By Attacking Science, Poilievre Takes a Page from Trump’s Playbook

Federal Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s platform states that if elected, his government will “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

To us, professors working in neuroscience and brain health, these words are chilling. The phrase is almost identical to wording used by the Trump administration to justify freezing medical research funding and targeting universities with diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, policies.

Nearly all research, regardless of discipline, depends on academic faculty applying for government grants. Now, in the United States, if a grant contains any “banned words,” it is flagged for cancellation or rejection.

On the banned list are the words “female” and “women,” as well as “trans” and “disabled.”

The result? Faculty positions and grants have been terminated abruptly and 75 per cent of scientists are thinking of leaving the country. To renew their funding, a leading figure running one major study told me in confidence that they renamed participants’ genders as “man” and “non-man.”

Securing a federal grant is typically required for an academic to be eligible for tenure, or a permanent appointment, at their post-secondary institution. If academics aren’t awarded tenure within seven years of starting their position, they are let go. Restricting what faculty are allowed to study therefore restricts who is allowed to have a job.

Research is shaped by the people who do it. Greater diversity in any institution leads to better outcomes, just like diversity in your retirement portfolio safeguards the return on your investments.

For academia, reducing diversity will limit the range of ideas that generate experiments and, therefore, what we can discover. This will lead to worse health outcomes for everybody.

DEI is in everyone’s best interest

For decades, most biomedical research used only male subjects, particularly if model systems like cells or rodents were involved. Since 2015, Canadian government funding agencies have mandated that researchers study both sexes, or all genders, or rigorously justify why they can’t.

It seems obvious that if samples from both sexes are not analyzed, the chances decrease that any discovery made will apply to both men and women.

Why is this important? Because we know that, for numerous brain health conditions, men and women are not equally susceptible.

Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia are more common in men. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, is diagnosed and treated more often in men than in women, but research suggests women and girls may be consistently under-identified and misdiagnosed.

Alzheimer’s disease, major depression and general anxiety disorder are more common in women.

We also know not everyone gets better when given the same drugs: what works wonders for one person is completely ineffective for another, even if they have the same diagnosis and experience the same symptoms.

People can end up with the same conditions but through different pathways. For some, life events such as an abusive childhood or prolonged stress contribute to their health problems. For others, there is no obvious trigger and the cause is likely determined by their brain’s biology and gene expression.

Why is this related to DEI? Because increasing the diversity of subjects included in scientific experiments increases the chances that we will discover all the ways that schizophrenia or Alzheimer’s develops, not just what causes these problems in men.

That knowledge can be used to develop a range of treatments that target these diverse causes.

The bottom line: DEI increases the chances that doctors can prescribe a treatment that works for you.

So why threaten to stop it? Under the cover of fighting against “woke ideology,” the Trump administration is trying to fulfil a major Project 2025 goal — to destroy universities.

As U.S. Vice-President JD Vance has said, “professors are the enemy.” Ideas are as effective a weapon as bombs, and universities are where many new ideas form, are debated and are taught.

Professors have tenure for an age-old reason: to protect academic freedom. Tenured faculty cannot be punished for expressing ideas the government doesn’t like. As such, we are the canaries in the coal mine.

We are supposed to sound the alarm when the public should be concerned about what politicians are doing.

So, consider this an attempt to light the beacons and hope they are seen. People have fought long and hard to bring DEI to academia. We now need to fight in its defence.

Tenured professors and scientists must form the backbone of resistance for all Canadians. We cannot stand idly by and let this egregious language go unchecked.

We must speak out. If we don’t, we now have a pretty good idea of how it ends.

*Story updated on April 16, 2025 at 5 p.m. to note a nuance in the gendered diagnosis and treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.