Carleton University researcher Manjeet Birk will study equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies at Ottawa universities after receiving a federal Insight Development research grant.
Birk said she was “elated” to see an institutional commitment to her project, which seeks to understand how EDI policies function on university campuses and serve communities of colour.
Throughout her time in academia, Birk said she has seen EDI policies implemented differently at post-secondary institutions across Canada. She developed the idea for her research project after Carleton launched its five-year EDI action plan in 2021.
“I was really inspired by that moment to think, OK, we have this great document. How does it actually get implemented and what differences does it actually make in the lives of people who are experiencing it on campus?’” Birk said.
Through the Insight Development grant, Birk’s project received just under $63,000 in funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
The money will fund data collection, student researchers and travel to conferences to present the research, Birk said.
Her project, named “EDI or Bust?” is still in its early stages. Currently, Birk is working toward the best way to gather information about EDI policies and track progress.
Birk said she originally wanted to conduct interview-based research, but will now pivot after experiencing challenges in contacting EDI-involved staff on campuses. The small number of people conducting EDI work and budgetary crises at universities often place EDI initiatives on the “back burner,” Birk said, creating obstacles for EDI research.
EDI in universities also depends on the “ebb and flow” of public attention and the political climate, according to Carleton law professor Rebecca Bromwich.
She said equity action should have strategic and long-term plans, so it is not “swept away by whatever ends up being in the news cycle at any particular time.” She pointed to current changes in public discourse around immigration and international students as an example of political climates leading to more exclusionary rhetoric.
EDI is currently in an “ebb” period of budget decreases after reaching a high in 2020, Bromwich said. However, she said EDI action in universities remains crucial, and post-secondary spaces have an “additional layer of duty” as educational institutions.
“There’s the explicit and the implicit curriculum,” Bromwich said. “Whatever people see modeled in a post-secondary context is what’s normalized to them.”
Universities can also be a “window or a bottleneck” for diversity within workplaces, Bromwich added. If university student bodies aren’t diverse, she said workplaces will struggle to hire diversely.
Julien Doris, a research administrator at the Université du Québec en Outaouais, said effective EDI policies remove barriers to employment access, advance careers and improve the lives of people belonging to minority groups.
Different universities can have different internal EDI policies, he said, but the philosophy behind equity action plans is the same.
“It’s not only access to employment, it’s how to improve the quality of the workplace,” Doris said.
Birk said that while commitments to EDI by individual faculty members are “impressive,” EDI policies often simply serve the interests of universities as white settler supremacist institutions.
“The crux of it is, we have so many commitments,” Birk said. “But are the lives of the people on campus actually changing? I don’t know. It remains to be seen.”
In the end, Birk said she hopes her research will have a “tangible difference” in the way that racialized and Indigenous faculty, students and staff engage on campus.
“Ultimately, I am less committed to the policies themselves and more committed to the people.”
Featured image provided by Manjeet Birk.
