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Douglas Todd: Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein put UBC at centre of debate over academic activism

Against opinion polls showing three in four Canadians believe political ideology should be kept out of universities, five years ago UBC hired left-wing climate activists Lewis and Klein as professors.

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When the University of B.C. hired left-wing activists Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein as faculty, Canada’s second-largest post-secondary institution took a firm position on a polarizing discussion over whether academics should openly advocate for political causes.

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Against opinion polls showing three in four Canadians believe political ideology should be kept out of universities, five years ago UBC hired filmmaker Lewis — who was elected leader of the federal NDP on March 29 — and well-known climate activist Klein.

While PhDs are required for virtually anyone seeking to be a professor at UBC, Lewis has only a bachelor’s degree.

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Klein, author of many books and journalism articles, does not have a degree.

In the year ending April 1 of 2025, Lewis, employed part-time, was paid $92,000.

Klein was paid $277,000.

The UBC geography website says Lewis is currently “on leave”. UBC officials say he last taught in the winter of 2024, a third-year course titled “climate justice”.

Klein teaches one graduate seminar a year, called “topics in human geography”. She is among “multiple instructors” of a second-year course called “climate emergency”. And she has the title “co-director, engagement,” at UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice.

The debate over whether universities and professors should take political stands has grown into a fiery one.

In a recent poll, Leger Opinion asked Canadians if they believed “political ideology should be kept out of universities and colleges to ensure that thinking and learning can take place.” Seventy-one per cent agreed, while 20 per cent disagreed, and the rest didn’t register their opinion.

In January, Harvard University president Alan Garber broke with years of recent post-secondary culture and said the university “went wrong” by allowing professors to inject their personal views into the classroom, arguing that faculty activism has chilled free speech and debate.

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“How many students would actually be willing to go toe-to-toe against a professor who has expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?” Garber asked.

But the debate is far from over on most campuses. Studies, including by ScienceDirect, show professors are much more likely than in the past to be activists.

Lewis and Klein epitomize the ideological trend.

On his UBC web profile, Lewis condemns the Trans-Canada Pipeline, accuses Israel of genocide, and aims to help students “confront these crises” because “it’s a matter of survival.”

On her UBC profile, Klein cites her many best-selling books, including The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism. She pays “particular attention to the intersections between climate justice and Indigenous land rights; the gendered and racialized labour of care; and the rights of migrants.”

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Lewis and Klein are far from the only left-wing activists on faculty at UBC. Departments devoted to political science, gender, environment, law, Indigenous relations, health, education and social work also have professors who state their dedication to “direct action,” “advocacy,” “resistance” and “social justice.” The same is true at Simon Fraser University.

Postmedia asked 10 questions of UBC, including about whether it had any conservative activists on faculty, but received only a brief, unattributed statement citing privacy laws.

UBC did acknowledge it is “rare” to hire public figures without strong academic credentials as professors.

Numerous Canadian studies show faculty and students feel their right to free speech and inquiry is threatened when advocacy penetrates the culture of post-secondary institutions.

A 2022 survey published by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute found 88 per cent of Canadian university professors vote for parties on the left, while nine per cent support the right.

A 2025 Leger survey of 1,200 Canadian post-secondary students found right-leaning university students are a minority, and that 50 per cent of them are reluctant to express their views, compared to 36 per cent of left-leaning students. Many worried their grades might be lowered for having the “wrong” opinion.

Last year, a poll commissioned by the Canadian Association of University Teachers reported six in 10 Canadians believe the value of college or university education has declined over the past four years, with ideological conservatives expressing this sentiment the strongest. While 52 per cent still report “a fair amount” of confidence in higher education, two-thirds worry political conflicts are becoming “more severe” on campuses.

Josh Greenberg, a journalism professor at Carleton University, stands up for “institutional neutrality” at universities and colleges, whether in regard to climate, Israel or transgender rights.

Greenberg supports SFU president Joy Johnson who, worried about polarization, has declared she will no longer make ”statements related to world events. … I have come to understand that taking a public position on behalf of the university can have a chilling effect on the vigorous discussion and debate of students, faculty and staff.”

Greenberg’s opponents argue that political neutrality is in effect supporting the status quo, as it was when many universities stayed silent about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.

Greenberg, nevertheless, insists post-secondary administrators remain impartial to protect the rights of faculty and students to freely express their views.

Ross McKitrick, a B.C.-trained professor of economics at the University of Guelph and a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, goes further. He says the taxpaying public, which spans the political spectrum, is losing faith in public universities and colleges in part because they’re “becoming political monocultures.”

With almost nine of 10 Canadian profs identifying as left wing, McKitrick, in an essay for the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, wrote, “Despite all their rhetoric about diversity, universities have systematically destroyed what is most central to their mission: intellectual or viewpoint diversity.”

Higher education in Canada has become “institutionally one-sided, highly partisan, and out of step with the public it serves,” McKitrick wrote. The most important reform required, he said, is that universities and colleges “re-establish a culture that emphasizes the formation of students as citizens and critical thinkers, and that fosters academic freedom and rigorous inquiry.”

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