Far-right politics and the university: A geographical perspective

Abstract

The global resurgence of far-right politics has had a significant impact on higher education, raising questions about the present and future of universities. This review article is a starting point to think about the contemporary far-right attacks on universities from a geographical perspective. By combining insights from geographical research on universities and far-right politics, the article develops a research agenda and suggests potential themes of inquiry. It examines the multiple intersections between far-right politics, geography and universities, the continuities and discontinuities between historical and contemporary iterations of far-right politics, as well as the contextual differences in the manifestation of far-right politics within universities. Drawing from contemporary examples, the article suggests four areas of future research – knowledge production and education, everyday spaces, economic geographies and spaces of resistance, to approach the multifaceted relationships between universities and far-right politics. Finally, the article also posits questions on responsibility in this context, outlining the need to imagine and realise anti-fascist universities.

Introduction

In his first few weeks of return to the White House, US President Donald Trump signed over two dozen executive orders that will have lasting impacts on American life, including its higher educational institutions (Leingang, 2024). In a campaign that promised seismic changes to higher education, including the planned dismantling of the US Department of Education, Trump and his running-mate JD Vance called for ‘honestly and aggressively attacking universities’ (Sen, 2024). They join a long and growing list of right-wing governments that have launched similar attacks on higher education institutions, from Brazil to Hungary to India and more (see Stanley, 2024). A broader political-economic shift towards neoliberalism had already brought forth concerns about the transformation of universities, especially the dilution of their critical and emancipatory functions. Scholars have discussed the ‘crisis of universities’ (Scott, 2018) and lamented over the ‘death of the idea of the university’ (Eagleton, 2015). The recent surge of far-right politics globally adds another layer of concern about the institution and space of the university (Papatsiba, 2024). While these changes have been discussed within various social science disciplines not limited to education, philosophy, sociology, politics and university studies, this paper makes space for a geographic perspective, particularly thinking about how we can geographically make sense of these contemporary changes. I argue that a geographic perspective on these issues can help explore, explain and analyse the spatial transformation of universities due to far-right politics as well as trace the geographies produced by far-right politics in and through universities.

This paper reviews the multiple intersections between geography, universities and far-right politics, to inquire how they relate to each other, and more importantly, how we can study them together. It argues that for a fuller understanding of the contemporary attacks on the university, there needs to be greater engagement between geographical research on universities on the one hand, and the emerging literature on far-right geographies on the other. The intersection of these two bodies of literature has the potential to generate insights about the specific role of the university within far-right politics and provide us with tools to explore that geographically. The paper starts with situating the contemporary far-right attacks within broader research on universities, followed by an exploration of university experiences under far-right regimes. It then develops a potential research agenda by referencing emerging research on far-right geographies, focusing on four aspects of university life – knowledge production and education, everyday space, economic geographies and spaces of resistance. This paper furthers discussions within the journal on universities (see Mitchell, 2008; Mitchell and Woolstone, 2024; Peerzada et al., 2024; Zacharek, 2024) and far-right politics (see Becker, 2024; Ettlinger, 2025; Koch, 2023), thinking about their overlaps and intersections.

Researching universities

Universities can be defined as ‘higher learning institutions with academic environments, where a community of scholars engage in teaching, learning, research and community service, along with being centres of professional training to serve the society's economic, political and cultural needs’ (Alemu, 2018: 212). Typically public, universities hold legal authority to confer academic degrees. This power is bestowed on universities by entities like the church, the monarch or commonly, the national government (Connell, 2019). There are also private universities that hold legal-administrative licences to teach and award qualifications in accordance with regulations laid down by the government. While universities worldwide share these core functions, they differ in terms of their mission, goals, function, qualification for faculty, criteria for student admission, programme durations and certifications offered (Assie-Lumumba, 2005). They are shaped by political, economic and cultural forces, and their roles reflect complex relationships with the state, market and civil society (Carey, 2016; Matthews, 2023). The space of the university is also a rapidly changing one, as can be seen through the integration of information technology leading to the production of a digital-physical geography; developments like virtual learning environments and distance learning courses have fundamentally restructured the spatialities and temporalities of the university, often deterritorialising the idea of the university (Robins and Webster, 2002; Sheail, 2018). As such, universities are seen as complex entities: awkward, fissile and slippery objects of analysis (McNeill et al., 2022).

