Populism and centrism in universities

Join HEPI and St John’s College, University of Oxford, for a lecture on Friday 19 June 2026, from 5pm to 7pm, at the Garden Quad Auditorium, St John’s College, entitled Higher Learning in the Post-Truth Age. The lecture, delivered by Professor Duncan Ivison, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester, will explore the responsibilities of universities in an era of profound technological and political change, growing misinformation and declining trust in major institutions. It will be followed by an In Conversation with Professor Duncan Ivison and Professor Irene Tracey (Vice-Chancellor, University of Oxford), joined by the editors of A Cultural History of Higher Learning (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). Register now.

This blog was kindly authored by Professor Stephen Graham,  Head of University College Cork College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences.

Universities should pitch to the centre, not (yet) the right.

This is not intended as a moral or normative statement but instead a tactical one.

In Preparing for Populism, a Debate Paper 44 for HEPI, Edward Venning and Professor Diana Beech called for universities to engage meaningfully with all political parties, develop different relationships with wider society, new stories about themselves and establish platforms for pluralistic political debates. All of this would secure the confidence of the public and build various forms of legitimacy. Venning and Beech’s analysis lines up with recent research from the UCL Policy Lab, which identified political apathy towards universities partly arising from public distrust and a perceived failure to engage meaningfully with emerging social issues.

Considering recent local election results in the UK, where Reform UK surged, and the Greens made significant gains, and also growing populist movements in countries such as Ireland, Venning and Beech’s Paper represents an important and timely call to action: universities really should take parties such as Reform and the Greens, and the movements they represent, very seriously indeed.

However, whilst this would be important, it is likely that a more fundamental process of self-inquiry and re-formation would be necessary for universities both to do this and, in a larger sense, to renew their ‘social license’ in combatting political polarisation.

Venning and Beech’s Paper describes university policy makers and advocates as centrists. Moreover, they suggest that ‘very few academics’ would engage with Reform UK with anything other than ‘disdain and criticism’. A picture is painted here of centrist managers and leftwing academics. 

The implicit characterisation of academics as leftwing is a fair one. It’s an old saw at this point but across many disciplines – particularly but not only the arts, humanities and social sciences I am involved with – there is a significant skewing to the left. In many disciplines and institutions, it is rare to encounter someone who would even identify as a centrist and vanishingly rare to encounter a conservative. A former colleague of mine would often joke that he was the ‘only Tory in the village’; indeed, in the 17 years I spent at that institution, he was literally the only person out of the thousands of staff and students I met who admitted to such an allegiance and I can’t remember anyone else even implying they might be anything other than far left or left-of-centre. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t dealing with many closeted Tories – I’m sure there were some – but no one ever admitted it. Mileage will vary according to discipline and institution, of course, but there is plenty of evidence to support these anecdotal points.

The characterisation of policy makers and advocates – if we take this to refer to senior leaders and managers – as centrist is of course defensible but doesn’t fully ring true. Reflecting on all the leaders, from middle to upper management, I have met across national training courses, sector bodies and in research and other settings, my sense is that it would be much more fitting to describe them as left-of-centre almost to a person; whilst evidence is less forthcoming on this group, there is some relevant context here.

The felt centre of gravity in many institutions, then, at least in the Anglophone world from which my examples and evidence are taken, is very much to the left of the centre, skewing even farther left depending on the setting both across staff and students.

Is it realistic to ask such universities to engage constructively with Reform UK?

It’s a laudable and important goal. But in a context where staff and students skew to the left, viewpoints are therefore not diverse and, to some extent, true critical thinking, debate and disagreement are likely limited, it may crash and burn, potentially contributing to further polarisation as it does.

If universities really want to rebuild their social license, mitigate polarisation and build legitimacy it is important not only to create positive stories about our wide social impact and build the kinds of pluralistic spaces described by Venning and Beech but also to be realistic about who we are and, potentially, how we might re-form into something that more closely resembles wider society; or that at least takes its views seriously. Without, or ahead of, such re-formation, to return to my opening, it probably makes more sense to cultivate platforms where at least mainstream, centrist political actors and ideas could be taken seriously as interlocutors and even as colleagues. I fear we might need to take this small step before the larger one to Reform, if that larger one is to be in good faith and lead to positive outcomes for ourselves and our communities.