Trump is demanding universities change policies or face defunding. Would Poilievre do the same?

U.S. President Donald Trump has been threatening to cancel funding for some universities unless they accede to his demands to change ideological policy, similar to a pledge Pierre Poilievre has made for Canadian post-secondary schools.

But so far, the Conservative leader has been sparse on details of exactly what kind of action he might take.

Trump’s demands, which have sparked condemnation about interference in academic freedom, made headlines this week after the White House said it’s freezing more than $2.2 billion US in grants and $60 million in contracts to Harvard University.

This came after Harvard president Alan Gerber refused to comply with the White House demands, saying in a letter that the university “will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights.”

Poilievre, meanwhile, has also threatened to defund universities over what he perceives as their ideological slant. In a Christmas Eve tweet on X, formerly known as Twitter, Poilievre said he would “defund wokism and fight antisemitism.”

‘Put an end to woke ideology’

That tweet was linked to a telephone interview he gave WinnipegJewishReview.com in which he was quoted as saying he won’t tolerate and will defund “all of those with a woke antisemitic agenda,” including universities that receive federal funding and all federally funded museums. 

He reiterated a similar pledge on March 26 when the party released its Quebec platform, saying a Conservative government would “put an end to the imposition of woke ideology in the federal civil service and in the allocation of federal funds for university research.”

The pledge prompted the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) to release a statement “expressing alarm” over Poilievre’s promise to interfere in the allocation of federal research funding.

“It’s worrying that a leader of a political party in Canada would try to dictate how research funds will be granted,” said David Robinson, CAUT’s executive director. “We’ve seen the impact of this political meddling south of the border where the Trump administration has launched a full-scale assault on universities and the scientific community. This kind of American-style culture war has no place in Canada.”

Beginning with Columbia University, the Trump administration has rebuked post-secondary institutions across the U.S. over their handling of the pro-Palestinian student protest movement that roiled campuses last year following the 2023 Hamas-led attack inside Israel and the subsequent Israeli attacks on Gaza.

Trump has called the protests anti-American and antisemitic, accused universities of peddling Marxism and “radical left” ideology, and promised to end federal grants and contracts to universities that do not agree to his administration’s demands.

On April 3, the White House issued a list of demands to Harvard that included a ban on face masks, limitations on campus protests and a review of academic departments’ biases. About a week later, those demands were expanded to include leadership reforms, changes to admission policy and an end to the university’s recognition of certain student organizations.

The school’s president said Harvard has already made extensive reforms to address antisemitism, but that many of the government’s demands don’t relate to antisemitism and instead are an attempt to regulate the “intellectual conditions” at Harvard.

The roots of ‘woke’

While Poilievre has not released any details of his proposed plans, he still seems to be taking lessons from the U.S. with threats to defund, said Patrick McCurdy, an associate professor of communication at the University of Ottawa.

“I would take it seriously in the same way that he has doubled down and is serious about his threats to defund the CBC,” McCurdy said. “It’s something that people should pay attention to.”

McCurdy was also part of a research study that examined the evolution of anti-woke discourse in debates within the House of Commons from 2019 to 2023. 

Their examination of Hansard records revealed that in 2019, there were only two mentions of the word “woke.” By 2023, the Conservatives’ use of the word had increased to 63 times, with Poilievre responsible for 33 instances that year, their study found.

As McCurdy noted in a recent article he co-wrote for Policy Options, the term “woke” is rooted in the African-American experience of racialized violence and originally meant being aware of racial injustice. Progressives then adopted it to encompass broader societal injustices related to feminist, LGBTQ+ and intersectional concerns, he said.

But the word has since been co-opted as a derogatory term used against some who promote such social justice concerns, and are accused of being fixated or authoritarian on issues including identity politics and equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) policies.

McCurdy’s article, titled The many dangers of Pierre Poilievre’s war on ‘woke,’ argues that his policy pledges such as defunding universities over ideology are just “part an exploitative strategy designed to stoke fears and resentment, entrench divisions and legitimize extreme positions in mainstream politics.”

A ‘threat to academic freedom’

“I would be interested in reading how he might propose this … [and] how this militates against the freedom of researchers, academics and universities to do their research,” McCurdy told CBC News in a telephone interview. “It’s certainly a threat to academic freedom.”

The Conservatives have spoken in the past about defunding universities over their campus policies. During his leadership campaign in 2017, Andrew Scheer said he would pull federal funding from universities that failed to uphold free speech, “shut down debate and can’t stand different points of view.”

This came in response to instances where anti-abortion and pro-Israel events were turned away from university campuses after protests erupted.

Poilievre would later follow up with a similar pledge during his 2022 leadership campaign in which he said if universities want to keep their federal research grants, they’ll need to protect academic freedom and guarantee free speech on campus. He also said he would appoint a “free speech guardian” to ensure universities were following those principles.

As for his current policy pledges, the Conservative Party did not respond to questions from CBC News asking for more details. However, in an interview published April 8 by the English-language media Jewish News Syndicate, Conservative Party candidate Neil Oberman, who is running in the Quebec riding of Mount Royal, said he supports cutting funding to universities that are not doing enough to combat antisemitism on their campuses.

“[Universities] will not receive a single penny from the federal government until they clean up their act,” he said.

Stéphane Sérafin, an assistant professor of law at the University of Ottawa who believes that woke ideology is a problem at universities, said the Liberal government has been very aggressive in imposing ideological requirements on research that includes EDI initiatives.

But he said he’s unsure what exactly Poilievre is contemplating.

“I would assume that at the very least they’d be looking to remove the kind of EDI requirements that have been added to those research funds. Beyond that, I can only speculate.”

Sérafin questioned whether a Conservative government would add requirements that comply with their ideological preferences, or if it would simply defund universities.

“Does he want to defund everything, or does he only want to target specific programs?” Sérafin asked of Poilievre’s intentions.

“He’s never kind of explicitly laid out a plan for how this would be done,” he said. “It’s kind of like one of those issues where the devil really is in the details.”