Shaun Newman Podcast - #925 - David Hunt & Martin Mrazik

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

David Hunt is the Research Director for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, a Canadian think tank focused on free-market policies, education reform, and public policy analysis. Martin Mrazik is a professor and registered psychologist in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta. We discuss their paper on “Freedom of expression on campus: A survey of students’ perceptions of free speech at Canadian Universities.”Freedom of expression on campus study link:https://aristotlefoundation.org/study/freedom-of-expression-on-campus-a-survey-of-students-perceptions-of-free-speech-at-canadian-universities/Tickets for the Prairie Rising Forum:https://prairierisingforum.ca/To watch the Full Cornerstone Forum: https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcastGet your voice heard: Text Shaun 587-217-8500Silver Gold Bull Links:Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/Email: [e-mail] Grahame: [phone]Bow Valley Credit UnionBitcoin: www.bowvalleycu.com/en/personal/investing-wealth/bitcoin-gatewayEmail: [e-mail] Use the code “SNP” on all ordersProphet River Links:Website: store.prophetriver.com/Email: [e-mail] Money SummitWebsite: ExpatMoneySummit.com

This is Viva Fry. I'm Dr. Peter McCullough. This is Tom Lomago. This is Chuck Pradnik. This is Alex Krenner. Hey, this is Brad Wall. This is J.P. Sears. Hi, this is Frank Peretti.

This is Tammy Peterson. This is Danielle Smith. This is James Lindsay. Hey, this is Brett Kessel, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Monday. How's everybody doing? Man, we got exciting things going on on this side.

A whole bunch of events coming up. Of course, I'm excited. The Cornerstone Forum returns to Calgary, March. 28th at the Weston near the Calgary Airport. We've got a whole bunch of speakers lined up already and tickets will be out

at some point this week. We just wanted to make sure we don't rush it and miss anything, you know, we're walking through the process. What did Shannon tell me it's better to have it all set up than have to problem solve with stupid little things that you didn't think of.

And so we're just walking through, making sure over the next couple days that we get everything properly outlined from the Expo to Friday night, Saturday, now Sunday. It is a one-day event, I can say that safely. Saturday is the Cornerstone Forum, but Friday night, now that we're a part of a hotel, we're going to have a bit of a social for anyone flying in early that wants to come and check that out. It'll be free for any guest attending the show to attend. It's just going to be a little bit of a value add to the show.

and I'm hoping I'll have more details out about that. The reason I'm talking about it right now, SGB back in as one of the title sponsors, as is Bow Valley Credit Union. And this show would not be coming to Calgary with these two companies stepping up and bringing it back to Calgary. So March 28th, the weekend of March 27th to 29th,

that's what you got to earmark on your calendar, pay attention. This week we're going to have tickets going on sale. We've added in a bunch of new things from no food to lunch only to supper and lunch tickets. So that way, you know, there's just different price points. I know that's one of the concerns. You know, I'm excited about it.

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here this week for the Cornerstone Forum. We're going to be having, oh man, Tom and Alex back and a whole bunch of others coming and looking forward to unveiling the speakers, looking forward to unveiling more of the event. But yes, Saturday, Friday, social, Saturday, the forum and Sunday, we're working on some cool things that I hope will be value-ad once again for all of you. Find folks who travels so far to come this way. Now, Bow Valley Credit, Silver Gold Bull, Bull, when it comes to precious men, I should probably say something about these two companies,

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This is cool. October 25th, their customer appreciation day. And they have Rod Giltaka going to be on site for part of the day as well as some others. They got, you know, a bunch of different things going on for customer appreciation. That's super cool. I'm going to try and show my face as well. Sunday, October 26th at 1 p.m., if anyone's interested, this is where you've got to text me. We have Rod Giltaka, and we have Chuck Pradnick, and we have Jamie Sinclair, heading to Lloyd Minster,

and we're going to go to the Lloyd Minster and District Fish and Game Association, indoor range. And we're going to do some handgun shooting, and it's 20 bucks if you want to come. Profit River has been gracious in supplying the ammo. and honestly, Keith from Lloyd Mr. District Fish and Game Association at the indoor range has been phenomenal too. So if you're interested in that, shoot me a text. Yeah, I think that's going to be a fun afternoon. 1 p.m. Sunday, October 26th. That is going to be something to pay attention to.

