Need Not Apply

In 2022, the University of Calgary rolled out a “cluster hiring initiative,” with the aim of recruiting, over the following three years, forty-five new professors from “equity-deserving” groups: women, Indigenous peoples, visible or racialized minorities, persons with disabilities, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. White men who were neither disabled nor LGBTQ+ could not apply. And who qualified as a visible or racialized minority? Those who were “Arab, Black, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Latin American, Korean, South Asian, Southeast Asian, West Asian,” according to the school’s Dimensions Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

The Calgary policy was quite obviously a case of discrimination, but advocates justified it as an overdue exercise of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The plan did not simply recommend taking these group identities into consideration; they were the criteria. Presumably, or at least hopefully, academic achievement, demonstrated...