BBC reporting on foreign interference in UK universities should concern everyone working in UK higher education. It is now beyond general guidance or abstract risk. Vice-chancellors and senior university leaders have been explicitly briefed by the UK security services, including direct meetings with MI5, to warn that universities are a prime target for foreign interference.

Ministers have instructed universities to report threats directly to government and security services. The Office for Students has reinforced that suppression of teaching or research due to the disapproval of a foreign state is unacceptable in almost all circumstances. These are not speculative concerns. Senior leaders at around 70 UK universities have already attended MI5 briefings outlining what interference looks like in practice: censorship of research, intimidation of staff, pressure on students, and the chilling of academic debate.

This national security warning lands uncomfortably close to home for colleagues at Bournemouth University, following the announcement of a joint institute with Tianjin University of Technology and the rapid expansion of Transnational Education (TNE) partnerships across China, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bahrain.

UCU is not opposed to international collaboration. Global exchange, international students, and cross-border research are core to higher education. But context matters. BU has been publicly identified as being in a financially vulnerable position. Financial precarity increases institutional exposure to pressure—both commercial and political.

When higher education is framed primarily as an export industry, there is a real danger that income generation begins to outweigh commitments to academic freedom, human rights, and freedom of speech.

These risks are not theoretical. Evidence gathered by UK-China Transparency documents academics being warned off particular topics, intimidation linked to visiting scholars, and concerns associated with Confucius Institutes. The fact that MI5 has felt it necessary to brief vice-chancellors directly should be taken as a serious signal: universities are now recognised as sites of strategic vulnerability.

Global warnings closer to home

These developments must also be understood in a wider international context. In the United States, under the Trump administration, social sciences and other critical disciplines were explicitly targeted through defunding, restructuring, and political attack. Research into inequality, race, gender, migration, and power was delegitimised not on academic grounds, but because it challenged dominant political narratives.

This offers a stark warning. Academic silencing rarely begins with outright bans. More often it occurs through funding withdrawal, the narrowing of what counts as “strategic” research, and the quiet erosion of capacity in critical disciplines. Once research time and resources are made conditional, entire areas of inquiry can be marginalised without a single formal prohibition.

Internal structures and indirect censorship

Against this backdrop, UCU is deeply concerned about internal structural changes at BU—specifically the proposed Workload Plan (WLP) and the forthcoming Academic Career Framework (ACF). Under these models, staff will be required to apply for research time, with allocation dependent on alignment with BU’s strategic aims.

This raises a fundamental question: who ultimately decides which research is legitimate, valued, or resourced?

When research hours are conditional on strategic alignment, academic freedom is not removed outright—it is quietly narrowed. Research that is critical, politically sensitive, or potentially uncomfortable for international partners may simply not be afforded time or institutional support. In such systems, silence does not need to be imposed; it is structurally produced.

This is not hypothetical. At Sheffield Hallam University, national attention has already been drawn to how workload models, institutional priorities, and external pressures can combine to constrain critical academic work. The lesson is clear: when research capacity and career progression depend on alignment, independence is placed at risk.

For UCU, the convergence of these factors is deeply troubling:
– a financially vulnerable institution
– rapid expansion of TNE partnerships in geopolitically sensitive contexts
– explicit national security warnings delivered directly to vice-chancellors by MI5
– global examples of political defunding of critical disciplines
– and internal frameworks that tie research capacity to strategic alignment

Together, these create a climate in which staff may reasonably conclude that pursuing critical work—particularly on human rights, freedom of speech, state power, educational colonialism, or international governance—comes at a personal and professional cost.

UCU therefore asks clear and urgent questions:

• What concrete safeguards has the University put in place to protect staff and students involved in TNE activity?
• How are risks to academic freedom, freedom of speech, and personal safety being assessed and mitigated within existing and proposed partnerships?
• How will the WLP and ACF be designed to ensure they do not function as mechanisms of indirect censorship?
• What protections exist for staff whose research may be critical of, or uncomfortable for, international partners or strategic priorities?
• What safe, transparent routes are available for staff to raise concerns without fear of reprisal?

These are not ideological questions. They go to the heart of the University’s statutory duties, its duty of care to staff and students, and its credibility as an academic institution.

Academic freedom cannot survive if it is conditional on strategic convenience. When vice-chancellors are being explicitly warned by the security services, it is incumbent on university leadership to demonstrate—not merely assert—that academic freedom, staff safety, and freedom of speech are being actively protected.

UCU will continue to raise these concerns openly and constructively—because silence, especially when structurally produced, is not neutrality.