A large and diverse body of research has sought to engage with the multi-faceted, and often contested, space of the university, attending to its multiple functions, its relationship with other entities such as the state, society, market and its multi-scalar engagement with socio-spatial processes (see, e.g. Kwiek, 2000; Meusburger et al., 2018; Woodward et al., 2017). One strand of research has traced the evolution of universities from autonomous mediaeval institutions to modern entities aligned with modern nation-states (Mowery and Sampat, 2006). Central to this shift is the nationalisation of universities – defined by Neave (2001) as their incorporation into the public domain as a national responsibility (Wittrock, 1993). Beyond Europe, scholars have examined alternative trajectories, including precolonial higher education, colonial imposition of European models and the influence of postcolonial state-building on evolution of universities (Alemu, 2018; Stockwell, 2009). Recent work has highlighted how globalisation and privatisation, driven by changes to the welfare state and post-war social contract, have reduced national control and encouraged the internationalisation of universities (Kwiek, 2007). The contemporary rise in far-right politics and its involvement with universities mark the next stage of their evolution, any analysis of which needs to be contextualised within these broader histories. Second, geographers particularly have become interested in the multiscalar roles of the university. Research here has followed two key directions: one explores the internationalisation of universities, focusing on their role in the global knowledge economy (Matus and Talburt, 2009), while the other emphasises their local impact, specifically their function as civic or economic anchor institutions (Goddard et al., 2013). Far-right politics reinserts the national within discussions on universities, which impacts the global mission of universities, while having very local ramifications, and as such warrants a multi-scalar analytical approach. Further, this analysis should include scales such as embodied and emotional, consider the co-constitution of the various scales through the university as well as how these different scales are represented, imagined and realised. The third body of work, typified by the field of critical university studies, has engaged with the normative ideas of the university, working at the intersection of scholarship, policy and governance, incorporating ‘reflective pragmatism’ around what universities do, and what they could/should do (Chappell, 2022; Petrina and Ross, 2014). Critical university studies examine how universities perpetuate inequality and injustice, while also advocating for reclaiming their democratic potential, through analysis critique, and resistance to current institutional practices (Williams, 2015). Far-right politics advances a particular conservative idea of the university, prioritising national responsibility and production of loyalty to the state over critical and emancipatory functions, and as such has consequences over the normative imagination of universities and their social role. It is therefore important to politicise the analysis of contemporary universities, recentring debates on what a university should be. Examining the contemporary impacts of far-right politics on universities needs to be situated within this broader literature, extending the core debates mentioned above as well as identifying particular and novel manifestations of the far-right, undergirded by a focus on spatial transformation of universities. The next section critically reviews the specific experience of universities under far-right regimes, followed by a preliminary research agenda, before concluding thoughts.

Far-right politics and universities

On a left-right political spectrum, far-right refers to an extreme right-wing political position, often characterised by extreme nationalism, nativist ideologies and authoritarian tendencies. Historically, far-right politics included ideologies like fascism and Nazism, but in its more contemporary forms includes a broad range of neo-fascist, neo-Nazi, third position, alt-right, white (or other ethnic) nationalist ideologies (Camus and Lebourg, 2017). The far-right is distinguished from the moderate right based on their contingent support for liberal constitutionalism, where far-right actors might acknowledge the procedures of democracy such as elections, but not its liberal content (Pirro, 2023). As such, far-right includes both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary forces, linked through overlapping memberships and complex webs of intersection, occurring through formal and informal channels (Pietiläinen, 2024). Beyond its most visible electoral articulations, far-right ideologies are reproduced through social movements, subcultures and individual actors, spanning the banal and spectacular, the public and the private (Castelli Gattinara and Pirro, 2019). Populism is understood as a potent form of far-right politics, that relies on particular constructions of the ‘authentic people’, commonly invoking ethnic, racial, class, cultural and other essentialisms, and aims to seriously rethink state-society relations and the limits of democratic liberalism, moving towards a majoritarian political structure (Lizotte and Kallio, 2023; Mudde, 2007; Rancière, 2017).

