Taking Sides: Academic Activism, Progressive Politics and the Traces we Leave Behind

I recently visited the new CERN Science Gateway. In between looking at exhibits which explore what we know of the origins of life, I went to see a show with my family: Journey Through the Particle Detector. The show’s presenter talked us through the process of detection which works not by looking at the sub-atomic particles directly, but by observing the effects they have on their surroundings. In other words, the scientists at CERN know that certain particles exist because of the behaviour changes in other surrounding particles and the traces they leave behind.

I am often unsettled when contemplating the origins of life, the particle soup from which we all somehow emerged. But I liked this idea of shifting the focus from myself as a discrete individual, to thinking about myself as existing through, and because of, the effects I have on what is around me. The places, the people, the ideas, in and on which I leave little parts of myself.

One of the spaces in which I hope to leave some trace, is the one in which I work: higher education. I have been working in universities for around 20 years, a dream of mine which originated many years ago in a rather antiquated sense of what it is to learn, to think, to be intellectual. The part of me that loves to smell books, to wander around a library, to soak up the atmosphere of collective endeavour and conversation was, and still is, drawn to the university.

But higher education in the UK is crumbling under unsustainable funding models and poor mental health of academics and students leading in some cases to underperformance, self-harm and suicide. One in two higher education institutions are now cutting jobs or announcing redundancies, according to the University and Colleges Union. Reasons for such cuts include a drop in international student numbers following Brexit and new visa restrictions for students with dependents. These cuts have harmful effects on the universities, and their staff and students, as well as on the economic, social and cultural lives of neighbouring communities.

Speaking to the current geopolitical context, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently said “We will have to ask British industry, British universities, British businesses and the British people to play a bigger part, and to use this to renew the social contract of our nation.” Reflecting on this quote in The New European, Paul Mason suggests that “from schools and universities through to the churches, mosques and temples of our ultra diverse communities, people are going to be faced with the question: which side are you on?” He warns of demands on universities to align their research with national security priorities. This is more pertinent than ever for my work, and that of my colleagues in Development Studies, as we see the Overseas Development Aid being cut to increase military spending, a stance which led to the recent resignation of the former international development minister Anneliese Dodds.

Rather than suggesting universities can be mobilised as part of a national war effort, calling on them to play a central role in shoring up a progressive social contract could be exciting. It will certainly require resources and imagination. Firstly, the higher education sector will need to be properly funded by the state, as a public good and pillar of our social contract and not as a factory for a productive workforce or a business seeking ever more healthy profit margins - the “edufactory” as Pier Vittorio Aureli has called it. Secondly, it will need to tackle, both with internal impetus and external support, the structural inequalities, elitism, and funding crises which currently threaten it. Thirdly, we all need to think together about the role of the university in today’s world, leveraging its position as a key knowledge broker.

Led by Sheffield Hallam University, the Civic University Network supports universities in “harnessing the collective power of the higher education sector to drive societal, economic, and environmental advancements in the places they call home”. This fits with a wider movement referred to as intellectual or academic activism, bridging the worlds of the ivory tower and real life, or what Patricia Collins has described as people placing “the power of their ideas in service to social justice.” This has become a harder and harder task in the neoliberal university which casts students as clients and academics as providers. It is also harder in the face of political moves to target and undermine the power of ideas, as we have seen recently in the USA and which has historical precedent in contexts as diverse as the Spanish Civil War and the Cambodian Genocide. These moves against intellectuals are aimed at quashing dissent.

This is not to suggest that the university, particularly in the Global North, is a haven of neutral intellectual work. The funding cuts I described are placing additional pressure on a sector which is struggling to tackle structural inequalities related to race, gender, and socio-economic status among others. Important movements around decolonising higher education have challenged reading lists, course content, and admissions procedures, while pointing towards new forms of colonialism which come with the neoliberalism of higher education.

But as Rebecca Solnit famously wrote in her book Hope in the Dark, change is often incremental, and small victories along the way to larger or more complete forms of transformation are just as valuable and just as important to recognise and celebrate. Because it cannot all be changed at once is not a reason to give up hope, in fact it is the very reason to act in whatever small way we can. I like to think about my intellectual work in the same way that Stuart Hall does, as “a practice which always thinks about its intervention in a world in which it would make some difference, in which it would have some effects”. Here, the academic, as a collection of particles moving through the world, has an important opportunity to demonstrate their existence. How? Through the effects they have, in the traces they leave behind, through their thinking, teaching, writing, talking, resisting. I would like universities to be truly public goods, resources of and for the wider community. I would like my ideas to be in service to social justice.

The effects I am trying to have, which I hope will be proof of my existence, of my having mattered, are mine to create. As are yours.  

March 2025