The European Parliament’s Academic Freedom Monitor 2025 (published in February 2026) presents a sobering assessment of the state of academic freedom across Europe. It argues that academic freedom is facing “increasing pressure” globally and is “slowly eroding in most EU Member States”. Familiar risks such as political interference, it notes, have in recent years been compounded by newer threats, including “intensifying foreign interference efforts”.
The Monitor’s analysis of foreign interference draws on empirical data concerning institutions affiliated with the People’s Republic of China and records growing concern about research collaborations, reliance on external scholarship schemes for doctoral candidates, and – crucially – inconsistent policy responses across EU Member States in managing these threats.
That divergence underpins one of the report’s more concrete proposals: the possible establishment of a specialised expert body at European level, tasked with identifying priorities and promoting good practice in coordination with national counterparts. Alongside this, the report envisages each academic institution creating a dedicated knowledge-security unit for staff and students, as a clearly identifiable single point of contact spanning European, national and institutional levels. Such an arrangement would, as the report puts it, “address the problem that academic staff, students, and their institutions generally lack the knowledge and insights needed to make informed decisions regarding foreign interference and research security risks”.
Would a similar approach work in the UK? Regulatory Advice 24, which sets out the OfS’ approach to assessing compliance with the post-1 August 2025 free-speech duties, does address risks of monitoring, intimidation and external pressure. It even contemplates attempts by “domestic or foreign governments” to influence or suppress lawful academic activity. But it doesn’t crystallise transnational repression as a distinct operational category with defined triggers, responsibilities, and escalation pathways inside institutions.
That ambiguity is now being addressed, in part, through sector-facing guidance. On 9 February 2026, the Department for Education published guidance on “foreign interference”, expressly distinguishing “transnational repression” and directing institutions to recognise and report concerns through appropriate security functions.
Yet the response landscape it maps remains diffuse. Universities are directed towards national security advice bodies, counter-interference toolkits, research-security compliance mechanisms, and (where relevant) new transparency requirements under the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme. In other words, responsibility sits variously with institutional security teams, research offices, compliance leads, or external agencies. What is still lacking is a clearly identifiable internal unit whose sole task is to recognise, triage and coordinate responses to threats aimed at chilling lawful academic work.
What we know from the case of aspiring Cambridge postgraduate student Roshaan Khattak is that, in such an environment, cases can fall between functions. Khattak, an exiled British-Pakistani documentary filmmaker researching enforced disappearances in Balochistan – a context in which Pakistani security services have been repeatedly implicated by international human-rights organisations – began receiving anonymous death threats in late 2024 and again in November 2025.
The messages warned that “even Cambridge and [the] UK is not safe” and contained confidential personal details, including his passport number. One such threat was received days after he had arranged an online solidarity meeting related to the enforced disappearance and unlawful detention of his cousin, Idris Khattak. Idris, a well-known researcher and human-rights advocate, was forcibly disappeared and later convicted in a secret military trial. Advocacy organisations have noted that such threats are consistent with a wider pattern of intimidation and violence directed at critics abroad and linked in reporting to Pakistani state actors, although the identity of the sender(s) in this case has not been independently established.
He notified the University of Cambridge on 17 November 2025 and again on 15 December, raising concerns about his safety and the impact on his academic work while he remained enrolled. Yet CAF has seen correspondence which suggests that the University did not mount a clearly joined-up institutional response. Indeed, on the information currently available to us, it did not provide any substantive acknowledgement or escalation of his reported death threats during his period of enrolment.
We have written to the University to seek clarification of these matters. But his case also exposes a wider structural problem. When threats arise that plausibly engage questions of state-linked intimidation – but are not yet formally attributed, and are neither purely a police matter nor simply an internal welfare issue – responsibility can become diffuse.
At minimum, a clearly identifiable knowledge-security unit within each university, with defined escalation pathways, trained staff, and responsibility for coordinating with national authorities where appropriate, would help to reduce that risk.
This article forms part of the Committee for Academic Freedom’s monitoring of developments in UK higher education. To receive monthly updates and analysis on cases affecting academic freedom, click the link and subscribe to our newsletter.