While calls for universities and DEI to be destroyed grow, Heterodox Academy pushes for reform 

Amidst international calls to tear down elite universities and abolish diversity efforts, a U.S.-based nonprofit instead believes both can be reformed rather than burned to the ground.

“Big universities with massive endowments, they’re not going anywhere, and they have enormous cultural influence,” said Heterodox Academy president John Tomasi in an interview with The Hub. “We’re not here to tear [universities] down. We’re here to, in a Socratic way, be gadflies to sting them and to make them and to steer them into a better course.”

Heterodox Academy, an advocacy group with chapters in various North American schools, is dedicated to promoting a new more moderate approach to diversity and inclusion focused on viewpoint tolerance, free speech, colour blindness, and merit.

The organization, co-founded by New York University professor and bestselling author Jonathan Haidt in 2015, argues that diversity on campuses can be a worthwhile initiative, but that the progressive “Diversity Equity and Inclusion” (DEI) ideology has instead created an exclusionary climate and ideological hegemony on university campuses.

“The message [in universities currently is] ‘conservatives need not apply. This is a progressive space, and conservatives will be scorned.’ We’ve created a hostile climate. We have to change that. We have to stop that,” said Haidt.

“We think that the idea that race identity differences should be deeply baked into law across all these different ethnic groups and racial groups is a fundamental mistake,” added Tomasi.

Tomasi, a former Brown University professor who left his tenured position to run the nonprofit, says DEI’s focus on immutable characteristics while forgoing the importance of viewpoint tolerance and free speech is flawed.

Heterodox’s unique approach to DEI comes as the United States (and in some cases  Canada) witnesses the pendulum swing away from “woke,” an ideology that critics say institutionalizes fixations on immutable characteristics like race, gender, and sexual orientation to label individuals as either oppressors or oppressed, as well as censoring anyone who disagrees with its premise.

In February, the Trump administration ordered U.S. schools and universities to end diversity initiatives, with the threat of losing federal funding. He’s also taken aim at DEI efforts in the federal government.

Meanwhile, several large companies that previously championed DEI are moving away from public expressions of the ideology—including Google, Target, Amazon, Meta, McDonald’s, Walmart, and Ford.

DEI ideology is anti-inclusion and anti-diversity 

Tomasi said mandatory DEI statements that require individuals to endorse the ideology as a condition for employment are problematic.

These statements have become common in Canadian and American universities, although some institutions have started to pull back on them.

Tomasi believes DEI statements are a form of compelled speech.

“[It’s] a terrible state of affairs. It’s probably the most vivid sign of how out of whack and how illiberal our universities were becoming for a few years. They’re basically ideological screens to weed out people who don’t have liberal values or [have] conservative values. Even dissenting civil rights views get weeded out,” he said.

Tomasi noted that it’s not just white people or conservatives who are targeted but also ethnic minorities who do not adhere to DEI ideology.

For example, Tabia Lee, a black woman working as a California community college diversity official, alleged her employer fired her for not being the “right kind of Black person” after she refused to engage in what she saw as reverse racism or use the term “Latinx” instead of “Latino/Latina.”

“We hear this story a lot from people of colour. They’re grateful to those before them who fought for inclusion, but the strange thing they experience is that now they’re at these universities and not allowed to speak,” he said.

Embracing “viewpoint diversity” 

Heterodox Academy boasts over 7,000 members, including professors, administrators, and graduate students, at more than 1,800 institutions across 22 countries.

Haidt said the idea for the organisation arose after he noticed what he described as ideological hegemony in academia.

“We were all on one side, and I could see that on any discussion of any politically controversial issue, that bad arguments could be put forth, and nobody would bother to challenge them. By 2015, we all kind of knew it’s the whole academy. So we decided, ‘Hey, let’s do something about it,’” he said.

The organization advocates for an approach that embraces viewpoint diversity, as well as open inquiry, constructive disagreement, colour blindness, and merit.