The rise of far-right politics in 20th century Europe, particularly Germany and Italy, had grave consequences for educational institutions. Universities underwent a rapid transformation with regard to their composition, relationship with state and society as well as the idea of the university. It should be noted here that unlike medieval universities, which were autonomous and self-governing institutions, modern European universities developed in conjunction with transition to modernity and the establishment of the modern nation-state (Kwiek, 2007). Beyond Europe, the advent of modern universities was often linked with colonial histories, where non-European precolonial higher educational institutions were destroyed and replaced by a European model, which subsequently became the template for universities worldwide. However, universities in the peripheries of the world carried vestiges of this precolonial institutionalised higher education along with being subject to forms of imperial violence, which has since shaped their organisation and ideal (Alemu, 2018). Universities in settler colonies, especially United States were also institutions of active dispossession of natives from their lands and contributed to the maintenance of supremacist structures (Curley and Smith, 2020; Roberts, 2000). In the postcolonial world, universities assumed a key political role by contributing to state-building, training competent bureaucracy and performing a developmental role towards the promotion of social and economic modernisation and international understanding (Stockwell, 2009).

These histories have led many to believe that universities as institutions have always been conservative, serving the interests of state and market, enabling dispossession, marginalisation and violence, and that the experiences of universities under far-right rule was nothing but an extreme manifestation of this. However, one key difference can be noted, in terms of academic autonomy. The relationship between universities and the state in most contexts was seen as an affirmative one, where the university served the nation-state while still acting as important sites of intellectual resistance to power; the university was guaranteed academic freedom and autonomy in exchange for furnishing the state with its cognitive requirements (Delanty, 2001; Neave, 2000). Under far-right regimes, however, this autonomy was undermined, and a unitary control of higher education consistent with the priorities of a fascist state was instated (Papi et al., 2019).

In Fascist Italy, universities were conceived of as ‘strictly scientific institutions dedicated to the continuous reformulation of culture (Ascoli, 1937). University students, as the future political and intellectual leaders, represented the middle-class elite that supported fascism, making them crucial to the vitality and survival of fascist systems (La Rovere, 1999). For the fascist regime, Italian universities were to fulfil a triple imperative – they were to aid in the building of a mass totalitarian regime, to craft a specifically ‘fascist’ culture to support it and to form a new elite that would perpetuate that culture and regime through space and time (Ben-Ghiat, 2020). Similar processes were seen in Nazi Germany, where the national socialist regime manipulated several aspects of the country's traditional university, turning German higher education into a crucial source of support for the new regime (see Ericksen, 2012). German universities supported the Nazi regime by advancing wartime technology and providing logistical support for the Holocaust. They integrated racial ideology into scholarly research, producing both ideological and expert knowledge (Grüttner, 2010). Beyond this, the changing governance structures, including the dominance of political accountability left strong marks on the institution of the university, which through submission, accommodation and active support, turned into a politically aligned organisation (Detzen and Hoffmann, 2020). Control of universities aimed to prevent threats to the regime and maintain the social order, eliminating any possibility of universities fostering social emancipation. Strict rules were enforced to control academics, students and administration, with state oversight ensuring adherence to fascist beliefs through funding and direct monitoring (Papi et al., 2019). Far-right politics reshaped university life under fascist regimes, aiming to align campuses with political goals. Mussolini's policies excluded ‘undesirable’ members, altered curricula and eroded university autonomy, turning campuses into sites of intimidation, surveillance and politicised daily life (Ben Ghiat, 2010). Similarly, the Nazification of universities imposed mandatory activities, political events and a focus on conformity, sidelining education as a public good and promoting loyalty over critical thinking (McLean, 2023).

