Jamie Sarkonak: Commons report recommends DEI by stealth

A demonstrator supporting Harvard University's admission process holds a sign that reads "Defend Diversity" during a protest outside of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) Harvard station in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on Sunday, Oct. 14, 2018. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Bloomberg via Getty Images

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This month, the House of Commons committee on science and research recommended a ban on diversity quotas in federal research programs, along with all references to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the granting process. But you should probably hold your cheers: that very same committee has also suggested an even tighter embrace of DEI.

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The paradoxical recommendations conclude a study on federal research granting criteria that has been underway for two-ish years. While they leave much to be desired, they at least signal that a stigma is beginning to grow around race-based policy, forcing some of its greatest advocates to retreat from their brash stances.

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At present, the federal funding agencies discriminate against researchers as a matter of routine. Some grant programs, such as the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program, operate with hard identity-based requirements as a means of fighting systemic discrimination — which in turn is a form of systemic discrimination, because it excludes whole categories of applicants on the basis of race or sex.

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In other instances, the discrimination is more subtle: some federal grants require applicants to commit to upholding DEI — amounting to forced political speech — and in general, as it’s practiced in the federal funding ecosystem, DEI is about imposing a value system where people in dominant, privileged identity groups are believed to oppress the rest of society.

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So, the committee’s insistence that references to DEI be eliminated from the grant pipeline would have been much more welcome if it were paired with a recommendation to strip the essence of DEI from federal funding. Instead, it was paired with a recommendation to double down and “introduce compulsory training on equity, diversity and inclusion principles and on the ethical and societal impact of research for all funding program applicants.”

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In other words, the instruction is to peel off the nuclear hazard sticker without actually removing or containing the radioactive substance at the heart of the problem.

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The committee also recommended that DEI be made a mandatory element of research design in projects applying for federal funding. Finally, it recommended that federal funding agencies “create incentives for inclusive research teams and establish dedicated funding sources and incentives for projects that demonstrate fair and equitable hiring practices, whose management teams are diverse and feature collaborations with historically excluded communities.”

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That is, the Commons science committee wants to ban diversity quotas from funding allocation while also forcing grant applicants to adopt DEI into their own research and hiring practices. Diversity quotas aren’t so necessary when everyone has to abide by principles that get you there anyway, right?

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What we’d get, if the government followed the committee’s recommendations, is DEI by stealth.

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In this way, the report was a good representation of the government’s approach to DEI and race-based policy in 2026. It’s no longer loud and proud like it was from 2019 to 2023, with officials bragging about their latest batch of DEI grants and strategies as critics are cowed into silence. But neither is it on the retreat. Instead, those promoting DEI have adopted a quieter stance, recognizing that the survival of these unpopular policies depends on people forgetting they exist.