Ideas - Confronting the escalating attacks on universities

Episode Date: April 13, 2026

The Trump administration has been targeting higher education for some time now — freezing grants and filing lawsuits against leading universities. But these threats are not limited to the U.S. and there are growing concerns about a potential spillover effect on Canadian campuses. In this podcast, host Nahlah Ayed speaks with three panelists to explore what's at stake with the politicized attacks on universities — and why it matters to all of us.This discussion was recorded in front of an audience at the Isabel Theatre in Toronto.Guests in this episode:Malinda S. Smith is an associate vice president research and a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. She is the co-editor of Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy: Teaching, Learning, and Researching While Black.Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as the university’s advisor on civil discourse, the first position of its kind in Canada.Davide Panagia is professor and chair of political science at UCLA, where his work bridges philosophy, media and democratic life. Before that, he held the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University.

This is really shaping up to be an incredibly consequential and potentially fast-moving week in Canadian politics. I'm Jamie Poisson, host of the Daily News podcast Frontburner and will be all over this story. The Liberals could lock a majority conservative leader Pierre Pollyev is struggling to control an insurrection in his party ranks. Can he remain party leader? Follow Frontburner for all the analysis you need to understand the moment. This is a CBC podcast. Knowledge is indeed under siege. Welcome to ideas. I'm Nala Ayyed.

Academic freedom has declined more quickly in the U.S. than in any other country in the past year. This is University of Regina Professor Mark Spooner, with his opening remarks in a panel discussion I moderated called Knowledge Under Siege. Harvard is White House's biggest target, but Professor, Professor. all over the country have been censoring themselves and avoiding provocative topics and rewriting grants. That threat to academic freedom in the U.S. comes straight from Donald Trump, who's launched lawsuits and tried to freeze research funding, accusing various universities of anti-Semitism and civil rights violations while targeting their diversity initiatives and transgender policies. And as the panelists point out, these attacks on higher

education aren't limited to the U.S. either. The politicized assault on higher education is spreading, and Canada is not immune. During the federal election campaign, the Conservatives pledged to defund university research it deemed as woke. The Alberta Provincial Government's Bill 18, or the Provincial Priorities Act, attempts to position the Alberta government as a gatekeeper to federal research funding. At a time when democratic norms are fraying, these developments should ring alarm bells for anyone who believes in a robust and pluralistic democracy. Our discussion was held at the Isabel Bader Theater in Toronto

on March 25, 2026. I began by introducing our panelists. Melinda S. Smith is an associate vice president, research, and a professor of political science at the University of Calgary. She is the co-editor of nuances of blackness in the Canadian Academy, teaching, learning, and researching while black. Randy Boyagoda is a novelist and professor of English at the University of Toronto, where he also serves as the university's advisor on civil discourse, the first position of its kind in Canada.

And last but not least, Davide Panagia is professor and chair of political science at UCLA, where his work bridges, philosophy, media, and democratic life. Before that, he held the Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies at Trent University. A very warm welcome to all of you. There is so much that we need to cover in the very short period. But I'd like to begin with a very general question to all of you. And Melinda, maybe if we could start with you. Very briefly, how would you describe the mood on university campuses right now?

I think it's more complex than people might imagine. Universities, I think, are a spaces of the imagination, of creativity, of discovery, and that still is true. But universities are increasingly described as polarized places, and that's shaped by questions of anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, but before the anti-black racism and anti-indigenous racism, as well as sexual and gender-based violence. I would say that that gets the most attention, but the data, if we go by data, does not suggest that, that that's actually would preoccupies students. I think food insecurity, preoccupied students, about 16% of students face food insecurity. Housing precarity impacts students.

And behind that, there's a question of financial issues. And by saying that, I'm also saying that many of the issues facing students today are not internal to the university. They are external to the university because universities are microcosm of the larger society. The final point I would say is the issue that shaping the climate or the environment on campus is that all these crises also leads to mental health issues.

So students also face social anxiety and depression. And so all these things together, I think, I'll call a polycrisis and universities a microcosm of the larger society. Randy, how would you describe the mood on university campuses? I think there would probably be multiple moods, Nala. I think just right now elsewhere on the campus of beautiful Victoria College, there's a whole group of first-year students celebrating the end of a first-year seminar program that they've all been part of.

And I imagine the mood in that room is a bullion. They've had this transformative experience on campus that hopefully stays with them for the next three years, and maybe beyond that. If your student is graduating, maybe you feel more uncertain. You're weighing the costs of time and perhaps student debt, facing an uncertain job market, facing the various kinds of precarity that Melinda just mentioned.