The contemporary attack on and crisis of universities bears many resemblances to the experiences outlined above, along with some crucial differences. Firstly, the current situation in universities has been made possible by a ‘longstanding neoliberal withering’ of the institutional structures of the university, including a disempowerment of university labour, an atmosphere of anti-intellectualism, and the insecurities brought forth by the failures of neoliberal capitalism (Ballas, 2023). Secondly, technological advancement has played a significant role in not only the changing geographies of the institution but also in creating digital infrastructures of disinformation, enabling organised and systematic targeting campaigns, and platforming a new generation of public intellectuals. Finally, the pace of immigration and demographic change that characterise the world today has also produced different and, in some cases, highly reactive forms of far-right discourses, more so after the pandemic, which emboldened many nation-states to further restrict free speech and mobility (Ballas, 2023). Thus, the resurgence of far-right politics occurs in geographically distinct ways and impacts the everyday lives and spaces within universities, making a geographical perspective particularly illuminating. The emerging literature on far-right geographies helps identify the continuities and discontinuities between historical and contemporary far-right politics, highlight its spatial nature and provide theoretical and methodological insights to shape a research agenda that explores far-right attacks on the university.

Far-right geographies

Far-right and authoritarian practices tend to be diffuse and ephemeral, but ‘unfold in particular spaces and places, and touch people's lives in an uneven manner’ (Koch, 2022: 2). Such politics crosses borders and bodies, unfolds differently across time and space, and thus a geographical perspective can be illuminating within interdisciplinary discussions on far-right politics. Some questions that guide the geographical analysis of far-right politics include: how far-right practices define, shape and result from specific spatial and temporal configurations, how are far-right practices experienced and embodied, and how do certain actors conjure or resist forms of authoritarianism? Spatialising the study of far-right politics demonstrates how they are perpetuated and challenged, and why they prevail in certain places and among certain actors (Koch, 2024). Geographers have focused on contemporary iterations of far-right politics and actors, questioning how such processes can be thought through spatially and how they can be theorised in relation to long-standing debates within the discipline (Lizotte, 2019). Political geographers have situated populist and right-wing nationalisms at the intersection of global, regional and localised dynamics, to reveal both their specificities and their connections to broader political changes. Thus, geographical analysis of far-right politics involves both an analysis of how right-wing ideologies manifest within particular geographical and temporal contexts, and how they alter institutional practices and governing arrangements (Nagel and Grove, 2021).

A large part of this research has focused on mapping and tracing where far-right politics occurs, especially populism, attempting to provide a spatial explanation for their occurrence. Most notable has been the research on ‘left-behind places’ (see Rodríguez-Pose, 2020), using concepts like ‘geographies of discontentment (Florida, 2021). Using these tools, it can be valuable to examine the contextual differences between universities and how they might be more susceptible to certain kinds of far-right politics. An example here would be Ignatieff (2024), who takes a geopolitical lens to analyse the geostrategic rivalry between countries like USA, China and Hungary to show how authoritarianism and far-right politics manifests in connected but different ways in different political contexts. Second, research on far-right geographies has focused on the use of spatial metaphors, particularly nation, territory, borders and ideas of distance, isolation, periphery and more, within far-right discourses (see Ajanovic et al., 2016; Beurskens, 2023). Here the focus is on spatial categories and representations and how they shape far-right practices, to reinforce the supposed natural and benign nature of state territoriality (Ince, 2019). Again, universities as spaces of knowledge production and socialisation are key arenas to examine how such discourses are produced and legitimised. This is evident in Geva and Santo'’s (2021) study on how research and teaching in certain Hungarian and French universities marks some bodies and places as unnatural, threatening or disposable, and how that relates to the increasingly xenophobic imaginations of the nation. Finally, a third line of inquiry within far-right geographies has sought to uncover the spatial politics of far-right groups and actors, by inquiring how this politics plays out in space. This involves the consideration of spatial strategies and spatial imaginaries, examining how far-right spaces are constructed, represented and reproduced, and to what end (see Ince, 2019). Exploring the spatial transformation of university campuses and evaluating their relationships with far-right politics is another way the impacts of far-right politics on universities can be researched. For instance, Cas Mudde's (2024) analysis of the far-right group Turning Point USA's use of the campus space, focusing on the visuality of MAGA hats, their recruitment practices, and their aesthetics point to how far-right groups remake the campus space. There have been calls within this field to include research on the foundations of right-wing populisms within ordinary spaces and practices of everyday life (Ince, 2019; Luger, 2024), paying greater attention to the role of emotions in shaping the geopolitical and everyday politics spatialities (Beurskens, 2023) and moving beyond the national scale, to think about far-right politics in terms of practices and at different scales, from the embodied to the transnational (Koch, 2022; Luger, 2022). Here as well, universities can become a key scale of analysis, with ample scope to focus on multi-scalarity of far-right politics through universities, as well as on the affective, aesthetic and everyday manifestations of such. As such, far-right geographies offers a vast range of theoretical and methodological tools for a more expansive and nuanced exploration of the multiple entanglements of universities and far-right politics.

