{"id":415567,"date":"2026-02-09T02:12:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:12:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/415567\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T02:12:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T02:12:09","slug":"universities-told-to-report-foreign-interference-on-campus-to-mi5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/415567\/","title":{"rendered":"Universities told to report foreign interference on campus to MI5"},"content":{"rendered":"

They promote Chinese culture and language on UK campuses, but have been criticised over alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party.<\/p>\n

The Chinese embassy in London at the time called the UKCT report’s findings “groundless and absurd”, adding that China respects freedom of speech in the UK and elsewhere.<\/p>\n

Meawhile, in November BBC News reported how a campaign of harassment and intimidation took place<\/a> at Sheffield Hallam University in an attempt to shut down an academic’s research into allegations of forced labour among Uyghur Muslims<\/a> in the Xinjiang region of China.<\/p>\n

Laura Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery, said at the time<\/a> that the university had “negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market”.<\/p>\n

Sheffield Hallam apologised to Murphy. The Chinese embassy criticised some of the university’s work on Xinjiang as being “seriously flawed”.<\/p>\n

Following the UK government’s latest intervention urging universities to report any foreign interference, higher education regulator the Office for Students said it would work with the sector to address “significant and growing threats”.<\/p>\n

Arif Ahmed, the regulator’s director for freedom of speech, said: “We’ve always been clear that universities must resist external state threats to academic freedom, and that suppression of research because of the disapproval of a foreign government is unacceptable in practically any circumstances.”<\/p>\n

Dr Tim Bradshaw, chief executive of the Russell Group of universities, welcomed the idea of a single point of contact for reports, saying this would “empower institutions to report and take action more swiftly and confidently, knowing there is support in place”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They promote Chinese culture and language on UK campuses, but have been criticised over alleged ties to the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-415567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}