And so maybe there's a little bit of uncertainty for someone like that. I think when you think about university administration, university professors, I think there would be anxiety. Anxiety about how long more this thing can keep going writ large.

I think we are facing a variety of inflection points that relate to the concept of polycrisis. fundamentally what is a university for? What is the public good? What is the professional good? What is the personal good that a university makes possible? And it seems to me that in good ways, whether it's in the United States or in Canada for decades,

these have been questions largely taken for granted by a large majority of people. And I don't think these questions are being taken for granted, so straightforwardly anymore, whether you're a professor, a staff member, a university leader, or a student. And I can say that's exactly why we're here tonight. Thank you for that. Davide, in your world, what is it like on university campuses? I would say that many of the things that were said already are very much a part of it. Some of them are perfectly natural. Students

are excited in their first year and anxious in their final years. Unfortunately, because of of what's happened in the United States and certainly the role or the target that my institution has been put under, I would say that among students and faculty and administration fear is a reality. And it's not just a fear of what comes next. It's a physical fear.

We have regular emails indicating or instructing us how to behave if ICE officials break into the classroom with warrants to deport students. We're regularly being informed that the university is under investigation by the Department of Justice. And, you know, I teach in a world, and this is something that is not insignificant, I teach in a world where there is the Second Amendment, and it's a public university and it's open. And so the real fear of, you know, somebody coming and gunning you down because somebody has posted a lecture of yours that they didn't like what you had to say on a network that is, you know, not amenable to your teaching. So, I mean, with all of the other things, we are very much, I think, living in fear. There is a kind of sense of, you know, keep the ship going.

but it is very much a question of like day by day. This idea that Mark really clearly outlined of universities being under attack isn't really new. I think we all can say that, all of us who have been around universities, but there is something different about it in this moment. And so, Randy, coming back to you, what is different about this moment?

I think it would be the variety of kinds of attacks. it's not only or straightforwardly a political attack. There is, and especially in the United States, the extreme costs associated with attending especially selective universities, the debt that gets generated there. In Canada, there is the ongoing question of the dramatic difference between, let's say, domestic and international student tuition and the question of how our system,

because of its chronic underfunding in many ways depends on international students who aren't coming in the same way. It goes back to the concept of the poly crisis, but I would say, actually, another term that I'd want to introduce here would be the concept of quantum politics.

Quantum politics. Yeah, I want to think about quantum politics, and I'm mindful of doing it with a couple of political scientists as an English professor, but that's the beauty of being an English professor. You can just keep on talking as long as it sounds good, people agree with you.

But this concept of quantum physics as compared to Newtonian physics, things are no longer reliable, things are no longer stable. Quantum politics, as with quantum physics, suggests indeterminacy, uncertainty. Unpredictability.

Unpredictability. And I would say that is what feels especially distinct right now. This isn't canon wars. This isn't PC wars. This isn't even simply woke wars. I think there's so many things going on that are sources of uncertainty of indeterminacy that we seem to have entered something of a kind of a quantum campus politics moment.

Melinda, would you agree? Is that what you would go to first? Slightly different. Okay. What's different? I do think this moment is different to the extent that historically, universities weren't spaces of inclusion. They weren't space. They were designed without many of us in mind.

And so it's only relatively recent in a moment. our histories where we've been talking about how do we make our universities more fair, more equitable, more inclusive, how do we bring in more diversity? These are relatively new questions, and yet they are now under scrutiny. There's an abnormalization of social justice, and in fact, efforts to be more inclusive are deemed reverse discrimination. So this is a child, this is not only going to talk on the pursuit of equity or, you know, equality and social justice, it is an attack, I think, on democratic rights. I think that's profoundly different. I also think it has implications for academic freedom and free inquiry.

How can you be in the university if actors external to the university are telling you what you can read or you back books a ban, what you can write, what kind of research you can pursue, what kind of federal funds you can apply for? This is quite different in the Canadian environment. And I do think we need to take it seriously because our democracy, the robustness of it is at stake, but also our sense of citizenship and belonging. Of course, the Canadian University is our primary focus in this conversation. However, there is a reason Davida is here. Yes. And the U.S. isn't very, very far away from us.