Towards a research agenda

Combining insights from university studies, far-right geographies and the historical experience of universities under far-right regimes provides us with a framework to explore the contemporary far-right attack on universities geographically. Below, I present a preliminary research agenda highlighting some potential areas of inquiry. I start with describing how geographers have conceptualised the university through particular lenses, focusing on their specific functions. I follow up with contemporary examples of how far-right politics impacts these functions, suggesting themes for future research, with reference to relevant previous work. This is in no way an exhaustive list but rather should be considered a starting point to think about the relationship between far-right politics and universities geographically.

Knowledge production and education

The first function of universities that form part of scholarly scrutiny involves knowledge production and dissemination in the context of their research and educational capacities. Here, one thread of work has focused on the institutional geographies that underpin processes of knowledge production and their evolution, both with respect to external entities like the state and economy, as well as internally. Specifically, research has focused on the changing relationship between universities and nation-states under neoliberal globalisation (Brøgger and Moscovitz, 2022; Kwiek, 2007), internal shifts in power dynamics with the rise of managerialism (Anderson, 2006), or the uneven global and intranational geopolitical relationships between knowledge and universities (Hammett et al., 2022; Shahjahan and Baizhanov, 2023). A second field of work has sought to critically inquire into the kind of knowledge produced within universities. Key works include analysis of how geographical knowledge produced within universities was utilised to commit violence upon colonised communities (see Morrissey, 2013; Roberts, 2000), as well as the militarisation of academia, whereby universities are increasingly contributing to the military-industrial-complex through research, training and transfer – where knowledge produced in university settings is appropriated for military objectives have also been criticised and campaigned against (see Bryan, 2016; Rose-Redwood et al., 2022; Woodward et al., 2017). Related to this, geographical research has explored the nature of education within universities and its evolution with respect to broader socio-political changes, especially neoliberal globalisation and technological development (see Ettlinger, 2024b; Larner and Le Heron, 2005). There have been greater calls to explore the geopolitical role played by education (see Nguyen, 2020), focusing not only on how broader geopolitical processes impact education, but also accounting for how those are differentially experienced, negotiated and contested, as well as how education gets employed to produce certain geopolitical realities (Müller, 2011). The contemporary rise of far-right politics relates to most of these debates, as it amends institutional structures and governance processes while producing certain kinds of knowledges for certain political ends, as shown by the examples below.

