UK universities must resist call for ‘institutional neutrality’

Many of us in the UK higher education sector have been aghast at the blatantly authoritarian attacks on US universities by the Trump administration, and by the manner in which the mechanisms of the US state have been turned against universities. Even the wealthiest and most prestigious US institutions are struggling to fight the US government with resources that UK universities simply do not have.

Trump’s assault on DEI in higher education is underpinned by well-organised, well-funded and committed efforts by conservative activists to break the social power of so-called woke universities. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, has launched Project Esther, which Jewish Voice for Peace has critiqued as being designed to use the fight against anti-Jewish discrimination to dismantle progressive efforts in wider society; many of the Trump administration’s attacks on universities have come under the cynical guise of fighting antisemitism.

UK-based groups are also pursuing similar tactics, whether they are via offshoots of US organisations, such as Turning Point UK, or independent organisations with US intellectual connections, such as the Free Speech Union or Academics for Academic Freedom.

Free-speech organisations like these often pitch their appeals on the basis of terms or phrases that appear to be non-controversial but, in practice, have far-reaching implications that may actually damage academic freedom. One example is urging universities to adopt policies of “institutional neutrality”, which can have the effect of stifling institutional action, as well as teaching and research on contentious issues; and can also impede the wider social role that universities play.

The result is that senior politicians and university leaders can be pushed into adopting positions favoured by the right without necessarily making open acknowledgement of that: for an example, see how education secretary Bridget Phillipson’s October 2025 comments on fighting antisemitism reflect – perhaps unintentionally – the language of Project Esther. We should therefore understand the local implications for how debates over academic freedom and institutional autonomy are operating globally.

As the academic freedom chair at the University of Warwick, I have spoken with colleagues around the UK who express shock and fear at Trump’s actions and who acknowledge that we must take some action to protect our sector. As Reform appears poised to replace the Conservative Party as the most popular right-leaning party (and the Labour government moves to the right on issues like trans rights and immigration), universities must confront the rising probability of battles over their core role(s) and identities.

Yet there is also a persistent reluctance to engage directly with the problem. Whether through institutional inertia, a genuine (and, I hope, accurate) belief that “this will not happen here” or a general reluctance to engage with painful discussions, the UK higher education sector is simply not prepared to deal with Trump-style authoritarianism, either from international actors or domestic pressures.

That is all the more unfortunate given that most UK universities are more vulnerable to political attack than their American counterparts given their heavy reliance on state funding and international recruitment – and at a time when they are already in financial crisis. We must be clear-eyed that the mechanisms of the UK state can be used to squeeze, direct or punish UK institutions to a high, even existential degree.

We also need to acknowledge that circumstances can change rapidly and may not have obvious or comfortable precedents. Some of our colleagues at the University of Sussex, for instance, have been trying to warn about the implications of regulators seeking to intervene in the ability of universities to set dignity-related policies, especially when the legal landscape is both unclear and changeable.

We should also keep in mind that direct coercion by an authoritarian government is not the only peril. As the American Association of University Professors has highlighted, precarity and uncertainty can breed a culture of anticipatory compliance. Even the local US politicians and university leaders who disagree with the Trump administration’s ambitions are taking proactive action to roll back policies, research and teaching that might fall afoul of them.

UK universities must prepare to answer difficult questions about how to manage conflicts between compliance and institutional autonomy. At Warwick, we are building cross-institutional reviews of our governing instruments and policies to identify where we might be vulnerable to pressure and where we might build in mechanisms to resist state interference. Other institutions have been conducting similar work, and still others have created high-level roles to oversee and support discussion on academic freedom issues.

We can and must draw on these examples to develop sector best practices. And we must urge our local institutions to build a distributed and resilient network of mutual support by working together with national organisations such as sector trades unions and Universities UK. We should not wait for these groups to come up with plans, however; this is an effort that requires grassroots action from across the sector.

Trump-style attacks on UK higher education are by no means inevitable. Nor are those attacks guaranteed to succeed. You might not even agree that they would be bad. But whatever our individual values or politics, prudence dictates that we should critically examine our cultures, assumptions and tolerances and prepare accordingly.

To not do so would be needlessly reckless and would further contribute to an undermining of the principles of academic freedom and institutional autonomy.

Gavin Schwartz-Leeper is the chair of the Academic Freedom Review Committee at the University of Warwick.