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shoot me a text. We'd love to have you there and looking forward to selling out at the Gold Horse Casino. It's always fun when we get a group of people there together. If you're wanting to get on the value for value wall, okay? Here is probably, this week is probably your last week. They've started engraving, and once it's done, it's done. So if you're like, oh crap, what does it take? 100 bucks, e-transfer me, reach out to me for details on that, and we can get your name on the wall, okay?

You're not going to want to miss the wall of dissidents. I know you're not. You're going to be kicking yourself if you don't do it. So reach out to me. We'd love to get a few more names. It is a wonderful, beautiful list of names, and would love to add you there. If you're listening or watching on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Rumble, make sure to subscribe, make sure to leave a review,

make sure to hit retweet, make sure to share with a friend. And finally, I guess I should talk about the Mash Spiel. We have the Mash Spiel coming up January 17th in Kalmar, Alberta. There's only 60 tickets available, 50 bucks apiece. I know you're going to be like, I suck at curling. Hey, folks, I suck it curling. This is Too's way of getting back at me for, probably beating them in, you know, ski shooting, is my guess.

Is my guess. But regardless, it's super easy. Come to Kalmar, have a fun day. There's no pressure. I'm going to make sure there's no pressure. I'd love to have you there. And that's January 17th in Kalmar, Alberta, just west of Laduke, if anyone is trying to figure out where that's at.

We'd love to have you there. And there's not, you know, you can show up on the day. But if you want to actually curl and be a part of the day, there's like less than 60 spots available. Or you can put a team of four in. Super cost. Like we're not trying to do anything crazy here. Just looking to have some fun and bring that community together.

All right. Let's get on to that tale of the tape. Today's first guest is a research director for the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, the second a professor and registered psychologist in the Department of Educational Psychology at the University of Alberta. I'm talking about David Hunt and Martin Morazek. So buckle up. Here we go.

Well, welcome to the Sean Numa podcast. Today I'm joined by David Hunt and Martin Marazic. Boys, thanks for hopping on with me today. Good to be here. Yes, thanks for having us. Now, I'm going to start with Martin and then, David, just it doesn't have it. You can go as long or as short as you want,

but just a little bit of background. First time on the podcast, would love if you'd give the audience a little bit about yourself so they know who they're listening to. So I'm a professor at the University of Alberta. I've been there for coming up on 12th. 20 years. I'm a psychologist by training, and I've, in my area of studies is in the area of psychological assessment. And I was a previous teacher in the schools in Alberta for a couple

of years before I did my doctoral studies. So I've been in the classroom. And I've been part of the program that I'm working with is we train undergraduates for teaching, as well as we train graduate students to become psychologists. So I've had the privilege of doing that for about 20 years now. Yeah, and I'm in the think tank world. So that's the intersection of academic research, but then with an orientation to government policy and media narrative. So trying to take research off the shelf, stuff is practical from a public policy perspective, and then get it out there. So I've been in that world for the better part of a decade and the research director at the Aristotle Foundation for public policy, which is based in Caligris. And we're really, I'd like to think

of us as the common sense think tank, trying to bring common sense back. into the public conversation. Well, what brings us all here today is your recent study survey, Freedom of Expression on Campus, a survey of students, perceptions of free speech at Canadian universities. Gentlemen, I don't know who wants to begin,

but if you want to walk the audience through what you've done and what you've found, I'm sure there's going to be a boatload of questions that come up along the way. Sure. I'll be glad to take to the lead there. So we, We wanted to learn a bit more about what students are experiencing in a classroom setting in post-secondary.

