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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

No, Mr. Mayor outside organizers are not responsible for student radicalism

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Philip Carl Salzman

While there are malevolent outside actors doing what they can with universities, the influential corruption is internal.

In his May 1 press conference on the university student demonstrations, occupations, and riots, New York Mayor Eric Adams blamed outside professional organizers for radicalizing our young people in universities in New York, on campuses throughout the country, and around the world. Exactly who these sinister outside forces are, the mayor did not specify.

Of course, the mayor is correct that there are outside professional organizers and agitators who have infiltrated campuses and encouraged even more extreme measures by demonstrators. Everyone sees the uniformity across the country of materials provided, such as tents and signs.

Yes, these are malevolent forces bent on transforming or destroying the United States. But funders and organizers are facilitators and enablers, not primary motivators. Mr. Adams is right in saying that professionals are behind these upheavals. But outside agitators and funders are not shaping the hearts and minds of university students. Rather, the professionals responsible for students’ mindsets are not external to universities; they are the employees of universities, who have been working on the students, miseducating them, throughout their entire university careers.

The satirical website Babylon Bee gets it right. With reference to the occupation of the Columbia University administration building, the Bee article headline is “Oh No! Indoctrinated Woke Extremists Destroy Woke Extremist Indoctrination Center.”

Quoting an imaginary university official, the Bee stated: “‘We didn’t see this coming,’ said one official. ‘After spending decades brainwashing young, impressionable people into volatile, savage revolutionaries, we were shocked to see them unleash such volatility and savagery while trying to launch a revolution. We wish there had been warning signs along the way.’”

Would that this were only humorous parody. Alas, it is an accurate representation of our universities in the 21st century. The many professors who have joined the demonstrators-occupiers-rioters, and who knows how many administrators and staff, is proof of the nature of today’s education.

The Bee continued:

“Students who engaged in the violent attack were thankful for the years of intense training they received from the institution they were now actively working to destroy. …

“At publishing time, the school’s leadership was confident that the government would do nothing to impede their ongoing efforts to make the country worse and more dangerous.”

The many pleas from well-meaning observers for the occupiers to desist so that students can return to their classes are beside the point. Their classes are where they were radicalized. The faculty itself is almost entirely radicalized.

Left-wing university monoculture today is nothing like the Enlightenment-based university that I attended in the mid-20th century, where the emphasis was on searching for the objective truth of reality using reason, evidence, and well-founded conclusions. Universities have now rejected the search for truth in favor of activism based on far-left Marxist “truths,” which may not be questioned.

Among these “truths” is the certainty that all people in the world are divided between evil, ruthless oppressors and exploiters and innocent, noble victims. In this class conflict, which is the only important feature of human life, black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBT people, females, the disabled, and Muslims are all innocent victims of whites, Asians, and Jews, heterosexuals, males, the able, and Christians.

“Victims” are represented in universities by grievance subjects, which at first leaked into but then flooded the humanities and social sciences. Feminist, Black, Queer, Islamic, and Disabled Studies do not exist to investigate truth and reality but to advocate for the victims they represent, and to spur change to the advantage of their designated category.

As part of this project, one common belief among grievance subjects, and now the humanities and social sciences, is that Western civilization must be abandoned as oppressive, and Western countries, such as the United States and Canada, must be transformed entirely or destroyed. Anti-colonial studies “prove” that these countries are in any case invalid and that the American and Canadian citizens are “colonial settlers” without legitimate standing.

University administrators are not innocent victims of these trends. On the contrary, they are primary instigators. They impose the “diversity, equity, and inclusion” manifestations of the “social justice” ideology, leading to official implementation of reverse racism, reverse sexism, and segregation. Discrimination against “oppressors” is not only tolerated; it is also systematically imposed and celebrated.

While student bodies have remained consistent in size, and the professoriat has, if anything, shrunk, not to mention the increased reliance on untenured, temporary “sessional” lecturers (a great financial saving), administrations have exploded in size, increasing to double or triple in most universities. One source of this is “DEI officers,” hired at every level and in every unit, at huge cost, to serve as political commissars policing thought and speech, so that no one can deviate from politically “correct” belief and expression.

Any professor, lecturer, or instructor professing opinions not in line with “social justice” and radical change are quickly identified and surrounded by DEI commissars and forced to confess error, go to re-education programs, lose privileges of various kinds—forget promotion and funding—and, if stubborn in deviation, termination outright, and banishment from the university. This puts great power in the hands of students, who only have to say that they are offended by what a professor says, and she (more rarely he today) is on the chopping block.