And certainly we'll talk about the spillover effect of what's going on in the states here. But I want to ask you, David, just more specifically, I think we've all seen the headlines, Trump administration, targeting higher. education for a while. Freezing grants, filing lawsuits against universities across the country, not only Harvard and Columbia, but at UCLA where you teach, he tried to freeze research funding at school to pay $1 billion to restore it. And now he's suing, after that was blocked by a judge, now he's suing the university. Can you just briefly talk about or explain what you think is really behind those attacks? Because there's been a number of are different reasons? Well, I think there are a number of different reasons. There's a very,

very good incentive for socioeconomic power elites to not educate the population. The good incentive is that it keeps the general population out of positions of power and reduces competition. So, I mean, that's a very crude version. We've had that since the time of the universities when, you know, they were basically glorified monasteries and only priests could go there, right? I mean, it's the same power structure and only certain people could enter into. So there's that, I think, basic incentive. I think the other sort of fundamental incentive is this view that, I mean, we can talk about where it might come from.

And I think universities are partly responsible for this, and I'm going to be very general about it, but I think this view that you don't need a university in order to generate economic prosperity. This, to me, is something that's very new. On the part of the universities, we haven't been very good to point out of the fact that everything that we use from these microphones to these lights were the result of all of our contributions and taxes that have paid our colleagues to be able to develop them. of the idea that the university is a public good. The idea of a public good is a problem in the United States because that's still, you know, after 70 years of the Cold War,

it's still considered a communist idea, and so nobody should think about a public good. But maybe I'll just test you on this, because Mark in his remarks said something about this also being kind of part of an authoritarian playbook. But that's, you know, that, yes, it is 100% part of an authoritarian playbook that goes back to the question of, you know, when you have an authoritarian system of power, you don't want to give people access to it. Right. And what we know, both statistically, historically, and the data shows us is that the best form of access is through education.

Yeah. Melinda, you want to tell something. The very fact that one of the greatest thinkers on this idea of on tyranny was actually recruited from the United States to the University of Toronto from Yale University as a number of scholars, and we have launched in Canada impact awards in order to attract some of this amazing talent. What's interesting to me is many of these talents focus on research on fascism, on democracy, but also had the experience of profound tyranny because of an, of anti-Semitism. So it seems to me we can't be complacent in Canada about what's at stake here in protecting our institutions,

but also better understanding why we need to be defending what may have stayed in the past, but our parliaments, our charter, our human rights bodies. So, yes, I think there's homegrown stuff here too, not just from... And we will get to that, absolutely. I'm sort of still trying to get my head around a little bit of what's going on in the States. And we did a lot of reading in preparation for this.

And some people point to the idea of McCarthyism is the closest parallel, perhaps, of what is happening in the U.S. right now. Does that comparison, how does that ring for you, Randy? Well, I think in a generalized way, yes, that sense that there are actors, political actors, who will seize the moment to identify people deemed enemies of the state. disloyal citizens because of their un-American activities, to be very precise, to go back to the 50s for a moment, and then to go to kind of go after them in a sense. I think the more dangerous thing, though, to be honest, would be the more widespread, softer version of authoritarianism. So yes, there's the high-profile congressional hearings, but then there's the decision made by a professor in a liberal arts college somewhere in Missouri to take. something off a syllabus.

Like what? Let's say, oh, I don't know. The most immediate one that comes to mind would be, let's say, the Handmaid's Tale. And it's a small decision like that. It's all those small decisions that people make. And it's

not because I think they're immediately worried about their job security. It's just the potential consequences aren't worth the risk of continuing to teach something that you otherwise would have taken for granted. Why, if I could just complete the thought, is because I think what we see, especially in the United States, I think there's a

different thing, something more interesting, more ironic happening in Canada about spillover effect that I can say something about later. But a compact has been broken. From about 1950 onward, there was a sense that the U.S. government invested billions in the research function of the university, seeing it as a good. I don't know if it will be. be a public good, but a good, a national good. When it came to technology, healthcare, military innovations, et cetera, at the same time, undergraduate education expanded dramatically. You go to university, you'll furnish your life with more ideas, with more experiences to make you a more interesting, open, thoughtful person, and you'll get a better job as a result. And so there's

this compact, and I think we're at a point now in the United States where that compact feels very broken. Davy did maybe just pick up on that. Do you see that at play kind of in the, yeah? Yeah, there's a lot, and there's a lot of reasons for it. I think one major historical reason, and this we have to keep it in mind, is that the

growth of the American University, as opposed to the Canadian University, but certainly the American University in the United States in the post-war period was because the university was part of the military industrial complex. There were three major disciplines that could