There's been a lot of discussion about diversity, equity and inclusion. There's been a lot of public media perceptions of things. So we really wanted to ask students what they're experiencing in the current climate and the, you know, in the current context. So we are kind of emulated some of what the Heterodox Academy is doing. in the United States. And they're an academy that really is designed to really create and push for critical thinking, for diverse perspectives. You know, the nature of heterodox is multiple perspectives. And that's important in an academic setting. Students want to go to learn. They want to critically think they should be challenged. And so we really wanted to understand what is going on

in the current context. And so we did a national survey where we sent out a survey links to students at over 20 universities across Canada. And it was an anonymous study because we wanted that to be very important that they could feel free to express their viewpoints. And we asked them five basic areas. One of them was how free do they feel to express themselves on non-controversial topics and then on controversial topics related to religion, sex, gender, politics, and so on. And again, this was an anonymous survey. We asked them for their demographic information, but there was no personally identifying information.

And so we had what we call a rolling sample, which is you put it out there and then people respond. And so the study really was designed to capture as many different areas of study as we possibly could across multiple institutions, and we were pretty successful in doing that. We had a broad range of answers, so we didn't just get answers from one specific demographic, which was really helpful to us, really important to us,

to see that a broad range of students were really interested in completing the survey. So that's what it looked like, Dave. I don't know if he had any of the comments on it, but that was kind of a broad overview. Yeah, no, excellent overview. All that I would add to it is in terms of on those controversial issues, which we raised, what would be the consequence for being honest, for expressing your views on that controversial topic in a classroom? setting at a Canadian university.

And there's the follow-up questions that we asked were things like, with the professor, say that your views are wrong. Would the professor criticize your views as offensive? Would students call your views offensive? Would someone post critical comments on social media? Would someone file, and this is an interesting one, the one that surprised me, how frequently this was mentioned. Would someone file a formal complaint because you've,

violated some campus harassment policy or student code of conduct. And then they'll think the last one was, would the professor actually lower your grade if you were honest about your reviews on X, Y, or Z controversial topic? And so given those follow-up questions, you can go pretty deep in terms of not only are students hesitant, but why are they self-censoring? Well, boys, what did you find? Marty, what was the most interesting finding for you?

Well, I think there is a number of interesting findings. I think one of the bigger takeaways is that a majority of students feel very constrained to give their honest thoughts in a post-secondary setting with, as David said, just kind of a fear of retribution. Council culture is real, and it's very real in a post-secondary setting. And, you know, for us, just we wanted to understand the demographics of people who were saying this to make sure that we didn't have just a skewed sample, and we didn't. What we found is that we had a large response rate from people who, you know, identify with certain political views from very liberal to very conservative, from different ethnicities, from different religious backgrounds. And what we found a significant trend was that even moderates, even students who identified as moderates, were very reluctant to express their viewpoints in a classroom setting. And conservative students were very reluctant to express themselves in a classroom setting.

I'm a professor at the University of Alberta. And so for me, it's really important that I know that when I'm talking to students that they're contributing and that they're not just sitting there thinking something and not expressing it. I used to be a teacher, and so obviously student engagement is a really big part of learning. You can't learn if you're not challenged, you can't learn if you can't say something and get honest feedback about it. And when over three quarters of students are expressing considerable reservations about saying anything in a classroom setting, to me that's very concerning. And that means is that there is a small percentage of students that feel very free to express their viewpoints,

and nobody is going to challenge them because they're afraid of how that's going to come across. And again, the cancel culture thing, I mean, we're seeing the devastating effects of students in a post-secondary. You're paying money for an education, and if you feel like you can't say anything for fear of significant retribution, to me, that's really disappointing. that's really problematic and goes against our core principles in academia, which is critically thinking, which is to challenge to come away knowing more to be, you know, contribute to civility in society. The exchange of ideas is just so core and fundamental, especially in a university setting where young adults tend to be quite idealistic, right? They're learning these things. And so, you know, the findings of our studies really,

