The Department for Education (DfE) is carrying out research into the impact of vexatious legal threats, including Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs), on UK academics.
SLAPPs are legal actions or threats intended less to succeed in court than to silence critics by imposing the financial and psychological burden of defending a claim. While such tactics are most commonly associated with attempts to intimidate journalists, academic researchers have increasingly found themselves on the receiving end of similar threats from companies and wealthy individuals unhappy with critical scholarship.
That’s why the DfE’s project is so important. It comes just months after an open letter sent to the Prime Minister in March 2026, coordinated with support from the UK Anti-SLAPP Coalition and signed by more than 100 academics, including CAF Director Dr Edward Skidelsky, calling on the Government to introduce comprehensive anti-SLAPP protections.
The letter argued that, without protections extending beyond the anti-SLAPP provisions introduced by the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act 2023 – which are currently limited to cases involving economic crime – stronger mechanisms for dismissing vexatious claims at an early stage, and clearer safeguards for academic work, important research on matters of public interest could increasingly be chilled, with serious implications for academic freedom.
In practice, an academic’s ability to pursue critical research into powerful actors often turns on whether their institution is willing to stand behind them. Yet many universities offer little in the way of insurance, legal review, or other safeguards capable of mitigating these risks, leaving scholars to shoulder the costs themselves.
The consequences are felt not only by individual researchers but also at the point of publication, where academic presses have been known to shift legal exposure to authors or editors, or simply decline to publish research likely to provoke legal action. A cautionary example is the Russia scholar Professor Karen Dawisha, who was dropped by her long-time publisher Cambridge University Press, which had initially agreed to publish her book, after concluding that the libel risk under English law was too high. The manuscript later appeared in the United States as Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia?
Indeed, Dawisha’s experience – publishing a “very academic book” deemed too legally perilous for a prestigious British press but readily taken up by a US publisher – serves as a reminder that while SLAPPs are a global problem, England has long been identified as a premier destination for “libel tourism”, owing to the decidedly claimant-friendly character of its defamation laws.
As part of its research, the DfE is inviting UK-based academics to complete a survey exploring the prevalence and impact of legal threats directed at researchers and their work. The survey is open both to academics who have personally received legal threats relating to their research or publications and to those concerned about such threats affecting their field.
According to the DfE, evidence gathered through the survey may help inform government policy in this area. Participants are also invited to indicate whether they would be willing to take part in follow-up research.
The survey can be accessed here and takes approximately five to twenty minutes to complete.
Academics wishing their responses to inform the next stage of the project are encouraged to submit them by 11.45pm on 19 June 2026, although the survey will remain open after that date.