“We should be moving towards a society that sees people as individuals and respects them as individuals,” said Tomasi.

“A true liberal, civil rights view is forward-looking, it’s constructive, it’s working towards a world that’s hard to achieve but worth striving for. It’s a world where people focus on the content of their character, not the colour of their skin.”

Haidt echoed Tomasi’s concerns, saying that while most people support diversity, the way academia has promoted diversity through DEI ideology is flawed.

“I think almost everybody favours diversity, but the way that diversity has evolved on campus is not the way that most Americans [or Canadians] of every race think about diversity,” he said.

Polling appears to back what Haidt is saying. A 2024 poll by the Leger for the Association for Canadian Studies found that 57 percent of Canadians and 46 percent of Americans oppose DEI hiring.

Heterodox Academy’s growth in Canada

Heterodox Academy has now crossed the border and grown in Canada, with 500 members across multiple Canadian institutions, including Simon Fraser University, McGill University, the University of Toronto, McMaster University, the University of British Columbia – Okanagan, Laval University, and Wilfrid Laurier University.

In late 2024, the organisation made headlines for its Canadian Campus Expression Survey, which found that a large number of Canadian students felt reluctant to talk about controversial issues.

Fifty-four percent of students surveyed said they were reluctant to speak about the Israel-Palestine issue, 51 percent about transgender issues, and 45 percent about political conversations altogether—fearing institutional reprisals.

“The results from the 2024 Canadian Campus Expression Survey raise important questions about how the climate of higher education institutions can foster environments that promote open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement for all students across Canada,” the organisation concluded.

Heterodox Academy’s growth hasn’t come without criticism. It faced blowback from both left-wing and right-wing voices for being perceived as both a pro-free speech group and one aiming to be moderate—supporting diversity without supporting DEI ideology.

Left-wing critics of the organization argue that it pushes conservative ideals and that its assertion that conservative viewpoints are being censored is unfounded. Right-wing critics meanwhile say that Heterodox refuses to leverage political power and that its attempt to be a “big tent” has turned it into “another club for leftists.”

Elite universities can be redeemed 

In the aftermath of October 7, elite universities—once infamous for censoring speech under the guise of safety—began tolerating blatant acts of antisemitism by pro-Palestinian students.

At a now-famous December 2023 congressional hearing, the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—three universities that had scored poorly on the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s campus free speech ranking—refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews constituted bullying or harassment on their campuses.

This led to several critics stating these universities were morally bankrupt and beyond reform.

“The public humiliation of universities…really opened up possibilities for reformers,” noted Haidt.

New “non-woke” alternative universities, such as the University of Austin—co-founded by Bari Weiss, Niall Ferguson, and Joe Lonsdale—or Jordan Peterson’s Peterson Academy, have begun to spring up.

The University of Austin prides itself in championing academic freedom “without fear of censorship or retribution,” offering a liberal education that seeks to “free the mind from ephemeral dogmas and biases.” The university also has merit-based admissions, hiring, and promotions, and offers tuition-free scholarships to all its students.

Peterson Academy meanwhile offers affordable on-demand courses taught by well-known experts (for just $860 per year).

“Maybe it’s time to let Columbia, Yale, and other elite schools become what they already basically are: finishing schools for the children of Chinese, Qatari, and other global elites. And let anyone interested in America’s future pursue education elsewhere,” Liel Leibovitz, editor at large for Tablet Magazine, wrote in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.

Nevertheless, both Tomasi and Haidt believe elite universities can still be redeemed.

Haidt cited the University of Chicago as a historic institution that’s become strongly committed to free speech. The school is known for its pro-free-speech “Chicago Principles.”

He also noted that legacy universities are showing signs of reform—bringing back standardised testing and ending their most divisive DEI policies.

“I think there should be many more universities,” said Tomassi. “We learn things from new universities. They discover things. They try new things. That’s an incredibly important thing.”