Oxford academics express solidarity with Harvard colleagues

14 May 2025

The Financial Times has published a letter from Oxford academics from a wide range of disciplines expressing their solidarity with Harvard colleagues whose institution is seeking to resist the interference of the Trump administration in its admissions procedures, teaching and research.

12 May 2025

Letter: Trump attack on academic freedom ‘must be resisted’

From Avi Shlaim and others

On April 11, the Trump administration sent a letter to Harvard University demanding a series of “reforms”. These included accepting federal government intervention into its admissions procedures; screening international students for their political views; reforming an array of schools, centres and programmes specified by the Trump administration; ending all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; and clamping down on student political organising, with a number of named student groups to be targeted.

Harvard’s rejection of these demands has led the Trump administration to freeze over $2.2bn in federal funds and threaten to strip the university of its tax-exempt status (“Donald Trump says he will revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status”, Report, FT.com, May 2).

In response, on April 21, Harvard sued the Trump administration in federal court (“Harvard sues Trump administration over funding freeze”, Report, FT.com, April 22).

As academic staff at the University of Oxford, we express our resolute support for our colleagues at Harvard University and at universities across the US. We reject in the strongest possible terms President Donald Trump’s weaponisation of charges of antisemitism to mount an outrageous assault on institutions of higher education in the US. And we assert the inviolability of academic freedom for the functioning of universities. This includes the ability of universities to govern themselves and to decide whom they should hire and admit, in accordance with the law but free of undue political influence. 

Our solidarity is with all our colleagues under attack in the US. We focus on Harvard in this letter because its administration has been the most prominent to resist President Trump and has therefore become his “main target”.

We salute Harvard President Alan Garber’s refusal to accede to the demands of the Trump administration, which marks a departure from a series of worrying capitulations by other universities. At the same time, we ask Harvard colleagues, particularly those in senior positions within the institution, to stand in solidarity with the most vulnerable members of their community at this time, especially international students, junior faculty and those involved in political protest in support of Palestine.

We are deeply concerned that in the run-up to the April 11 letter, Harvard had already acquiesced to pressure in several areas, reportedly forcing out two academic leaders of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and suspending a research partnership with a Palestinian university. 

We welcome recent collective action across the higher education sector in the US, including the statement published on April 22 by the American Association of Colleges and Universities denouncing the Trump administration’s “over-reach and political interference”.

It is imperative that scholars around the world resist attempts by authoritarian leaders and governments to control our research, target our students and turn us into tools of their personal power. The costs of resisting President Trump’s vindictive campaign against universities are high, but the costs of acquiescing to his demands will be higher still.

If Trump is successful, other leaders and regimes around the world will be sure to follow his lead in encroaching on the freedom of their own sectors of higher education. On a global scale, the very survival of universities as independent institutions is at stake.

Avi Shlaim
Emeritus Professor of International Relations

Amia Srinivasan
Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory

Laura Ashe
Professor of English Literature

Walter Armbrust
Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies

Robert Evans
Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History

Katrin Kohl
Professor of German

Peter Thonemann
Professor of Ancient History

Katherine Ibbett
Professor of French

Andrew Hurrell
Montague Burton Emeritus Professor of International Relations

Barbara Harriss-White
Emeritus Professor of Development Studies

Filippo de Vivo
Professor of Early Modern History

Kate Crosby
Numata Professor of Buddhist Studies

Morgan Clarke
Professor of Social Anthropology

Oreet Ashery
Professor of Contemporary Art

Patricia Daley
Professor of the Human Geography of Africa

James McDougall
Professor of Modern and Contemporary History

Annie Sutherland
Professor of Medieval Literature

Tim Schwanen
Professor of Transport Geography and Director of the Transport Studies Unit

Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee
Professor, Faculty of English

Federica Genovese
Professor of Political Science and International Relations

Paul Betts
Professor of History

Nikita Sud
Professor of the Politics of Development

Michael Willis
Professor of North African Politics

Raihan Ismail
Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies

Dev Gangjee
Professor of Law

Alpa Shah
Professor of Social Anthropology

Catherine Pope
Professor of Medical Sociology

Arathi Sriprakash
Professor of Sociology and Education

Robin Cohen
Professor Emeritus of Development Studies

Thomas Charles-Edwards
Professor Emeritus of Celtic

David Gellner
Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology

Naomi Waltham-Smith
Professor of Music

Kate Tunstall
Professor of French

Peter Boxall
Goldsmiths’ Professor of English Literature

Musab Younis
Associate Professor of Political Theory

Sneha Krishnan
Associate Professor in Human Geography

Faridah Zaman
Associate Professor of History

Stuart White
Associate Professor of Politics

Thomas Cousins
Clarendon-Lienhardt Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of Africa

Daniel Altshuler
Associate Professor of Semantics

Hannah Skoda
Associate Professor of History

Nathan Lane
Associate Professor of Economics

Zuzanna Olszewska
Associate Professor in the Social Anthropology of the Middle East