raised some alarms, in my opinion, about what's going on in a post-secondary setting? David, what are your thoughts? Yeah, to add some numbers in there to Marty's good points. So this one doesn't surprise me, but maybe it'll surprise them in your audience. And that is if a student self-identifies as very conservative, they're 10 times more likely to experience daily mistreatment than a student who identifies as very liberal. So very conservative, 10 times more likely to have daily mistreatment. And again, mistreatment being defined as we talked about earlier,

professor, lowering your grades, social media, harassment, all that sort of stuff. To me, that's not shocking. But what I found very shocking in this study was the fact that, as Marty said, the moderates, those who self-identify as middle of the road, if we include extreme concern all the way down to slight concern, It's staggering. 76.4% of moderate students fear that on social media, there'll be some sort of ramification for what they said in class. Over two-thirds of them fear a lower grade.

Again, moderate middle-of-the-road students, if they expressed a moderate viewing class, over two-thirds, fear a lower grade. And then it was close to 70% feared a formal complaint. Moderate middle-of-the-road students. fearing a formal complaint for expressing their views. And it's not a laughing matter. I just laugh out of nervousness because it's like if you,

like that should be a huge wake-up call because it's in Canada in this country, most of our universities are public institutions. There are very few private universities in Canada. And the private universities we do have have very, very small enrollment. So these are public institutions that are taxpayer funded, and at least in theory, should at least be indirectly accountable to the public. and where the middle of the road, the moderate students, cannot express their views for fear of a formal complaint.

That should be enough to set off alarm bells. Another interesting part of the study was when we look at religious versus non-religious students. Our survey confirmed what stats can already tells you, that two-thirds of students are religious of some kind, only one-third or not, and that's going to be broken up by atheist-gnostic and just haven't thought about it much. that's only a third.

But yet, who are the ones that feel free to express their views on religion without consequence? Of course, it's the atheist and agnostic students. I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but it was close to zero of them fierce, any form of repercussion for expressing what they believe about religion, whereas the religious students, which outnumber the non-religious by two to one, are very hesitant to be honest about what they believe and why they believe it, which again, for the sake of learning, you should be allowed to think out loud in a classroom, I would hope.

And then kind of the last takeaway from my perspective is looking at the data, you go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep. You're doing all these cross-tagulations and using various analytical tools. And in the process, we realize that we can divvy up pretty much the entire sample into one of six, into six different segments. And so those segments would be,

One would be Asian or East Asian, South Asian students. Another one would be those of African American descent. Another one would be Muslim students. Another would be Jewish students. One of them would be straight white males. And then the last category would be those who are either white or Hispanic, but predominantly white, and are secular. So not non-religious students who lean liberal.

And so of those six segments, that pretty much gives you the entire sense. sample, only one of them feels free to express themselves on mostly any of the issues. And that, of course, is the secular liberals. Two of them, the Jews and the straight white males are hesitant on every single issue because they fear consequences on all of the controversial issues. And then the rest of the categories are hesitant on at least two issues. And if you zoom down even deeper to look at very hesitant versus very open. If you really, really get down to it, you start to realize that the only ones who feel completely at liberty to speak their mind in class are those who are not heterosexual, those who are not white, not male, like it's not not conservative and not religious, those five categories. Okay, so how many students identify with all five of those?

It's 0.4%. So less than half of a percent, check all five. of those boxes and they're the only ones who feel completely free to speak to their mind. Bottom line being, it works out to roughly, roughly 75% of students have at least some hesitations in terms of being honest in class. You know, I had a smart hockey man once tell me back in the days of when this podcast was interviewing different NHL slash just sports professionals. And I was talking about hockey and the changing of, you know,

you know, we went from like a two-fight rule to, you know, getting rid of the instigator and on and on and on and forgive me to anyone who isn't Canadian and is kind of shaking their head at this. And he told me back then, hockey mirrors society. So hockey is changing because society is changing. You know, you can sit there and act like you want all the fights, but if that isn't what society is about anymore, it'll slowly change the game. And when you look at the universities, it sounds like,

universities are mirroring society. The people who are the loudest, most outspoken, come from that same group and they fear no reprisal from the government. They're almost, you know, forgive me for putting, I don't mean to put words in anyone's mouth, just my own watchful eye on it. It's, they feel okay to share their opinion because there is no reprisals. You know, I just had on Tim Hagerum,