contributed to the Cold War, political science, economics, and physics. And as a result of the GI Bill, the further investment in expanding the number of students and access to university in the United States. I would sort of want to point out one fact about the soft power aspect of it, that it's not that soft. I don't know how well it is known, but every single public employee, a public university in the United States. As far as I know, certainly in California, because I had to do it,

has to take a loyalty oath. Loyalty to... To not inciting terrorism, not inciting communism, not inciting insurrections. And what effect do you think that has on... Well, it got Angela Davis fired. Like, this is exactly how my university fired Angela Davis in the 1960s,

you know, accusing her of having communist ideas. therefore it wasn't an academic freedom problem it was an oath violation problem right so these people that are you know thinking twice there are very serious legal consequences and this is a country that as much as we like to imagine rights and liberties as being important it is also a country that thinks first in terms of liability and the cost of liability Melinda, you've mentioned a couple of times now this idea of a spillover of what seeing what's happening at the south of the border kind of catapulting over our own border. Again, what would you point to as kind of the starkest thing that has crossed the border at university campuses? One is the discussions were mentioned about funding of research.

And we see if we pay attention to the House of Commons, Science and Research Committee, You would see there, there was a lot of discussion about funding, research, and they are again focusing on questions around equity, diversity, inclusion. They are focusing on topics around gender. They're focusing on topics around inclusion. That's very similar to what's happening in the U.S., but the idea of stopping this. And you can always tell there's a spillover when people start using DEI,

diversity, equity, inclusion, rather than EDI, which is what most Canadian post-secondary institutions use. What's the difference between those structures? Well, DEI emerged out of U.S. executive orders back in the 1960s. So that's what people use. I'm going to say that in Canada, EDI emerges out of the Royal Commission on Equality and Employment. Justice Rosalie Silva-Bella reported that really heavily based on Statistics Canada, research.

There was an Employment Equity Act, Human Rights Commission, but Section 152 of the Canadian Charter enables ameliorative grounds to deal with disadvantage. Few people in Canada, who I'm hearing talking about DEI, ever ground their discussions in the fact that we have

charter rights for it or human rights for it. Very different from the United States arguments for their DEI. So I talk about the use of the work in Canada. The word woke. woke or wokeism. For many people, they don't even know this term comes from.

It was used by African Americans during the civil rights movement and earlier to tell people when they're going into segregated areas to stay woke, be alert to the fact that they may end up debt. So the idea that that would be appropriated, that terminology to protect people and their rights would be appropriated and now used to deny people's rights. It's actually quite surprising. But again, it's been imported into Canada, and people are not talking about the ways in which it's actually quite chilling to be using that language or to be defaming the people who engage in civil rights.

I would just use one more example, and perhaps because I'm in Alberta, where when you start going into schools and talking about removing books from the shelves, Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, maybe we aren't paying close enough attention. When did Canada start engaging in book banning? And so if, or going into universities and saying, you can't teach courses on gender. We had the Royal Commission on the styles of women for how long. And that was a joint conservative under the Maruni government. So there was nonpartisan, yes, gender equity. Now we are saying it's a problem. So I do think we need to actually ground ourselves in Canadian history, Canadian stories and lore,

because I think the spillover effect is quite concerning. That spillover effect that political scientist Melinda S. Smith talks about was part of an on-stage discussion I moderated at the Isabel Bader Theatre in Toronto called Knowledge Underseech. This is Ideas. I'm Nala Ayyad. This is really shaping up to be an incredibly consequential and potentially fast-mast-meas. moving week in Canadian politics. I'm Jamie Poisson, host of the Daily News Podcast, Frontburner, and will be all over this story. The Liberals could lock a majority conservative leader Pierre Poliyev is struggling to control an insurrection in his party ranks. Can he remain party leader?

Follow Frontburner for all the analysis you need to understand the moment. Since his re-election, Donald Trump has targeted leading universities like UCLA, where Canadian political scientist Davidei Panagia teaches. He joined me on stage in Toronto with University of Calgary's Melinda S. Smith and the University of Toronto's Randy Boyagoda to unpack the threats facing American universities and the spillover effect of their impact here at home on Canadian campuses. Randy, maybe could you sort of add to that? There's another way to think about the spillover effect.

You mentioned it with the impact plus chairs, the idea that the federal government, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, is investing some, I think it's about a billion dollars to recruit top researchers in priority areas associated with national purpose. 1.7 billion. $1.7 billion to Canadian universities.

So step back for a moment. The Canadian government is making explicit, investments and priorities that have a lot to do with, yes, democratic resiliency, but also national defense. And so it seems to me like the intensification of Canadian nationalism is a striking effect of what's been happening south of the border since the second Trump administration. And the idea that as the federal government continues, I suspect, to intensify its investments in national defense, well, this will necessarily create grant opportunities for Canadian researchers.

