McMaster University

The McMaster HxA Campus Community of Heterodox Academy is a local Canadian chapter of the US-based organization, Heterodox Academy, founded by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Heterodox Academy is led by university insiders including political theorist John Tomasi (formally from Brown University) and is committed to internal reform of universities to re-focus our institutions on core values of open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement. Heterodox Academy is a non-partisan organization and while the Canadian HxA Campus Communities are in the process of creating our own culture and structures that apply to our own national laws and institutions, we work under the umbrella and philosophy of the broader Heterodox Academy organization. Believing that, as the Heterodox Academy website puts it, “meaningful change must come within,” we share Heterodox Academy’s commitment to internal debate, reform and change in universities and reject polarizing political debates in Canada about higher education. Members of the Heterodox Academy Campus Community at McMaster have a broad range of political views, from conservative, liberal, social democratic, classical liberal, libertarian and democratic socialist. Some do not wish publicly to identify politically and-or prefer to focus on research-teaching with little interest in or concern for politics.

Heterodox Academy does not take positions on controversial social policy or intellectual issues, other than on some selected questions outlined on the Heterodox Academy website that centrally concern open inquiry, constructive disagreement and viewpoint diversity. Even within the core Heterodox Academy agenda, the organization has room for a variety of viewpoints on how to best proceed in making our universities centers of open inquiry, constructive disagreement and viewpoint diversity. What brings us together is commitment to Heterodox Academy’s Four Point plan for making universities centers for open inquiry. This means we believe in enshrining knowledge-seeking as McMaster’s non-negotiable purpose, we wish to adopt and uphold a campus-wide commitment to the free exchange of ideas, expand the range of perspectives on campus, and model scholarly virtues in all professional contexts. We endeavor to work constructively with the McMaster administration, faculty association, staff unions, department and programs, student groups and individual faculty, staff and students to promote Heterodox Academy values.