The event brought together scholars, administrators, students, artists and policymakers to reflect on progress and persistent gaps.
The forum explored themes such as systemic discrimination, Black health, linguistic diversity and institutional responsibility, addressing the complexity and urgency of advancing equity in Canadian academia.
“Equity is not simply an institutional posture—it is a fundamental right, one that requires intentionality and rigour,” said University of Ottawa president and vice-chancellor Marie-Eve Sylvestre, focusing the second day of the forum on the idea that universities shape more than classrooms—they shape society.
“Equity is not simply an institutional posture—it is a fundamental right, one that requires intentionality and rigour.”
Marie-Eve Sylvestre
— President and vice-chancellor of the University of Ottawa
Francophonie at the heart of Black inclusion
Sylvestre, Bishop’s University vice‑principal Danai Bélanger and University of Ottawa professor Anne Levesque explored an issue often not part of equity discussions, language.
Conversations around diversity in Canada often default to Anglophone frameworks, leaving little room for the complexity of Black Francophone and bilingual experiences. Speakers argued that language can’t be treated as a secondary consideration in equity conversations, because it shapes access, belonging and even the way racism is experienced within institutions.
Levesque stressed the importance of applying a Francophone and bilingual lens consistently, while Bélanger highlighted how institutional conversations can become stuck on language and culture, making it harder to address systemic racism directly.
What emerged was a more complicated portrait of belonging. Language isn’t neutral—it carries histories, hierarchies and expectations. For Black Francophone and bilingual students, especially newcomers, these layers shape how they’re perceived and how they navigate academic spaces. Accents, cultural references and colonial histories all play a role. Yet institutions often flatten these differences and treat Francophone identity as a single category.
The result is a gap between intention and experience. Universities may commit to diversity, but without recognizing internal diversity within linguistic communities, inclusion remains incomplete.
Ongoing systemic barriers
Systemic barriers continue to shape higher education and influence who enters these spaces and who advances within them. Malinda Smith, associate vice-president research (equity, diversity and inclusion) at the University of Calgary, challenged institutions to confront their role not just as places of learning, but as spaces that can reproduce inequality.
Smith questioned why inequities continue, despite undeniable evidence of them. The numbers tell a familiar story: Black students enter universities in visible numbers, but that presence narrows sharply higher up the academic ladder.
Throughout the forum, speakers mentioned that inequity is cumulative rather than isolated. Barriers encountered in education, health care and everyday life reinforce each other, shaping who feels safe, supported and able to thrive.
University of Ottawa scholars Josephine Etowa, Ewurabena Simpson and Kafui Abra Sawyer explored these realities from different perspectives. Etowa’s work on Black health framed inequity as a lifelong condition shaped by access, safety and belonging, while Simpson examined how racism in schools has downstream effects on health, confidence and opportunity. Sawyer mentioned the quieter but persistent microaggressions and racial trauma embedded in everyday student experiences.
The conclusion was clear: inequity doesn’t begin in universities. It begins long before, in housing, education systems and social conditions that shape who gets to arrive in spaces like university and how.
But even when institutions try to respond, they face another challenge, data. Without meaningful, community-informed race-based data, disparities remain difficult to measure and address. Yet evidence without action risks becoming its own form of institutional failure.
Role of universities in driving change
If the day raised difficult questions, the focus consistently returned to the role universities must play in answering them.
Between sessions, spoken word artist Aishah Salim brought a different kind of reflection, while remarks from Ottawa city councillor Rawlson King and Awad Ibrahim, vice-provost, equity, diversity and inclusive excellence, expanded the conversation beyond the campus.
“By virtue of being human, you are a poet. This is because we do not have a prompter that tells us what to say and do or which direction to take. Each one of us is holding a pen and writing the story of our lives, making every one of us unique,” said Ibrahim.
“Each one of us is holding a pen and writing the story of our lives, making every one of us unique.”
Awad Ibrahim
— Vice-provost, equity, diversity and inclusive excellence
His closing words framed education as something deeply human and creative, a reminder that institutions are ultimately made up of individuals choosing how to act.
But the forum showed that words are not enough.
Participants pointed to a common challenge: how universities can move beyond public commitments and turn them into structural change. Representation, accountability and sustained investment are conditions for meaningful action. Who gets hired, who gets promoted, whose research is funded—these decisions define whether equity is experienced or simply spoken of.
Five years after the charter was signed, the message from the 2026 charter forum was clear: The evidence exists. The frameworks exist. What remains is ensuring that Black inclusion isn’t just discussed but built into the structures of research and education.