The rise of neo-nationalism understood as the rise and revival of extreme right-wing movements, characterised by anti-immigrant and xenophobic rhetoric, economic protectionism, constraints on civil liberties, has profound impacts on the knowledge production and dissemination functions of universities (see Douglass, 2021). Giudici et al. (2024) have shown that education acts as a means of disseminating conservative and nativist culture and values under far-right regimes, rather than as a means of redistributing opportunities, calling for further research on the strategies adopted by far-right actors to influence education, while also considering education as a lens through which far-right politics can be analysed. As has been seen in various contexts, a reinvigorated national movement has taken root within the university sector, often as a response to the hyper-globalisation of higher education. For example, various universities in Europe have targeted student mobility, redesigned degree programmes and reorganised central administration to ‘take back control’. Denmark, for instance, has been at the forefront of this renationalisation impetus, slashing English language courses, limiting intake of international students and stressing a ‘think Danish’ attitude by reorienting Danish higher education to support Danish jobs and Danish labour markets (Brøgger, 2023; Jørgensen, 2013). Beyond this, higher education is being mobilised to defend ‘national’ cultures, tradition and civilisation (Leingang, 2024). The nation is seen as a top priority within far-right education, where universities are expected to introduce students to the dominant cultures, glorify a mythic past and obscure perspectives and histories of those who do not belong (Stanley, 2018). Such examples show that there is an increasing willingness of nation-states to intervene within university affairs and reclaim higher education as an ethnic-territorial domain (Brøgger, 2023).

Another example would be Donald Trump's executive order, ‘Ending Radical Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing’, which seeks to eliminate federal DEI ¹ initiatives, oppose ‘gender identity politics’, and discourage private sector DEI efforts (Anguiano, 2025; Smith and Jesse, 2025). Under this policy, federal research funding for projects deemed ‘DEI-related’, gender-focused or propelling ‘climate change hoax’ have been frozen, with agencies like the NIH and NSF enforcing compliance under threat of prosecution (see Flath et al., 2025; Palmer, 2025). This builds on previous efforts to ban critical race theory and defund disciplines such as gender and Latinx studies while promoting a parallel ‘American academy’ to deliver MAGA-aligned content under the guise of neutrality (Briant, 2024; Nittle, 2023). Trump is also not the only one to adopt this strategy, as other far-right leaders like Orbán in Hungary or Modi in India have also attacked university curricula (Ignatieff, 2023; Peerzada et al., 2024). As such, universities as spaces of knowledge production and dissemination are not just impacted by broader far-right politics but are also utilised to further far-right agendas. As such the exploration of the spatialities of knowledge production and education under the aegis of far-right politics, particularly focusing on changing institutional governance is a potential area of further research. Conversely, the university as a lens can also provide valuable insights into the discourses, imaginations and practices of far-right actors, through exploring how they imagine the university space and beyond. Also important would be to explore the intersections between emerging technologies like Artificial Intelligence, critical education, their utilisation by far-right actors and university life and spaces (see Ettlinger, 2024b).

Everyday spaces

The second scale of focus should be on the everyday life and spaces within the university, focusing on the constitution and experience of practices and processes at the personal, embodied levels and their relationship to socio-political structures. The university has been understood as a socio-cultural and political space constituted through everyday practices and experiences of staff, students and other members of the university. The subfield of critical campus geographies has responded to a gap in research about the socio-spatial relations constructed and contested on university campuses within a geographical scholarship that intends to explore the complexities associated with social locations, sites and scales (Hopkins, 2011). This approach has explored how the university campus is experienced and becomes embodied on an everyday basis; it focuses on the ways in which campuses are constructed, contested, managed and experienced in marginalising or empowering ways (Hopkins, 2011). Questions of belonging on campus has been at the forefront of this research (see Andersson et al., 2012; Wong, 2024) while the notion of the university campus has been expanded to include student residences (Holton, 2016, 2017), student unions (Brooks et al., 2016) and other spaces of consumption (Middha, 2020). Much of the impacts of far-right attacks on universities are experienced and embodied on an everyday basis, both banal and spectacular, and as such should be a key priority of future research. Below I use the example of Gaza Solidarity Encampments to show how far-right politics can impact the everyday life on campus, identifying potential directions for future investigation.

