Academics' warning of American-style 'anti-EDI' shift leads feds to backtrack from sensitive info ask
Why It Matters
Several researchers raised concerns about academia and funders’ slow shift to the right, emulating what is happening in the United States. Many also highlighted that they filled the EDI questions in funding applications on the condition that sensitive personal information will remain confidential, or if aggregated, will remain anonymous.
A federal committee has amended a motion to publicly release the confidential information of Canada’s researchers after a petition signed by more than 5,000 academics called the motion an American-style anti-EDI attack.
The original motion, agreed upon by the Standing Committee for Science and Research (SRSR), would have seen the disclosure of information provided by funding applicants to Canada’s three federal agencies: the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
“Data mining like this – with no formal accountability or peer review of the proposed use of the data – is unacceptable,” the petition reads.
While information about funded resea
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