So while there are malevolent outside actors doing what they can with universities, the influential corruption is internal. If you block the outsiders, nothing will change. The universities are the source of the radicalism.

Philip Carl Salzman is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at McGill University and Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

Economy

One Solution to Canada’s Housing Crisis: Move. Toronto loses nearly half million people to more affordable locations

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Wendell Cox

The largest CMA, Toronto, had by far the most significant net internal migration loss at 402,600, Montreal lost 162,700, and Vancouver lost 49,700.

Canadians are fleeing overpriced cities to find more affordable housing. And restrictive urban planning policies are to blame.

Canadians may be solving the housing crisis on their own by moving away from more expensive areas to areas where housing is much more affordable. This trend is highlighted in the latest internal migration data from Statistics Canada.

The data covers 167 areas comprising the entire nation, including Census Metropolitan Areas (CMAs), which have populations from 100,000 to seven million. It also includes the smaller Census Agglomerations (CAs), which have a core population of at least 10,000, as well as areas outside CMAs and CAs in each province and territory, which are referred to as “largely rural areas.”

Long-standing migration trends have been virtually reversed. Larger cities (CMAs) now see the highest loss of net internal migrants, while smaller cities (CAs) are experiencing solid gains. Between 2019 and 2023, Canada’s CMAs lost 273,800 net internal migrants to smaller areas, including CAs and largely rural areas. This contrasts sharply with the previous five-year period (2014 to 2018) when CMAs saw only a 1,000-person loss.

So, where did these people go? A significant portion – 108,100 – moved to CAs, which captured 39 per cent of the CMA losses. This is triple that of the previous five years (2014 through 2018).

However, the most notable shift occurred in largely rural areas, which gained 165,700 net internal migrants, representing 61 per cent of CMA losses. This is a dramatic increase compared to the 33,700 net loss in the previous five years.

Among the 167 areas, the migration data is stunning.

The areas experiencing the greatest net internal migration are outside CMAs and CAs. The largely rural area of Ontario saw the biggest gain, with a net increase of 78,300 people – nearly 40 times the number from the previous five years. Meanwhile, rural Quebec placed second, with a net gain of 76,200 people, more than 10 times the increase in the prior five years. The Calgary CMA ranked third (and first among CMAs) at 42,600, followed by the Ottawa Gatineau CMA (Ontario and Quebec) at 36,700 and the Oshawa CMA at 34,900.

The largest CMA, Toronto, had by far the most significant net internal migration loss at 402,600, Montreal lost 162,700, and Vancouver lost 49,700. Outside these CMAs, nearly all areas posted net gains.

People have also started moving to the Maritimes. The Halifax CMA tripled its previous gain (21,300). In New Brunswick, Moncton nearly quadrupled its gain (7,000). Modest gains were also made in Fredericton and Saint John as well as in Charlottetown in Prince Edward Island.

Meanwhile, housing affordability in Canada’s largest CMAs has become grim. Toronto’s median house price to median household income has doubled in less than two decades. Vancouver’s prices have tripled relative to incomes in five decades. Montreal’s house prices nearly doubled relative to incomes over two decades.

These CMAs (and others) have housing policies typical of the international planning orthodoxy, which seeks to make cities denser. In effect, they have declared war against “urban sprawl,” trying to stop any material expansion of urbanization. These urban containment policies, which include greenbelts, agricultural reserves, urban growth boundaries and compact city strategies, are associated with the worst housing affordability. Land prices are skewed upward throughout the market. Demand continues to increase ahead of incomes, but the supply of low-cost suburban land, so crucial to controlling costs, is frozen.

Regrettably, some areas where people have fled are also subject to urban containment and housing affordability has deteriorated rapidly. Between 2015 and 2022, prices in Ontario CMAs London, Guelph, Brantford and St. Catharines have about doubled. BC’s Fraser Valley and Vancouver Island have seen similar increases. Those moving to these areas are ahead financially, but the rapidly rising house prices are closing opportunities.

There are proposals to restore housing affordability, though none tackle the urban containment policies associated with the price increases. Indeed, we have not found a single metropolitan area where housing affordability has been restored with the market distortions of the intensity that have developed in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal (not in our Demographia International Housing Affordability report or elsewhere). Such markets have become unsustainable for most new entrant households because they cannot afford to live there.

Housing is not a commodity. Households have varying preferences, from ground-oriented housing (detached and townhomes) to high-rise condos. Indeed, a growing body of literature associates detached housing with higher total fertility rates. According to Statistics Canada, Canadians have favoured lower densities for decades, a trend that continued through the 2021 Census, a trend that continued through the 2021 Census, according to Statistics Canada.