and I don't know if that name means anything to either of you to, but he was in the U of S as a law student and wrote a letter just wanting open dialogue on basically you know extra time for certain groups of people and just basically pointing out certain subjects were almost taboo to talk about and he was saying well why can't we talk about him and so he wrote a letter and then the suit you of S went after him for having what I would consider you know it's going into a difficult subject but at the same time he's just asking for a conversation conversation around on it and for that they've tried reprimanding them right they've went after them and so what does that do that sends a clear message to any other student it doesn't matter how balanced you are

and trying to navigate a difficult situation maybe just don't go there so I guess I come back to my earlier statement it's like universities are marrying society right now and if you have a group of people that feel emboldened to talk about their position I think that's pretty clear and if you have a different group of people that are like I don't know I'm just going to keep my head down and to work and I'm not going to make any, you know, because society is telling us what is okay and what isn't okay right now. And it looks like it's bleeding into universities. Am I wrong on that thought process? I think you're very right. I know in the social sciences that the stats tell us, you know, when I started at the university almost 20 years ago, the ratio of faculty that leaned

left versus leaned right was about six or seven to one. And recent, not, would suggest it's over 20 to 1. So now we have faculty, right, that clearly align with certain ideologies. And again, if they have the opportunity to, you know, speak from their truths and to share from their ideologies, then that's fine. Like, I'm not against any open discussion. I think that's really helpful and important for us. That's not what we're getting at here. But the concern that we're getting at is, as you said, that society seems to say, certain

certain people should shut up and not say anything, and other people have like a blank check that they can say whatever they want. And to me, that's, the concern is that I want students to learn, I want them to be challenged. I want them to think through these very difficult issues. I have my own opinions on things, but I want students to come away being better human beings and really contributing to civil society. And if you feel you're on the out that you can't say anything, then that really stifles your ability to contribute. And then, you know, you kind of mentioned just you're going to kind of just do your own thing. Is that what we want? Do we want people just sitting there just kind of doing their own thing and thinking their own thoughts and not

sharing that? Like, I don't think that's what we're really, we really want. And so that's a concern is that we want to set an environment. And to me, like I, I'm very supportive of diversity and really inclusion. But what we're seeing in the context of what's happened in the last five years of the diversity, equity, inclusion is doing the opposite. It's having a really polarizing effect. And to me, that's problematic. If you have a policy if you have a way of doing something and it's not working, well, then you need to take a look at it and say, how do we do a better job of this? And one of the things that, you know, for me would be interesting, important is maybe university should be accountable. And maybe, you know, we have rankings

of institutions across Canada in terms of their students of faculty ratios and resources available on campus and research dollars and teaching quality and all those kind of things. And to me, I would really like to see a promotion of freedom from or freedom of expression index. How well do they universities and institutions do to really look at what they're doing? And if I was a student going, I have a choice to go to a few different universities, I would probably want to go to one that includes me that is supposed to. supportive of all viewpoints. That would be, you know, what I think a lot of students would want.

So to me is, as I think through this, like we really, in my opinion, post-secondary institutions, we can't hide anymore that the data is really strong. It's really, we're seeing this echoed in many different areas. And I think our study just kind of highlighted a lot of that. Yes, viewpoint diversity is pretty much, yeah, non-existent. Sorry, Sean, jump in. No, I was just going to say the DEI thing is we love diversity, equity, inclusion, except for diversity of opinion. Yeah. And that is where it falls absolutely flat. We want all the different kinds of people.

We want them all. But if you don't talk our language, then you're ostracized out. That's, you know, like that to me has seemed very evident in society. So this DEI thing is all these nice little words. but if you differ on opinion, I mean, you're reinforcing it with this study. I mean, you're showing that a group of, a large group of students,

even if they're wrong and they're thinking, don't even feel comfortable in sharing it because of reprisals. So I guess, you know, I go, so what does this mean for, I don't even know, is it students? Is it universities? Is it Canada?

