Diversity Thursday

We have not done a DivThu for awhile, but that is bad on me. I hate the topic, but now and then it needs to be brought up.

The fight is not over. Those who desire to judge people not on the content of their character, but on brainstem tribalism, will not stop.

There are some who feel more than they think. Hope more than they investigate. They think the Diversity Commissariat will only come for "those" with badthink.

No, they are coming for everyone. In nations that do not have all the protections we have - which are almost all - they are using every lever of power in the State to force others to the Party's will.

Just a few pull quotes from a critically important bit by Canadian Murray Klippenstein with Bruce Pardy at Quillette.

Eventually everyone will have to take a stand.

Will you?

Seven years ago, the Law Society of Ontario (which then was still called the Law Society of Upper Canada) created a working group to address “challenges faced by racialized licensees” in Ontario’s legal profession. The working group reported in 2016 that it had discovered “systemic racism” in the profession. While no one will dispute that elements of racism can be found in parts of Canadian society, the collected survey data did not support the conclusion that racism in my profession is widespread and serious. Nevertheless, in December, 2016, Convocation (the legislative body that governs the Law Society) adopted a set of 13 recommendations on the topic. Times being what they are, no one felt comfortable putting the brakes on this process, despite misgivings. The idea that racism was rampant, and that heavy-handed measures were required to address it, took on a life of its own.

One of the listed recommendations was that the Law Society should “require every licensee to adopt and to abide by a statement of principles acknowledging their obligation to promote equality, diversity and inclusion generally, and in their behaviour towards colleagues, employees, clients and the public.” When the Law Society announced this new requirement the following September, its advisory also stated that we Ontario lawyers should “demonstrate a personal valuing” of these principles.

Despite the fact that I always have been a strong advocate for “equality,” this development left me flabbergasted: Our regulator was demanding that lawyers and paralegals draft and then obey a set of specific political ideas—both in their personal and professional lives—as a condition of their license.

Failure to prepare a personal statement of principles in keeping with the Law Society’s directive would likely result (after a short reprieve for re-education) in sanctions, such as an administrative suspension. (The Law Society has not formally announced what the penalty will be, except to say that “progressive measures” would be applied.) Lawyers who are suspended are not permitted to practice law. Their refusal to embrace these values would put their livelihood in peril. The Law Society was prescribing, effectively with the force of law, what to say and what to think. I never imagined that I would ever see such a thing in Canada.

No one is safe. My friends who are liberals have made a devil's bargain with the left. Leftist popular fronts always turn on the weaker partners. 

When it comes to essential liberties, liberals should partner with the traditional conservatives. 

Well, they don't - and so here they find themselves.

As an egalitarian and progressive, I always have been favourably inclined toward “diversity and inclusion.” But I thought those ideas meant a spirit of open-mindedness and respect toward others regardless of their personal characteristics. In fact, that is the opposite of what the Law Society means and intends. In this context, “diversity and inclusion” is code for identity politics—by which we are all slotted into factions defined by appearance, ethnicity and gender (usually through “self-identification”), supposed antagonists in an altogether imaginary and endless zero-sum game of dominance and oppression.
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When it became clear that the diversity faction had captured my profession’s regulators, I felt I had no choice. My first step was to tell the Law Society to, in effect, go to hell. I did so in a long letter, to which I have not yet received a reply. The second step was to refuse to comply with the new requirement. (The Law Society announced that there would be penalties for such failure, though not during the first year—so, thus far, I still have my license.) The third was to wind down my law firm, because I no longer feel that my legal practice is viable in this climate. The fourth was to join in a court challenge to the compulsory Statement of Principles, which is ongoing. Finally, I have joined a group of other lawyers and paralegals who oppose the Statement of Principles and who are organizing a campaign in the upcoming Law Society elections in April. In a surprising development, I will be running for “Bencher” (the somewhat quaint term used to describe the Law Society’s directors), with the goal of changing the Law Society from the inside.

I realized that all of these steps would have reputational consequences for my firm. My opposition to the new rules would create serious internal conflict with my younger associates, who might either agree with the new policy or seek to avoid the notoriety associated with opposing it. My conflict with the Law Society also would become known to my clients, my professional contacts, potential recruits who are still in law school, and my wider circle of progressive friends and supporters. I feared that the principled nature of my stance would be lost on many of these people, who would simply see my efforts as being aimed at undermining the goals of “equality, diversity and inclusion.” Given all this, I believed that I had no choice but to wind down the firm.

Had I tried to keep the firm going, I would face years of increasingly bewildering and dubious claims based on race, sex and other forms of “identity,” all of which could be based on nothing more than “self-identification,” and all of which would now have the official imprimatur of the Law Society. As noted, the required Statement of Principles is just one of 13 measures adopted by the Law Society designed to force identity politics on law firms. Instead of being encouraged to promote an ethos of high professional competence, hard work and teamwork, I would be called on to play the role of full-time equity officer, conscripted to implement an ideology and a system I considered to be intellectually and morally wrong, not to mention, in some ways, simply ridiculous.

I have now largely completed the wind-down of my firm. My associates have formally transferred to other firms, and my firm now consists only of me. I have had a good run, and I can, with sacrifice and deep regret, say goodbye to both the business I built and the vision I had for the remainder of my career. Unlike me, unfortunately, most younger lawyers and paralegals have no realistic option for resisting the Law Society’s authoritarianism. As the new rules make plain, they will increasingly be judged more on the basis of ideology, skin colour and sex chromosomes than by their competence, skills, effort and professional contributions. That is not a career that I would wish upon anyone—including those individuals who are nominally considered as potential beneficiaries of these new rules.