And this, I think, is a very uncomfortable thing in a Canadian campus context, because I think we're really straightforward and being upset at the idea that American universities are being told to invest in dual-use technology. And yet, we're doing the exact same thing here, and we're taking great patriotic pride in it. and it would be a very Canadian thing to do to not clap at what I said, but ignore what I said and continue the conversation,

but I think there's something going on there that we're not reckoning with. Melinda, one more quick note, and then we're going to talk about funding some more, please. Oh, sorry, I just said, the only one is the lose sight of the, when we say, chill over effect, the impact on academic freedom.

Yeah. And the ability to pursue, so we talk about the excitement of students coming into universities, and they're wanting to pursue their areas of love and their research and their discovery, and then you get into a university environment, and the questions you may want to ask, you can't pose.

The books you might want to read, you can't read, because your syllabus is under scrutiny. So I don't want us to lose sight of the implications of that chill for our democracy and why we need in Canada to protect academic freedom, not just in collective agreements, but in Europe they're talking about putting it into their constitutions. David, I'm curious if you could talk about or explain a very purpose. example of academic chill that is playing out in your own university.

What's your own curriculum in fact? One of the sort of consequences, personal consequences, for me is that every few months I get an email from some ambiguous legal source within the university telling me that to keep, and I just got one on Sunday as I was landing in in Toronto. It was an email saying that, you know, all of my communications, including my private communications, including my private cell phone communication, text messages, et cetera, are subject to investigation by the Department of Justice. And so I have to keep all of my communication, electronic communications, because they're being, they could be selected.

So this is, you know, something that creates not an insignificant amount of personal anxiety. At a personal level, I just, you know, I have to. to find ways. Well, there's certainly certain things that I won't be able, even before that becomes ever more difficult to teach. I teach a lot of films in certain films you can't, you know, teach and present anymore. There are certain courses that aren't being taught anymore?

Titles are being changed of courses, renaming of courses, renaming directives, inclusive excellence is now the new EDI. So, you know, people try to find workarounds, but yes, I mean, a lot of departments, gender studies department, Afro-American departments are very much, and I'm sure everybody heard about the ridiculous case in Texas where a philosopher professor was told that he couldn't teach the Plato's Republic because it was too woke. That's still being taught in Canada, isn't it? I do want to ask about, just follow up on that, EDI or D.I, I guess, depending on the side of the border we're on, but why are these initiatives, why have they become such a flashpoint? Maybe Melinda and then Randy?

EDI, equity, diversity, inclusion, and I think the acronymization of this work is really an issue. So the idea of a big tent of opportunity for universities, this has led to push back. of reverse discrimination, anti-white, anti-men. And what surprises me about anyone listening to this is to look at the evidence. It's actually not based on evidence. And so now we can't use anti-bias in our workshops in Alberta, and we can't use cultural competencies, so we can't require them. And there's a whole list of words that have been banned because they are claimed to be discriminatory.

So questions of justice have been turned around to be questions of injustice. EDI was about basically making the university a more fair and inclusive place for a larger swath of the population. I think it's quite consistent with democracy. But just quickly, Melinda, you've noted in the past that there's a link between the language

that Alberta universities are using or adopting and was being used in American states such as Mississippi when we were talking about EDI-D-E-I. What is that language? Yes. So the language that we, so most of Alberta universities, I think this is now well written about, have shifted away from the language of equity, diversity, inclusion. I think one university president wrote about why that was the case, but they have adopted language, most of adopted language around access,

community, and belonging. And that was used previously in Florida and Mississippi universities as well. And other universities are misusing, I would say, the commitment to promote an advanced pluralism, including to have a diversity of ideas and perspectives and cultures, and how to get people to live well together. So I think these pursuits have been misused to say they are, to juxtapose them against EDI, But I actually think we need to advance both. In the province of Alberta, the new legislation is called the Jordan Peterson legislation,

which is used to say we shouldn't be able to use language like anti-bias, cultural competencies, including indigenous education. Maybe people are missing this, but I think it's important to pay attention to. Brenda, we've talked previously about trust in university institutions. How does all of this, this debate over that language and the borrowing of these kinds of ideas from south of the border, how does that influence how university institutions are perceived and whether they are or not trusted? Well, I think we do live in what social scientists call a low-trust environment. Certainly in my work as UFT's advisor on civil discourse, I hear about this, professors and students,