With governments (virtually around the world) failing to maintain stable and affordable housing markets, it’s not surprising people are taking matters into their own hands. Until fundamental reforms can be implemented in the most expensive markets, those seeking a better quality of life will have no choice but to leave.

First published in the Financial Post.

Wendell Cox is a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy and the author of Demographia International Housing Affordability.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Destructive Legacy of Gender Theory’s Popular Pioneer

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From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Lee Harding

The idea that gender is disconnected from sex was popularized by psychologist John Money. Perverted minds produce perverted ideas. Unfortunately, Money’s legacy of destruction continues.

The idea that sex drives come out of nowhere and have nothing to do with biology should be dismissed out of hand, given the countless generations of procreated human and even animal species. Yet, in 1961, Money claimed that “erotic outlook and orientation is an autonomous psychological phenomenon independent of genes and hormones.”

Money later said that “like hermaphrodites, all the human race follow the same pattern, namely, of psychological undifferentiation at birth.”

In other words, no one is born heterosexual, and there are no biology-based differences in how men and women act. By 1973, even Money had to acknowledge a wide body of research that showed “fetal gonadal hormones . . . have an influence on neural pathways in the brain.” Still, he emphasized nurture over nature.

Money had a chance to test his theories after the birth of Winnipeg twin brothers Bruce and Ron Reimer, born in 1965. A botched circumcision left Bruce’s penis almost severed, seemingly damaged beyond function. Their parents saw Money on TV in 1967 and went to his gender clinic at Johns Hopkins University.

The clinic was the first of its kind and specialized in cross-sex surgeries. Money convinced the parents to have Bruce’s penis and testes removed, rename him Brenda, and raise him as a girl. Both twins visited Money annually, and Money used their example on a lecture circuit to insist that gender roles were instilled and not innate.

This was complete fiction, but the truth didn’t come out until it was exposed by psychologist H. Keith Sigmundson and biologist Milton Diamond in a medical journal in 1997.

The twins’ mother Janet recalled how Brenda hated dresses, sewing, and dolls. Instead, the child preferred to play soldier, dress in men’s clothes, tinker with tools and gadgets, and even stand up to pee. When Brenda told doctors “she” felt she wasn’t a girl, they discounted it.

It turns out Money made the twins inspect each other’s genitals. His therapy involved forcing the twins into a simulation of sexual positions and motions, something Money justified as healthy childhood sexual exploration. Money photographed this while as many as six colleagues looked in person. If either child resisted orders, the doctor responded with anger and verbal abuse.

This disturbing account is not entirely surprising. Money participated in nudism and group sex as part of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. He advocated open marriages and even compiled a pornographic presentation for students at Johns Hopkins Medical School called “Pornography in the Home.”

In his 1975 book Sexual Signatures, Money wrote, “[E]xplicit sexual pictures can and should be used as part of a child’s sex education…. [to] reinforce his or her own gender identity/role,” Money explained.

By the age of 13, Brenda so dreaded the annual visit to Money that she threatened suicide. Her parents sent her anyway. Consultants at the Baltimore clinic recruited male-to-female transsexuals to convince Reimer it was better to be female and have a vagina. This so disturbed Reimer, that she ran away from the hospital and hid on the roof of a nearby building.

In 1980, Reimer begged her father to know the truth and he finally admitted her birth as a male. The family moved and the child took the name David. Next, endocrinologists, psychologists, and surgeons did their best to reconstruct Reimer’s manliness. Money stopped talking about the twins on the lecture circuit but did not confess how woefully wrong he was.

In 1979, Dr. Paul McHugh, chief psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, investigated whether their sex reassignment surgeries helped the psycho-social problems of patients. The answer was so clearly “no” that the clinic stopped doing them.

In 2004, McHugh recalled that those operated on “had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before.” He added, “I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.”

When the gender clinic was shut down in 1980, Money started another clinic at Johns Hopkins for gender “paraphilias,” a polite term for deviancies. That year, he told Time magazine, “A childhood sexual experience, such as being the partner of a relative or of an older person, need not necessarily affect the child adversely.”

In 1991, Money told Paidika, a pro-pedophilia journal in the Netherlands that a mutually acceptable sexual relationship between a ten-year-old boy and a man in his 30s was not “pathological in any way.” He said efforts to keep children from sexual activity, including sexual consent laws, was “really a diabolically clever ploy to establish anti-sexualism on a big scale.”

David Reimer killed himself in 2004, while Money died in 2006. Too bad the psychologist’s warped ideas didn’t die with him. In practice, they lead to futility and failure.

Lee Harding is a Research Fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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