Thank you for your patience as I get this site organised.
Welcome to Keeping an Eye on EDI.
I spent a good deal of time during Covid lockdowns researching Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) programs and policies. Why?
I worry about the possible n-th order negative consequences of the rapid, ubiquitous, and uncritical adoption of EDI policies and programs in general, and in Canadian universities in particular. Worse, I worry that these policies and programs, i.e. their architects and employees, have made critical analyses nigh impossible. E.g. to do so is to reveal your bigotry.
Here I share my findings and analyses with scholars and other interested parties. I include citations, or at least all information required for the citation format of your choice. Use my work freely. I’m only worried about credit for original works I’ve authored, as noted at the beginning of these posts.
This EDI-watch project is best undertaken as a collaborative. I welcome comments and guest contributors.
I am not inclined to censor trolls and ad hominen attacks in the comments. However, I will limit repetitious comments of these sorts to make the most of productive discussion. So, you get to be nasty only once.
The organization of this site is a work in progress. Content includes the following:
- EDI policies and job ads
- EDI related bibliographies
- The role of EDI in grants and other funding
- The role of the Canadian Federal and Provincial governments in EDI
- Critical analyses of EDI concepts and terminology
- The relationship between woke-ism and EDI
- Hypotheses of broader historical social phenomena giving rise to EDI; e.g. Liberation Theology
- Autonomous effects of EDI, both negative and positive
- The impact of EDI programs on academic freedom
- The origins and evolution of EDI
- EDI in the news
- Suggestions/requests from readers.
You can contact me at pamspencil@gmail.com. Please wait at least one week for a reply.
Keeping An Eye On EDI 
This is a great idea. I suggest adding something on the philosophy of EDI, particularly a linguistic analysis.
I see EDI as an emotive use of language making it more difficult to disagree or be critical. If you think of the opposites of EDI, inequity, monoracial and exclusionary, who would be in favour of these? SInce words like equity are virtues while words like inequity are not, the language creates pressure for approval. But what do these approved words really mean in actual policies?
For example, diversity in what characteristics? How much diversity, etc. Since words like diversity are boundless they mean whatever someone in authority says they mean, and any disagreement equals rejection of diversity. In short, this vocabulary of EDI is power shifting, from the subjects of the diversity policies to the policy makers and implementers.
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Pamela! As a fellow lover of curry and cautious critic of all things EDI – tell the Howard I said hi, and I’ll read on with interest.
Be well and good luck in your endeavours!
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Great initiative Pamela! I’m particularly interested to learn more about the history of this movement that seemed to arrive and be uncritically accepted very quickly. Who were the key players who got this ideology inserted as policy at almost every institution?
Have you thought about working towards an edited book of diverse perspectives on EDI in the academy, for example? This would be really helpful I think, as there doesn’t seem to be any good books on this topic, especially (surprisingly) making the case for EDI.
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