Like, gentlemen, what does this mean when you have a group of our up-and-coming students who are going to go into business, and teaching and everywhere, if they don't feel comfortable at all sharing their opinions. Yeah, well, I think to answer that, let's go back to your last question. And I would flip the hockey analogy that I do not believe, of course, there's competing theories of culture change, but I would strongly suggest the evidence is that society, universities are not following or mirroring society.

society is following universities decades after the fact. So what we're seeing in terms of this freedom of, this lack of freedom of expression in class is reflecting at least a decade, if not multiple decades worth of policies at the university level, where diversity equity and inclusion, that has been the agenda for more than a little while at universities. And it's only in the public narrative as of the last probably five, maybe six years. But it's been the university space for a long time.

And I bumped into Gadsad, former Concordia University professor and New York Times bestselling author, bumped into him in a hotel lobby and said, hey, Gat, good to see you. And we started chatting. He's like, yeah, David, I'm citing your university discrimination index in my forthcoming book, which, of course, that index shows that virtually any academic faculty job posting in Canada has some form of DEI in it. And in some cases goes so far as to not allow the high. hiring of, for example, white, white males, you know, one out of five UBC postings are like that. So he, as we're talking, he made some sort of comment that something to the fact of, and he was teasing,

but something to the fact of, David, it's too bad you're 20 years late because I was, I being dad, he was sounding the alarm 20 years ago on these issues because what he was seeing as a professor 20 years ago. So I think we're probably 20, if not 30 years behind the academy. So in terms of changing the channel, yes, there are immediate actions that should be taken at the government level in terms of public funds. And in terms of accountability measures being put in place. And as Martin was saying, different ways of being able to gauge the viewpoint diversity, freedom of expression on campus. So yes, there are immediate levers. Yes, the government can do stuff.

The public should respond. But I think we also need to be realistic that this will have to be. be a generational change simply because of how deeply embedded these ideas are. Yeah, at least 25% of students have fully drunk the Kool-Aid. And so in terms of navigating that, all of us, all Canadian citizens have their work cut out for them in terms of in a responsible, respectful, appropriate way, dialoguing with your neighbors. Yeah, it, it, it, it, it, Let's just say we have our challenges as Canadians because this is a serious and deep problem. There isn't a superficial quick fix to it.

That's an interesting thought, A, that we're downstream in the universities. Actually, it makes, it's very well put. So how do you change where we're at? Like, you know, to just foster kids allowed to be able to say their peace and not worry about receiving. leaving a bad grade or being ostracized from, you know, a professor or all these things. Like, how do you, how do you change that? Like, how do Canadians hear this information and actually change something at the University of Alberta or Saskatchewan or wherever they're sitting so that kids don't feel like they can't say their peace? Like, how do you even begin that?

That's a, it's a monster question and something that I already think about an awful lot. I do think that giving opportunities for people to express their viewpoint, and that's why I, I'm a big supporter of the Heterodox Academy because their goal is to really bring academics together who are, who believe in the different opinions and different viewpoints are actually make you stronger. And so I think there are organizations like that. I think just giving people different opportunities to express their viewpoints on social media is really important. And then I think it really comes down to our daily lives, is that how open are we to have an honest conversation? I think that that's important in any context.

I do think that, you know, what I've seen, Sean, at the university level, is that institutions have really embraced creating policy, creating positions that are very, you know, promote very much of their DEI frameworks. And so now you have institutional policies that are promoting this and moving it forward. And what changes that? Well, I think the economics of that are always something important. I think, I think government should promote the fact that universities should, you know, post their freedom of expression indexes. I really think that accountability piece is really huge. Like I really think if we're going to change, we have to make people accountable because what we're seeing is the people that are not accountable, right, say whatever they want. And then they're free to, you know,

