Have there been any news reports on how likely that thing is to getting passed?
Three real thoughts on reading the article. First, the person ends it with a rhetorical flourish of stating that this is wrong because universities are places for a diversity of thoughts and opinions. I think that there could in fact be a solid defense of this bill along those lines by pointing out that there is a trend of an overrepresentation of certain viewpoints and beliefs among those who act as instructors in institutions of higher learning, and as such forcing them to hire people with more different viewpoints would thus support the goal of having students interacting with and understanding more ways of seeing the world. Secondly, given the sort of person who'd go about and make a bill like that, I suspect that one major flaw will be that it'd be in force even in departments where the politics of the instructor should never matter, at all. So, basically everything but the humanities, liberal arts, and philosophy. Third, I also suspect that this guy isn't putting in the sorts of safeguards you need to make an affirmative action bill, like this is, work. Namely, are there provisions here that show how this bill will eventually lead to its own obsolescence, are there provisions for showing how the ideological makeup of faculty is changing, for showing how this change willbe self-sustaining over time without legal oversight, and when they can expect this to happen so they can track expectations vs. results, and effectively know when they can stop forcing an unfair job market and allow people to apply based entirely on their own merits once more?
Frankly, since applying to a job like university teach is a self-selecting trait, and unlike most affirmative action bills, this one aims for political views, which is also a self-selecting trait, and given there are signs of a correlation between belonging to one political group and seeking to teach at a post-secondary level (or even, I suspect, at any level), I would be shocked to find that there are any unbiased studies which suggest that the ideological makeup of the professors at post-secondary institutions will ever be the same as the general public without it being strongarmed by law or forced hiring practices.
Huh, that took up more than I thought it would. Anyways, on to what I actually came here thinking about.
Not sure I was ever gonna say these words, but I'm kinda impressed by Trudeau's damage control savvy. While I'm not sure how big a percentage of his electoral base they are, there's certainly a very vocal, noisy portion which was in love with one thing they thought he'd do, and another he'd promised to do. Namely, not build more oil pipelines, and changing our electoral system, by fiat if necessary (because having the party in power right now determine the method by which any other party might try to replace them by fiat is a genius idea, but I digress). He's since given the ok to two major pipelines, and he recently dropped the bomb that he isn't going to change the electoral system after all. Cue the sound and fury and the marches and the petitions.
The clever thing is, he dropped that bombshell about two and a half weeks before he was due to meet Trump for the first time. So the dude pulls off some of the political theatre him and his father are so good at, gets along well enough with Trump while landing enough small digs that everyone can read in subtle insults and evasions of the more egregious Trumpisms. And now all that anger is gone because if there's something the noisy ones hate more than pipelines and British systems of voting, it's Trump. And now we're back to a chorus of Trudeau's general awesomeness and even a few shirtless Trudeau pics (though I'm really hoping those go away soon. Damned things were fricking everywhere back during the honeymoon).