anxious about trusting each other, in department meetings, we see this play out a lot. but it does have to do with language and I was thinking about one example that maybe speaks to one of the challenges that I think we face as part of my U of my UFT civil discourse work I talked to a lot of different people about

what we do well when it comes to civil discourse what we could be doing better etc and I was in a consultation session and someone was there on behalf of a student organization or student life-related organization and they were discussing an election watch party they had

for the U.S. presidential election for students. As an example of, you know, creating the conditions for people to come together who have difference. And as I recall, the event was trauma-informed and inclusive. And I immediately said,

is that for the Trump supporters who were sad that he didn't win by a larger margin? And the person just looked at me blankly. And so then I kind of pressed it a little bit to kind of point out that inclusion codes left. Let's be straightforward about this. I think we should be inclusive spaces. I think

diversity, equity, and inclusion are good things to pursue. But in the institutional landscape, they code more progressive than not. Where that causes a problem is let's say you're hosting one of these election watch parties and three tall white guys show up wearing MAGA hats. What do we do? How does this affect the question of inclusion, because to my mind, I would much rather those three students be part of a larger, diverse community, and feel part of that, then feel like I'm not trusted here, I'm not welcome here. This place is inclusive, just not for people like me. And I understand there's a deeper history for that, and I understand those correctives, but in the individual dual case, I would much rather

those students are at a UFT event than going elsewhere to find community. But that results in some friction and some tension. And I think we need to at some level, as Foucault might suggest, interrogate the terms that we use or that we sometimes take for granted.

And so I think in some ways inclusion is subject to interrogation that way. So if I can say, the language of social inclusion which has been used in Europe for years to talk about how they move immigrants who couldn't be citizens into part of the national fabric. And so social inclusion was really about how do you bring into the big tent of citizenship

and belonging people who were on the margins. So I do think this is the abnormalization again of social justice when we say that ordinary words which are trying to do things which every society and every democracy needs. We don't need people under margins. We don't need people whose skills and knowledge and brilliance are underutilized. We need to be more inclusive.

So now imagine, and to this day, that language that was so ordinary and so much a part of nation building is now turned on its head and be seen as something exclusionary. So the language game is actually important. important, but I would say that's the... So, let me let you finish.

No, no, I was going to say, I think your earlier example. Your earlier example about the etymology of woke was an excellent example. Yeah, yeah. And this is what I mean by we use words now, terms, that at some level we take for granted. And we take for granted a consensus around them that may not exactly exist. And so what you just described right there as inclusion makes excellent sense to me. And if that's how we lived it out on campus, that would be great. but I'm just not convinced that everyone experiences it

in that good way you just described. Underlying all of that is this idea, of course, of universities being central to democratic life and supposed to reflect the society that we live in, all of us out here outside of university gates. You know, wealth disparity continues to escalate, authoritarianism continues to rise. So I want to ask you all of blunt questions.

have universities failed in that central mission to be that pillar of democracy? I mean, Randy, how would you answer that? No, I don't think they have failed. You might say they may be flailing a little bit at that effort because of a crisis of confidence, because of the broken compact preps that I was describing earlier in the U.S. context.

But I think, and I'm thinking here about the University of Toronto, that's 100,000 students, I would like to think with confidence that the great majority of University of Toronto students have a transformational experience on this, on our three campuses, even though at the level of perception,

at the level of fraught-feeling public discourse, the university doesn't feel like it's doing what it used to do because we don't take these things for granted anymore, nor I think should we. We keep on. I'm crying and we fail better. We flail better.

Perhaps would be the hope I would have for higher education. There's a warm way for me to end my point. Melinda. I am much more optimistic about that. I actually do think the polarization and crisis narrative may be sometimes exaggerated or amplified. And I actually think universities, I would say it depends on which disciplines you are. And certainly in this kind of conversation, the social science, humanities, and creative, arts are under more stress than you would say science or engineering or medicine. We are the ones

that get characterized as having contentious conversations, difficult conversations that requires brave conversations. But, I mean, so, okay, learning is sometimes hard. This is an opportunity for us to talk about what is the role in responsibilities and universities in democracy. They are more complex because our societies are more complex. So I don't want to exaggerate the situation on university campuses, because I still think they remain vital to social mobilization, developing citizenship and belonging. So maybe we need to actually also have more conversations like this in order for us to recognize the value of universities colleges for the health and well-being, none of us only individually,

but also for our democracy. Is the answer different in the U.S., Davity? No, it's not different in the U.S. in the sense. that it's the same coupling of basically education is good for democracy. And that's fine. But the idea that a university is good for democracy, I always like to look things both conceptually and historically. That is very much part of a post-war discourse that invested in the university

for its economic and military. Universities existed before we had democracies, right, And they had the same problems, first of all, knowledge increased regardless. So there isn't a natural relationship between the university and democracies. What has developed over the years, I think, is an emphasis on the place of experimental thinking, as necessary to democracy. When we understand democracy as democracy as a project of collective, collective participation where we can't know what comes next.