Jeanne Morefield
Associate Professor of Political Theory

Elizabeth Ewart
Associate Professor of Social Anthropology

Lauren Hammond
Associate Professor of Geography Education

Reece Oosterbeek
Associate Professor of Engineering Science

Simukai Chigudu
Associate Professor of African Politics

Katherine Paugh
Associate Professor of History

Leila Ullrich
Associate Professor of Criminology

Timothy Michael
Associate Professor of English

Umberto Bongianino
Samir Shamma Associate Professor in Islamic Numismatics, Epigraphy and Material Culture

Elizabeth Murphy
Asset and Space Management

Alexis McGivern
Head of Stakeholder Engagement, Oxford Net Zero

Dorothée Boulanger
Career Development Fellow in Gender Studies

Holly Cooper
DPhil Student, Faculty of History

Dori Kimel
Reader in Legal Philosophy

Vladimir Bortun
Lecturer in Politics, St. John’s

Ana Castaño
Lecturer in Spanish

Jasper Friedrich
Teaching Associate in Political Philosophy, Blavatnik School of Government

Lucy Radley
Research Assistant, Psychiatry department

Madelon de Jong
Senior Clinical Immunologist

Juliet Brown
Principal Library Assistant

Carlos Tapia
IT Services

Joseph da Costa
Research Fellow

Miguel Moctezuma
Coordinator Oxford Global Security Programme

Carina Uchida
DPhil Candidate and Tutor in International Relations

Emilie Vrain
Senior Research Fellow of Environmental Social Science

David Ewing
Stipendiary Lecturer in French (Queen’s College)

Michael Mayo
Director of the Visiting Student Programme and Stipendiary Lecturer

Anton Jäger
Departmental Lecturer in the History of Political Thought and Political Theory

Jackie Turner
Communications

Katherine Lebow
Associate Professor of History

Roger Nascimento
Medical Faculty

John Broome
Emeritus White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy

Alison Smith
Senior Research Associate, Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Diego Sánchez-Ancochea
Professor of the Political Economy of Development

Dr Rachna Begh
University Research Lecturer

Matthew Lloyd
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Pharmacology

Liam Shaw
Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellow

Paola Quevedo
Communications Assistant Medical Sciences Division

Anne Ferrey
Senior Lecturer, Course Director MSc Translational Health Sciences, University of Oxford

Mori Reithmayr
Postdoctoral Fellow, Rothermere American Institute

Juliet Addenbrooke
Accreditation Administrator

Adham Faramawy
Senior Lecturer Fine Art, The Ruskin, Oxford University

Thomas A. Püschel
Associate Professor in Evolutionary Anthropology

Daniel Cullen
Researcher, Centre for Criminology, Faculty of Law

Gordon Reavley
Tutor Short Online courses, History of Art, Assessor, Certificate of Higher Education, Supervising Tutor

Susan Tibbles
Senior Library Assistant

Jad Moawad
Postdoctoral Researcher, Institute of New Economic Thinking

Alex Gunn
DPhil Candidate and Tutor in English

Zeynep Yurekli
Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture

Samira Barzin
Senior Researcher

Ms Emily Dyson
Graduate Teaching Assistant in Political Theory

Kevin Matlock
Postdoctoral Researcher in Student Wellbeing

Samuel Wainwright
DPhil Candidate and Tutor

Marta Zboralska
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Ruskin School of Art

George Haggett
Stipendiary Lecturer in Music, Somerville College

Selçuk Bedük
Lecturer in Comparative Social Policy

Elizabeth Cullinane
DPhil candidate and Tutor in Music

Michael Sackur
DPhil candidate

Yamina Boukari
Bennett Institute Junior Research Fellow in Applied Health Data Science

Tessa Reardon
Research Fellow in the Departments of Experimental Psychology and Psychiatry

Marko Ilić
Departmental Lecturer in the History of Art

Dylan Carver
Departmental Lecturer in English Literature

Elizabeth Dawson
Kellogg College

Tanvi Rai
Senior Researcher

Andonis Marden
Executive Director of the Refugee-Led Research Hub

Christy Wensley
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Faculty of English

Ed Penington
Researcher in Health Economics, Department of Psychiatry

Aura Raulo
Browne Junior Research Fellow in Biology, Queen’s College

Rod Chalk
Centre for Medicines Discovery

Heather Stallard
Communications and Events Officer

Narmin Ismayilova
Visiting Research Fellow, Faculty of AMES

Paul Dresch
Emeritus Fellow, St John’s College

Roger Just
Professor of Social Anthropology (retired)

Ellen Dyer
Senior Research Associate in African Climate Science

Sabina Lovibond
Emeritus Fellow in Philosophy, Worcester College

Chloe Pieters
Early Career Teaching and Research Fellow in History, St Edmund Hall

Dr Alexandra Pugh
Hamilton Junior Research Fellow in French

Dr Penny Cartwright
Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow

Jonathon Turnbull
Junior Research Fellow in Geography

Günseli Gürel
Departmental Lecturer, Islamic art and architecture

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