REF 2028 must promote academic freedom

June’s announcement that the UK’s Research Excellence Framework (REF) will increase the weighting of “people, culture and environment” from 15 to 25 per cent in 2028 was a radical one – particularly as it means the quality of research outputs will no longer predominate in determining REF outcomes.

Where did the proposal come from? UK Research and Innovation claims that there has been wide consultation with the sector. But it is not clear that this consultation actually supports the shift.

The initial decisions report states that “a significant minority of respondents…suggested that driving a positive research culture should be a core purpose of the REF”. This statement appears to be based on a small survey in which 64 out of 248 respondents (26 per cent) said that the “research process” should be heavily weighted in the REF. (See Annex C in the summary of stakeholder engagements.) This minority support seems a weak basis for a change that is likely to have dramatic effects on the sector.

Campus spotlight: What can universities do to protect academic freedom?

It might also be seen as worrying that UKRI has proposed to hike the weighting of research culture before working out exactly what it is trying to reward and how this will be assessed. However, one element it has explicitly emphasised is EDI (equality, diversity and inclusion). In contrast, an aspect of research culture that is not mentioned at all in the proposals is academic freedom. Neither do the proposals have anything to say about the scientific and scholarly values underpinning research excellence.

Because the REF determines a significant part of the funding received by universities, it is a powerful shaper of incentives. If policy-scoring schemes such as Stonewall’s diversity league table of employers and the Athena Swan awards for gender equality have already distorted the priorities of universities, we can envisage how much more dramatic this effect will be when combined with the serious financial incentives entailed in the REF. Institutional autonomy and diversity risk being undermined.

Tying research funding to EDI submissions is not an entirely untried idea. Between 2016 and 2020, an Athena Swan silver award was required for departments to be eligible for funding from the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). There is no robust evidence that this policy had any positive effect on female representation in science – but that is in part because Athena Swan’s interpretation of “trans inclusion”, in effect, barred institutions from gathering equalities data on sex. This put them in contravention of the UK’s public sector equality duty to collect data on sex as a protected characteristic and demonstrates that well-meaning EDI interventions can have unintended consequences.

Universities are already embedding EDI “at the heart of all that we do” – as they typically put it. Although this might sound unobjectionable, it would be naive not to acknowledge that EDI departments are increasingly politicised. The tendency of EDI activities to promote particular contested ideologies, such as gender-identity theory and decoloniality theory, leads to two related problems. One is that some protected characteristics are treated as more equal than others, which conflicts with the duty to uphold the 2010 Equality Act. The other is that EDI zeal for particular theoretical perspectives undermines academic freedom, pluralism and freedom of belief.

Bureaucratic infringements of academic freedom operate via a range of mechanisms, both formal – such as ethics committees and recruitment and promotion criteria – and informal, such as harassment of staff with the “wrong” opinions via EDI networks and attempts to no-platform external speakers. At the heart of this is a politicisation of science and scholarship that undermines public trust in science and universities, risking grave social consequences such as vaccine hesitancy and climate science scepticism. Falling public confidence in universities in the US shows us the damage that can be done when universities are perceived to be partisan supporters of particular causes.

We suggest that increasing the environment element in the REF above 15 per cent carries serious risks. But regardless of the weighting, it is vital that academic freedom is explicitly centred in the evaluation of research environments. If it isn’t, there is a clear danger that, notwithstanding the legal duties imposed by the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, academic freedom will fall further down the list of university priorities, exacerbating existing trends towards managerialist control and away from academic governance.

There are concrete proposals that universities should consider to promote academic freedom. For example, one of us co-authored an article last year suggesting that all university policies should be assessed to ensure their alignment with both academic freedom and equality legislation, and that university senior leadership teams should include an academic freedom champion. The law firm Mishcon de Reya provides a practical checklist for universities seeking to be compliant with the law on academic freedom.

The UKRI consultation on the REF initially excluded the environment element. However, the research councils have now invited written responses on this component. It is vital that academics have their say on proposals that could transform universities, for better or worse.

Alice Sullivan is professor of sociology at UCL and head of research at the UCL Social Research Institute. John Armstrong is reader in financial mathematics at King’s College London.