But if there are things that are being deliberately excluded from that experience on campuses, are campuses living up to that ideal? You know, I think any form of exclusion necessarily is a limitation of that ideal and of that project. And I will say this, I won't even say this controversially because of the obvious questions around race, ethnicity, and gender, but simply because we don't know who the next smart person is and where they're going to come from, and they're going to devise that particular thing that will make it so that I can live long.

I want to zoom out a little bit and ask any of you. I mean, what the effect is, we talk about, again, I'm being very broad here, but we talk about the humanities in particular being absolutely fundamental to bolstering democracy, both in producing the people who practice democracy, but also exchange of ideas, all those things, David, you mentioned, but in Canada and in the U.S., humanities programs are being cut.

What are the consequences? Melinda. Ask the social scientist. I think the humanities historically have been vital to society. And I think, so I actually do think we need to reflect on why there have been such profound cuts. I mean, where do you learn critical thinking, where do you learn to read great books and the questions they pose?

So the idea of book banning, for example, should be an atomar to us in this current moment. The humanities and the social sciences have been indispensable to this understanding, and to the extent that they shrink, I think you also see that we shrink our capacity to support the kinds of disciplines and conversations that are vital not only to our democracies, but to our health and well-being as well.

So, Randy, back to the question of whether universities are failing or not. I'm not trying to prove one or the other, but I'm curious when it's humanities that are being cut. Who's to blame? I mean, where do you place that responsibility? No, I blame it on parents. Don't take the humanities. Why are you taking an English degree? Yes, there are clear frontal attacks, especially on certain humanities programs,

and especially in places like the contemporary, United States. But humanity enrollments, writ large, have been flatlining or declining for a long time under any kind of government in North America. And why is that?

Because the students aren't taking the courses. Because then the question becomes, why aren't they taking the courses? I think it's probably two things. I think there is a very reasonable pressure on the part of parents that they expect if a student

the young person is going to spend four years of their lives and tens of thousands of dollars learning something. There should be some utility to that. And that utility doesn't translate into the depth and shadow that you

get only from reading great books and having conversations about them. It's hard to make that case. And it's understandably, especially in public universities, there's that fundamental problem. And then let me go beyond that. It's not just the parents, I think we should blame the kids too, in that we were just lamenting backstage the question of who's actually reading these books on these syllabi anymore.

The capacity for reading, the capacity for that patient life inside a book, inside a writing exercise is withering, and you all know this. And so it seems to me like this is a problem that is more systemic than any political party. You know, there's a further problem that really that's encompassed in this, and I can't see if there's students in the crowd, but if there are students, especially undergraduates in the crowd, you'll know this, is that the humanities and social sciences, and the humanities oriented social sciences like my subfield, which is political

philosophy, don't give you right answers. So you can never tell a student what they have to do in order to get an A in the class. and because the only possible answer is keep reading, keep policing, keep trying to figure it out, keep being reflexive. That produces a level of anxiety of uncertainty in a student, right, that's very difficult. I think that one of the easiest ways to solve this problem, it'll never happen, but one of the easiest ways to solve this problem is get rid of the grades.

Getting rid of the grades means getting rid of the anxiety of having to perform. in order to produce an output and instrumentalize knowledge because really what a grade is or what a GPA is is effectively the educational equivalent of money. Interesting idea. I don't have to tell you that underfunding is a major and chronic problem for Canadian and American universities, but certainly in Canada, it's a constant problem. It correlates to rising tuition fees and the overall cost of going to. to university. It is also seen, as you said very early on, Randy, as a form of yet another

form of attack against universities, perhaps a way to defang certain universities. What happens if a university education reverts to being something that only the very wealthy can access? You've got the American university system. I've told my kids that they have to, you know, I can't afford them to send to elite American universities. UCLA is a public university and in-state tuition is $15,000 a year. That's just tuition. Yeah. Right?

