The university could be the last bastion of woke

Woke advertising seems to be falling out of fashion. Multinational corporations are dropping mandatory diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) training programmes. In the US, President Trump has recently signed executive orders ending ‘radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing’.

Yet, at the very moment the elite obsession with woke ideas seems to be losing its grip on wider society in the West, the UK higher-education sector appears to be more in thrall to it than ever. Indeed, universities that fail to pledge allegiance to the cult of diversity may soon face cuts to their research budgets.

Currently, British universities receive £2 billion a year of taxpayer funding to support academic research. This comprises a significant proportion of their revenue – second only to student tuition fees at many institutions. Allocated according to a Research Excellence Framework, this money has always come with strings attached. But under new guidelines published this month, universities will now need to prove they are ‘robustly’ tackling inequality and promoting diversity and inclusion before receiving funding. This will be done by, among other things, recording the numbers of black, Asian and mixed-race academics eligible for research funding and demonstrating the success of staff from ‘under-represented groups’ when it comes to applying for promotion.

This latest demand on those seeking research funding has nothing to do with their subject expertise and runs counter to both academic freedom and the pursuit of intellectual excellence. It simply adds to the myriad ways in which every aspect of higher education is geared around promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. Even now, academic-funding bodies, such as the Economic and Social Research Council and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, require applicants to submit DEI action plans. UK Research and Innovation describes equality, diversity and inclusion as ‘integral’ to its ‘vision and mission’.

Yet, as political commentator and former academic Matthew Goodwin explores in his new book, Bad Education, too few working within universities are willing to push back against the politicisation of higher education. As a result, ‘our universities are no longer interested in their original purpose’, he writes, ‘they are no longer prioritising the search for truth, learning, and evidence over dogma’. They have been captured by a ‘new dominant ideology’, he argues, which has been imposed on staff, students and administrators, and now fully permeates all aspects of academic life.

Goodwin describes this ideology as a belief system, ‘completely focussed on, if not obsessed with, its core, guiding claim that all racial, sexual and gender minorities must be considered sacred and untouchable and must be protected from “emotional harm”, while the majority must be treated with suspicion, if not contempt, even by themselves’. Academics and students who imbibe this outlook, he tells us, ‘see Western societies as being defined by ongoing, never-ending, zero-sum battles for power between minority and majority identity groups’. They consider it the duty of state institutions, including universities, to intervene and redress historical wrongs by exercising discrimination in the present. The result, Goodwin explains, has been to ‘dumb down intellectual standards on campus, prioritising this unscientific political dogma over evidence, rigour, logic and reason, creating a world in which everything from university reading lists to academic hires becomes an openly political project’.

Given his strength of feeling, it is unsurprising to learn that Goodwin is no longer part of this project. After two decades working in academia, he left his position as professor of politics at the University of Kent last summer. Bad Education can be read as his lengthy resignation letter. Combining a personal account of the struggles faced by lecturers who dissent from the newly dominant ideology with a forensic analysis of the current state of the UK’s higher-education sector, it makes for a compelling read.

Goodwin does not hold back when describing the impact woke dogma has had on teaching, learning and research. He writes of his frustration at watching students being incentivised ‘not to see themselves as masters of their own destiny, as individuals with the world at their feet, but as members of some or other victimised identity group’. Throughout, he challenges ‘a damaging and stifling groupthink that erodes free speech and the academic freedom of scholars to research and say whatever they like’. This ‘groupthink’, he tells us, means that universities can no longer claim ‘to prioritise the pursuit of truth’. Instead, ‘they have become activist institutions, interested only in a very narrow set of ideas that conform to and confirm a specific worldview’.

Goodwin is on shakier ground when trying to explain how this situation has arisen. He claims that it’s because universities have ‘moved sharply and radically to the left’. Yet gender-critical feminists, such as Kathleen Stock and Jo Phoenix, who are among the recent victims of the academic woke mob, can hardly be described as right-wing. Likewise, woke values haven’t simply been externally imposed on academics, who – a minority of activists aside – are only going along with it out of cowardice and a desire to get on with the day job. Rather, academics have themselves played a key role in the politicisation of universities, not least by leaving the lecture-theatre door open to ideological dogma. And they did so by abandoning any commitment to the core academic principles of truth and objectivity in the name of non-judgementalism and respecting difference.

These criticisms should not detract from Goodwin’s invaluable portrait of the experience of being a professor whose views do not align with the dominant values on campus. He shows how all the things that are considered essential for a successful academic career – from having research papers published and securing research grants, to being invited into academic networks and giving talks at other universities – all became far more difficult after 2016, when he said publicly that we should respect the Brexit referendum result.

More important still is Goodwin’s account of how today’s woke orthodoxy is enshrined within the higher-education system. He tells of ‘an increasingly vast and powerful bureaucracy’, comprising ‘an assortment of university vice-chancellors, senior bureaucrats and administrators, unelected higher-education agencies, think-tanks, research councils, charities and lobbying groups, all of which have been accumulating more power and influence’. This group, Goodwin explains, now asserts control over every aspect of university life, from who gets appointed and promoted to the content of taught courses to the research that gets published in prestigious journals. This bureaucracy, according to Goodwin, is backed by ‘a radical minority of activist scholars’, all of which ‘owe their jobs, salaries, livelihoods and sense of social status and esteem on campus’ to their capacity to continue asserting the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion.

All of this matters because universities now provide a formative intellectual experience for almost half of all young adults in the UK. They remain important institutions that have influence not just over education but also upon our broader culture. In contributing to the transmission and pursuit of knowledge, universities shape the intellectual climate of the nation. The values of a new generation of graduates will shape politics, culture and society long into the future. No matter how many companies ditch DEI training programmes, woke thinking will continue to hold the nation in its grip until it is weakened within our universities.

Goodwin concludes by considering how universities can be reclaimed. He doesn’t think another ‘spirited discussion about free speech will make a difference’. Instead, he proposes a more robust and interventionist approach, citing the previous Conservative government’s Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act 2023 as an example of how the tide can be turned. Given the current Labour government’s woeful approach to education, similarly robust measures may be a long time coming. In the meantime, I would argue, grassroots campaigns for academic freedom, as well as debates to win over the hearts and minds of those who consider themselves to be scholars rather than activists, continue to be vitally important.

When it comes to defending academic freedom against institutional attempts at politicising higher education, sunlight is often the best disinfectant. After all, woke ideas rarely withstand public scrutiny. And thanks to Bad Education, that day of reckoning is one step closer.

Joanna Williams is a spiked columnist and author of How Woke Won. She is a visiting fellow at Mathias Corvinus Collegium in Hungary.

Bad Education: Why Our Universities Are Broken and How We Can Fix Them, by Matt Goodwin, is published by Penguin.