Academic freedom in the UK is under sustained pressure. When the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act came into force in August 2025, universities were placed under a new legal duty to protect open debate. The regulator, the Office for Students, was given powers to intervene where institutions fall short. On paper, it looked like a turning point.
Yet the emails arriving at the Committee for Academic Freedom tell a different story. Recruitment must now be free of political litmus tests, and yet job adverts still demand a “demonstrable commitment” to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) as an essential criterion. Promotion should no longer depend on adherence to particular values or ideas, and yet institutional frameworks continue to reward alignment with prevailing orthodoxies on contested questions. Academic staff cannot be pressured to endorse or reject prescribed value judgements, and yet many still feel obliged to keep certain topics off slides, sanitise reading lists, add trigger warnings, or take part in quasi-compulsory “decolonisation” projects.
Our work covers five core areas:
- Mobilising signatories: We coordinate support for our Three Principles — freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and institutional neutrality — and have so far gathered over 600 signatories from across UK institutions and disciplines, the most comprehensive database of its kind.
- Monitoring threats: Our regularly updated Threats to Freedom bulletin tracks cases of censorship, legal developments and institutional trends. Shared with more than 1,000 subscribers and widely reposted on X, it is now regarded as the most authoritative ongoing record of the state of academic freedom in the UK.
- Broadcasting voices: Our podcast series, Cancelled Voices, features interviews with academics and students penalised for lawful expression.
- Hosting debate: Our Open to Argument seminar series brings structured debate on controversial topics to campuses across the UK.
- Advocacy: We work with universities and policymakers to strengthen protections for academic freedom and challenge restrictive policies.
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Impact and recognition
CAF’s interventions have helped shape national discussion and policy. Our work has been featured in the New Statesman, The Critic, UnHerd, The Telegraph, LRB, THE and WonkHE, helping to dispel the idea that the free-speech crisis in universities is merely a “culture-wars” issue.
Many stories first reported by CAF have received extensive media coverage — for instance, our interview with Exeter student Robert Ivinson, disciplined for remarks overheard through a wall, was later reported in The Telegraph, Mail, TLS and on GB News.
Our guiding principles
The Committee for Academic Freedom comprises academics from all disciplines and of all points of view. We disagree on many issues, political and cultural. But we affirm without reservation the following three principles, which we hold to be central to the liberal university:
- Freedom of speech: Staff and students should be free, within the limits of the law, to express any opinion without fear of reprisal.
- Freedom of conscience: No member of a university should be compelled to express or affirm beliefs against their conscience.
- Institutional neutrality*: Universities should not promote political agendas or affiliate themselves with organisations pursuing them. *Clarification
Add your voice. Sign the Principles.
Join over 600 academics affirming the core freedoms that define a liberal university.