Why the mega-rich are bankrolling anti-woke education

In a Thai restaurant in London's West End last week, eight strangers gathered to discuss freedom of speech in Britain's universities.

The group had come together after signing up to "cancelled" professor Eric Kaufmann's new masters degree, the Politics of Cultural Conflict, exploring the culture wars between the political Left and Right.

Following a 20-year career at London's Birkbeck University, Kaufmann quit following "a five-year period of steady hostility from radical staff and students inside and outside the university". He has responded by launching his own political course at the University of Buckingham.

"It's about studying woke as an object," says Kaufmann. "That cannot currently happen at other universities, where the focus is only on how the right is weaponising the culture war.

"I think it's important to do research which is either 'cancellable' or difficult, but can feed into policy or political debates. In a mainstream university it is uncomfortable to be pursuing that kind of research. Your promotion prospects and research funding would be negatively affected."

Kaufmann's classes, which include an online course exploring woke as an ideology, reflect a growing interest in attempts to study – and in some cases challenge – cancel culture. This week, Britain's second-richest man, Sir Leonard Blavatnik, emerged as one of the billionaires bankrolling an "anti-woke" university in the US.

The University of Austin has so far raised $200m (£153m) from a swathe of high-profile investors eager to back the start-up university's "fearless pursuit of truth". It "welcomes witches who refuse to burn". Other billionaire backers include Harlan Crow, the property developer and Republican donor, and Peter Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal.

The university's founding faculty fellows include Kathleen Stock, who resigned from her post at the University of Sussex following a high-profile gender row with the institution and fellow academics.

Although Kaufmann's course is the first of its kind in the UK, there are concerns about university censorship here which mirrors the backlash in America.

A trigger warning was appended to Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales by the University of Nottingham last week over "expressions of Christian faith". Aberdeen University last year issued a trigger warning for the "emotionally challenging" Peter Pan.

Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd comes with a warning to students that it contains content related to "the cruelty of nature" at the University of Warwick, which even banned the term "trigger warning" a few years ago amid fears it could be considered too provocative.

The Government is on the cusp of potentially pulling the plug on a flagship Tory policy aimed at forcing universities to actively promote free speech, a decision which could lead to a backlash among some academics, students and investors.

Kaufmann says that professors now have to fill out forms saying how they are teaching in line with diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. "We have to report on our curriculum content, including race and sex of authors on reading lists, and show progress," he adds.

One businessman with a senior role at a British university, who did not want to be named, says the issue is that both the Left and the Right are now "approaching university as an ideological tool."

He doesn't agree with either side, believing instead that campuses should be politically neutral. "The language of diversity – be kind, be inclusive – can be used to bully [those with a different view]. The accusation that you're not inclusive is a potent one.

"Arguments that if you don't take a political position, you haven't got a view, is also new. Universities shouldn't take a view."

The culture wars debate is far bigger and more politicised in the US, where deep-pocketed investors are openly trying to rewrite the education system. The University of Austin is not the only institution backed by billionaires who feel threatened by what Elon Musk has called a "mind virus" that is "rife on college campuses".

Mr Musk himself is spending $100m (£80m) to set up schools and another university in Texas after complaining about a "meaningful degradation" in the skills of graduates.

Ralston College, which has outposts in Savannah, Georgia and the Greek island of Samos, is run by the Canadian psychologist and author Jordan Peterson.

Peterson, who has also set up the online Jordan Peterson Academy, was once a little-known academic but has become a lightning rod in the culture wars in recent years. His rugged self-help book, 12 Rules for Life, earned him a legion of fans and the respect of the Right – but his attitudes have been pilloried as old-fashioned and even dangerous by the Left.

Parodied in recent Marvel comics as Captain America's nemesis, he has attracted donations from backers including the hedge fund boss Sir Paul Marshall , who owns a significant stake in news channel GB News.

"If you can't say what you think, soon you won't be able to think, because mostly we think in words," Peterson argued in an interview with The Telegraph.

A spokesman for Sir Paul says he "believes that freedom of thought is fundamental to philosophical inquiry", adding that his investments are "not so much for anti-woke reasons, but for pro-philanthropy, pro-civilisation and pro-freedom of speech reasons".

Money talks and the stream of donor cash going towards non-traditional institutions is beginning to influence some of the big beasts of academia.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences this summer said they would no longer ask those applying for teaching jobs to explain how they would boost diversity.

At the University of Michigan, The New York Times earlier this year found that students were growing more frustrated by diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, which have seen computer-science students quizzed on microaggressions and reportedly cost around a quarter of a billion dollars since 2016.

Former students of these top universities are also pushing for change. The billionaire investor Bill Ackman played an instrumental part in ousting former Harvard president Claudine Gay earlier this year after a row over her handling of anti-Semitism on campus.

He argued earlier this year that Harvard had quashed "conservative and other viewpoints" from its campus. "Certain speech is no longer permitted," he wrote. "Campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and cancelled."

His comments are part of a wider cultural backlash in America, where companies are rowing back on DEI initiatives and education is increasingly becoming a point of contention. A number of billionaires have backed governor Ron DeSantis and his self-described war on woke.

On a trip to Britain last year he met the now Conservative leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch. He said they discussed "her war on woke" and she "complimented what we are doing in Florida".

In the City, investors are uneasy about their community bankrolling an "anti-woke" agenda in academia. A UK-based investment chief criticises what is happening in America and says the trend among billionaire backers is unlikely to move here. Another major Tory donor said they would rather not involve themselves in the frontlines of the debate.

Kaufmann expects most City investors to continue pouring money into Britain's oldest and most sought-after institutions when it comes to funding decisions. Although his course is pegged as a first of its kind in this country, he is yet to be inundated with interest.

While hundreds of people have taken part in his online course on woke ideology, which costs around £80, only eight have signed up to his masters degree on cultural conflict.

Even so, academics and investors alike are paying attention. "Education should not be ideological," says the businessman with a senior role at a British university. "Academia should be about arguments not conclusions."