Do you want a system where only those, where there are two options, either the very wealthy can afford it or those who aren't wealthy begin their lives with an insurmountable amount of debt that is complicated by a precarious job. market and no access to health care. Melinda. I want to return to the concept of polycrisis, and one of them is this kind of all of these insecurities, including around money, and they are shaped both by international and domestic factors. International, we think of just freezing international students, which will pay in double fees, and all of a sudden you now have universities and crisis.

You think of funding from provincial governments, because education is primarily merely provincial and you see the ways in which everything that we value in the university, including academic freedom, including what we learn, what we study, the books we read are shaped by money. And so unless we understand education as a public good, I think we will face ongoing crisis. We need to think of universities and places of public good and also fund them a lot of. accordingly because democracy but also prosperity depend on it. Okay. A little bit more about money, but a question directed at you, Davidae, is

there's this amount of money, $1.7 billion that's being used to help recruit international scholars. That's being spent by the federal government to bring, you know, scholars here. I'm curious as a Canadian scholar who's in the U.S. what your views are of that idea. Well, it's even more complicated than that because I'm a Canadian scholar who's in the U.S. who began his career benefiting from a similar program, having been a Canada research chair. You know, the model that we have in Canada is exceptional in terms of the federal monies investing in research and provincial monies investing in teaching and balancing these two elements of university life. I think the provinces have to step up.

would you consider moving back to Canada under such a program? Oh no, I'm actively considering it. He gave me his CV before we came last week. You know of any position? No, would I guess. I mean, these chairs were designed to attract, including with the CRCs, to bring Canadians home. And to have that talent contribute to Canada.

But the other thing is to bring the best in the way. world here. But I want to give a little cautionary note because we already have homegrown talent. And so the proportionality of the funds going to recruit externally needs to be well kept in balance with making sure that we are funding the social science and humanities here, scholars who are here, who are talented, so they aren't being recruited elsewhere. Maybe they won't be going to the U.S. now. But there's also Europe is also doing the same thing. Britain is during the same thing. So how do we make sure we keep talent, we recruit and retain talent in Canada, not just recruit them externally? A lot of people listening to our conversation right now have zero connection to universities.

I'm just wondering again a short answer from each of you. Why should any of that matter? Why should any of this that we're talking about matter to them, Davida? I mean, my answer is going to sound similar. I think everybody has a connection to the university in terms of research, right? because the roads that we drive on have been part of the chemical industry

that are chemical departments chemistry departments that figured out how to combine elements you know the elevators whose buttons we press are part of an engineering program etc etc so we all actually really do have a connection I think our job

and one of the great things about this event is to make that known that there is a connection that everybody has. Randy and then, Melinda, I have a specific question for you. That's why I'm leaving you to last. Please, Randy, go ahead. No, I really had nothing to add to what Davy D. Everyone listening to this show benefits from universities.

So, Melinda, the question I had for you is Henry Marshall Tori helped establish Canadian universities, including Carlton and Ottawa, University of British Columbia, and the University of Alberta. He said that the goal of the modern university was to uplift the whole people. this goal of kind of uplifting the whole people what happens if we lose sight of that goal imagine I think this was in 1910 when he said this okay and he didn't he wasn't saying only rural people or urban people he wasn't saying only immigrants or non-immigrants the whole people I mean that vision of a great university is one that actually shapes my career because I think it matters

And I actually think we cannot afford to lose sight of that. And the universities as created were designed to be a spaces where citizens of all walks of life can come and become better citizens, better people individually, not individually, but also they saw that spaces where you can cultivate pluralism of how people of these different backgrounds can learn to get along very. better, to live better. There's no other institution, none in our society than a university where this can happen, where you have such diversity of people, and where you have the possibility of creating something better. Henry Marshall Torrey was onto something very wise, and I think we'd be well served in 2016 and beyond to heed those words today. That was the conclusion to our panel discussion recorded live at the Isabel Bayoum.

Theater in Toronto featuring Melinda S. Smith, Randy Boyagoda, and Davide Panagia. It was presented in partnership with the University of Regina and the Toronto International Festival of Authors. Special thanks to Mark Spooner and the whole team at the University of Regina for making this event possible, and to Roland Gulliver and Hany Yakon from Tifa. This episode was produced by contributor Melissa Gismondi. It was the latest in a series of episodes Melissa produced on the future of the university. To find out more, visit our website, cbc.ca.ca.com. Lisa Ayuso is the web producer for ideas.

Technical production, Will Yarr and Emily Kiervezio. The senior producer is Nikola Luxchich. The executive producer of Ideas is Greg Kelly, and I'm Nala Ayyed. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.ca slash podcasts.