wants to hear any ideas that could shed a bad light on the aquaculture industry (4). Do you understand?"

I didn't.

You see, the purpose of Science is the pursuit of truth, not to serve political expediency. Yes, there are philosophical problems. Yes, we do have battles between schools of thought. Yes, causation is difficult to prove, and truth is always only provisional. But if you can't trust a scientist, who can you trust?

I went back to the lab that afternoon to dispose of the evidence. I sat down for a while and watched the two Atlantics swim around the pool. The denial of their existence had made me oddly fond of them.

I killed them with a bleeding heart. 

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) AquaNet ran from 1999 to 2006. It is interesting that although at the time AquaNet was quite a prestigious project, some fifteen years later it is hard to find any detailed information about it: http://www.nce-rce.gc.ca/Index_eng.asp (Accessed: 30 Mar 2017), http://www.nce-rce.gc.ca/_docs/reports/annual-annuel/Annual_Report_02-03_Rapport_Annuel-e.pdf (Accessed: 30 Mar 2017)

(2) Each adult steelhead trout ate one or two juvenile salmon per week. Before we decided on steelheads as a predator, we conducted preliminary experiments with cormorants. They were too efficient. It took four of them less than ten seconds to clear twenty juvenile Pacifics from a large holding tank.

(3) After the 9/11 attacks the cleaning of fish tanks was not a priority.

(4) To my knowledge there is no evidence that suggests the establishment of a viable Atlantic salmon population on the Pacific coast. But that does not mean that one day life will not find a way.

UPDATE, 6 APR 2017

In the meantime I have spoken to John Volpe from the University of Victoria(1). John is a specialist in Invasion Ecology. He and I first met during my time with AquaNet.

John told me that about a decade ago he had evidence "of multiple year classes of wild-reared Atlantics in multiple Van Island rivers. They were competitively equal to or superior to native juvenile salmonids and in some instances very numerous. Adults were prevalent in dozens of rivers."

He also told me that no work has been done since, and nobody really knows what the status quo is.

On the other hand a 2006 Fraser Institute publication, Fraser Alert, states: "Overall, the risk of escaped salmon detrimentally affecting wild stocks in BC is currently low." (2)

The question is this: Who do you trust? (3)

NOTES AND REFERENCES

(1) http://www.johnvolpe.ca/ (Accessed: 6 Apr 2017)

(2) https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Escaped_Farmed_Salmon.pdf (Accessed: 6 Apr 2017). The Fraser Institute is a conservative "think tank". Fraser Alert is not a peer-reviewed publication. This paper was penned by a group of scientists from the University of British Columbia, the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, and the University of Glasgow. One of the authors, Scott McKinley, was the Executive Scientific Director of AquaNet.

(3) The existence of viable Atlantic salmon populations on the Pacific coast is not a trivial matter, both ecologically and economically. It is curious that in a whole decade no work should have been done on this problem. Why would that be?

Why education has lost its mind

The original title of my article was "Why education has lost its mind (and soul)". The editors changed it to "What education is (or should be) all about", which is excruciating.

https://www.pressreader.com/canada/vancouver-sun/20070913/281797099614906