Christopher Dummitt: Racism accusations can’t stifle the truth about diversity

Advertisement 1 This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Breadcrumb Trail Links HomeNP Comment Christopher Dummitt: Racism accusations can't stifle the truth about diversity The data says that diversity quotas reduce excellence. Critics have responded not by producing alternate data, but by lobbing insults Author of the article: By Christopher Dummitt Published Sep 12, 2026 Last updated 53 minutes ago 5 minute read Join the conversation PHOTO BY GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO Article content In a Macdonald-Laurier Institute report published last week, authors Eric Kaufmann, Leif Rasmussen and Jonah Davids dare to ask what seems to be, for some, a forbidden question in Canada: Does prioritizing diversity in hiring mean losing excellence? Article content The claim that equity leads to research excellence is made regularly. Our national research funding agencies declare that equity “strengthens research outputs and increases the overall excellence of research,” and the Canada Research Chairs program itself, which mandates diversity quotas, insists that “Achieving a more equitable, diverse and inclusive Canadian research enterprise is essential to creating the excellent, innovative and impactful research necessary to seize opportunities.” Article content RECOMMENDED VIDEOS Article content Article content The MLI report set out to test that claim using the CRC program, which was created in 2000 to reverse the brain drain of Canada’s brightest minds abroad, hardly a solved problem. Article content Right? The National Post newsletter that doesn’t hold back, giving readers the unvarnished truth on media, politics and culture. Sign Up By signing up, you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Article content Since 2017, partly in response to human rights tribunal claims and criticism that it wasn’t diversifying fast enough, the CRC program imposed diversity quotas: universities that didn’t meet them risked losing chairs altogether. It worked. White male representation fell from roughly 80 per cent of positions to about 25 per cent today. So far, so good, you might say — why shouldn’t the chairs roughly reflect the population? Article content The MLI report then asks what the consequence has been — and here’s where things get controversial. It tries to measure how research excellence changed alongside these shifts, using h-index (a widely used, not…