express themselves and the rest of the group isn't. So again, from an economic standpoint, I think if we want to have institutions that really take this seriously and organizations and businesses that take this seriously, why would we not want to do that? Why are we scared of showing the data? Like what's the, what's the concern here? So that's why I'm, for me, it's really important that, that some of the actions are accountability, because I think that that just helps. It just our study, we hope, just promotes some understanding of people to say, you know, when my kid came home and said that he felt embarrassed about what his viewpoints were and he

didn't want to say anything, that his narrative is not the only one. There's a lot of other kids, a lot of other students that are feeling that. And so, okay, bring that together. And like I said, I think the accountability piece is really big. it's a massive you know obviously a systemic big issue but hopefully this just opens people's eyes to where they're willing to say let's let's think about what we're doing and how we can you know really be more inclusive like truly inclusive Dave what what are your thoughts yeah I know I think that was a really good point in terms of you're not alone if you think that this is this crazy

and it's if you think that not being able to express yourself or to think out loud in the university classroom, if that's crazy, you're not alone. And you're actually with the majority. And I think that as a democracy, representative government, where we do vote in our members of parliament and our members of the legislative assembly, we need to be holding these institutions to account. So it's talking to your neighbors about it, talking to family, to friends. And then especially, again, MPs, MLAs, all of that. what we're going to do at the Aristotle Foundation. We're nonpartisan, but we're a research institute. So we're going to keep providing this research pretty soon.

Here we have another study coming out, exposing the waste and the administrative bloat that's been caused by DEI and the universities. And I think, again, people are going to be absolutely shocked at just how many millions and billions of dollars are being wasted, not on teaching, not on learning, not on research at universities. but at one university, you have 71 jobs just for enforcing DEI. And again, those are taxpayer-funded jobs. This is a public institution in this country. And frankly, it's not unique. It's just one of the few universities where we could actually get the data from. So we're going to keep exposing the stuff.

We're going to keep getting the word out there as a research institute that, frankly, we don't care what political parties in power? It's just what is good policy? And we're going to provide the data. so that whoever is in power can then provide, can make informed decisions, but to everyone in your audience, to be informed.

Our studies are very accessible. The work that Marty does is very accessible. Read it. Don't be shy to share with your neighbors, with your friends. Have these hard conversations, and let's not be afraid of navigating our political differences and the things that we should be united on.

I think of the very tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk and how Bernie Sanders, I think, made the best public statement of anybody. And here he is. He's the furthest across the aisle from Charlie Kirk in terms of where their political views are. But one thing for sure they held in common was that we have to be free to be able to debate at a minimum. If we're going to have a parliamentary democracy in Canada, we have to be able to debate. And without fear of consequences. And in this country, presently, way too many young people do fear consequences for debating.

So that has to end that we have to start talking about how wrong that is. And the public pressure needs to shift. So I am, even though the last statement I made, sure, it may have sound a bit dire. And I do think it's a pragmatic, realistic comment. But I do remain hopeful. I am hopeful because I think the pendulum has gone so far one way. And people are starting to realize how ridiculous it is. And it's starting to swing back the other way.

And I think where DEI accelerated was it sounds nice. diversity, equity, inclusion. These are great-sounding things that I think if we agree to what those terms were, I think we'd all be in favor of it. But the reality is it's not. It's exactly the opposite of what claims to be. And Canadians in particular, we pride ourselves on being compassionate and being empathetic and being well-rounded and open-minded, all these things which are beautiful things.

But I think we need to stop being so naive and realize that there is quite a bit, an extraordinary amount of ideological capture in our public institutions. And as a populace, we should not tolerate that regardless of political leanings. Well, what I'll do for the audience is I'll put the link for this study in particular in the show notes. That way they can click on them and go read it for themselves and see everything. And before I let you boys out of here, is there anything we miss that you want to make sure the audience knows whether it's, you know, you brought another study upcoming. I think that'll be interesting to pay attention to. It sounds very much, you know, Blacklocks reporter or Canadian Taxpayers Federation breaking down the numbers, which I'm sure some people would be shocked by.

I don't know if I'm going to be shocked by anymore. I keep seeing the bloat of government in particular. So I don't know if it will shock me, but I'll be interested to see it when it comes out. Regardless, is there anything else that you want to make sure the audience knows about Martin or David before I let you out of here? Yeah, I mean, going back to your last question, Sean, One thing that, you know, I would encourage any young student, like the student you mentioned at University of Saskatchewan, it does take a lot of courage to stand up for what you believe in. But that's an important value and virtue. And so when you do stand up and yes, the first guy through the brick wall is the bloodiest for sure, and we're seeing that.

And yet that's also an important value that we have. And if you, you know, believe in a truth, which is I should be able to express myself and you have the courage to stand up for those convictions, well, good on you. Because, you know, I think that's an important thing is that the more students kind of empower each other and empower an honest conversation, not being, you know, negative and just all critical. But it's really like the goal here is let's promote open discussion. That's the goal. The goal here is let's think through both sides. of the picture. Start a conversation in the university setting of is a traditional family with a mom and dad. Is there scientific and psychological evidence that that's an important thing too

to value? Right. That would be a really controversial subject right in the university classroom right now. Gender, you know, gender transitions. We should be able to talk about those things and come away with it feeling like, okay, I learned something from it, not just somebody ponder the their chest and gallo emotional and said, well, this is, this is how I feel about it. We should be able to come away from those important discussions. So I think, you know, a take-home message for anybody listening would be just keep having the courage to do the right thing. It does take courage to speak the truth.

But that's an important thing. I think that's an important value. I think one of the other data points that, that I think is kind of concerning is just the numbers of Jewish students who, who, who. you know, we're identified as, you know, as part of the Jewish heritage. They, their experience of their, again, this is their perception, but their perception of experiencing regular, abusive interactions with other people was five times out of other demographic groups.

And, you know, I mean, again, should a university be a safe place? Should a university be a place where people of all walks of life, feel that degree of safety? Well, I think we should. And so this is where we're not just talking about ideology, Sean. We're talking about reality. And so that's where it's like, okay, well, this is concerning. We want everybody to be safe. We always talk about having a safe space. Well, part of it is you can have a safe space by welcoming all viewpoints. If you have a classroom and people get fired up and they exchange their viewpoints and they walk away from it saying, okay, I learned something today.

To me, that's empowering. You know, we say that the old added diversity of strength. There's a lot to that, Sean. There's an awful lot to that of true diversity. And we see that in sports and you use your sports analogies. When I, you know, I have the privilege of working with sports teams. And when we see teams that have strong personalities that are very different people, what happens is if they come together, they are stronger.

That's a good thing. And so, you know, when it comes to these strong viewpoints, I'm glad people have them, and I just want to see that in the classroom. I want to see people feel free to express themselves. So those would be some summary statements that I have. Yeah, and the only thing I'd add there is those who are creating an environment where students are not feeling free to express themselves and likewise in society, just know the data is quite clear.

It's a small but very vocal minority that's enforcing that, and a very powerful minority. And so one of the things we wrote towards, the end of the study was there's a very short section just providing a little bit of discussion and commentary reflecting on the findings that were there most of the studies just the hard data but towards the end we speculate that there's a bandwagon effect where whatever's in vogue you're going to have those who hop on the bandwagon simply because they know that that's that's what's in right now and it's advantageous to have those views so if a shift began where

free expression was again welcome or viewpoint diversity was again welcome. I strongly suspect that that's momentum could shift quite quickly. And not only because the majority have these common sense views, but because those who just hopped on the bandwagon will just as quickly hop off. Gentlemen, I appreciate you hopping on and doing this. We got through some technical difficulties at the beginning. But either way, thanks for doing this and bringing light to you know, your study or your polling.

I don't know what you guys call it, but either way. Thank you for giving us some time today. And while we'll be paying attention, David, I assume Martin, you work with them at different times, but the different studies that are coming up will be paying attention. I think that's very interesting to see the younger generation of Canadians,

their thoughts on what's happening in their respective circles. I think that's really important to highlight, and I appreciate you both coming on and talking about it. Yes, thank you, Sean, for happiness.