In the summer of 2024, multiple student encampments were set up in solidarity with the War on Gaza, demanding their universities divest from arms manufacturers, boycott Israeli institutions, call for a ceasefire and pledge to rebuild Gazan educational sector. In response, most university administrators took the recourse of disciplinary action, securitising the campus and violently evicting and brutalising students with the help of university, private and state security forces. Universities transformed into battle-zones with police using military tactics to subdue and remove students from their campuses (Ettlinger, 2024a; Kestler-D’Amours, 2024; Speri, 2024). The militarisation of university campuses has been a long-standing concern politically and intellectually (see Giroux, 2008, 2016). According to Giroux (2016), the contemporary American university embodies a ‘hypermodern militarised knowledge factory’ (p. 58), where facts, information and abilities obtained through education are all militarised, transforming universities into handmaidens of war. Chatterjee and Maira (2016) have documented instances of securitisation and militarisation of the already imperial American university, what they call the ‘strange coupling of the bucolic and the brutal, the stormtroopers and students’. Campus police, as part of a wider policing infrastructure, contribute to the securitisation of campuses, embodying racialised violence, with minoritised students bearing the brunt of this (Ananth and Leiva, 2019). Far-right politics brings with it militarisation, often violent in nature, on to the campus, along with a greater intrusion of the legal-carceral state; the securitisation and militarisation of university campuses are an enforcement strategy that uses the legal-political resources of the neoliberal state (Godrej, 2016). This will become a core intellectual and political issue with the ascent of authoritarianism.

Second, the aftermath of the encampments, still ongoing, have led to a significant reorganisation of the physical university space. In Columbia University for example, the site of one of the first encampments, there is now fencing around the lawns of the school's quad, along with a colour-coded campus status map, with varying levels of access restrictions based upon the ‘potential disruption to academic mission and/or campus operations’. Peace officers have been recruited with the authority to arrest students, in addition to the already existing 290 security personnel, along with placing severe limits on the freedom of speech, congregation and political action (Speri, 2024). Similar policies have been seen in Oxford University, and other institutes around the world, often targeted specifically against pro-Palestinian activism (see Newby, 2024). Research on the changing nature of activism within neoliberalising universities has identified how administrative growth and restructuring is often used to control and correct activism through spatial appropriation of the campus (Ginsberg, 2011). Strategies of cooperation, sanitisation and bureaucratisation have become key to controlling activism in a way that does not threaten the corporate structure, while making politics marketable (Dolhinow, 2017). Violence and repression take a more banal form through the increasing depoliticisation and neutralisation of the university campus, that systematically reduces the space for dissent (Carey, 2016). Such strategies are also employed within far-right contexts, where alternative views, critical thought and dissent is systematically disabled and displaced; a greater focus on the spatial nature of this is necessary.

Third, pro-Palestinian activists have also faced extreme legal action, including suspension and termination from degree programmes, detention and deportation. Specifically targeting international students on legal visas, the American state has used its full power of Immigration and Customs Enforcement to identify, detain and deport students engaged in pro-Palestinian activism. Most universities have capitulated to the demands of the executive by providing information about relevant students, cooperating with Homeland Security agencies, and allowing immigration enforcement on to campuses (Gowayed and Halliday Hardie, 2025; Jeyaretnam, 2025; Oladipo, 2025). Targeting migrant staff and students has been a popular strategy among right-leaning governments (and also increasingly left-wing parties like the UK Labour, see Syal, 2025), bolstered under far-right regimes. Trump's 2017 Muslim Ban left thousands of legal migrant students stranded, while his immigration policies and deportation plans threaten over 400,000 undocumented students’ access to higher education. Aggressive local immigration enforcement has impacted sanctuary campuses and services for undocumented students (Sen, 2024). Additionally, changes to H1B visas, the cancellation of birthright citizenship and increasing scrutiny of students from ‘enemy nations’ has also deterred legal migration (Leingang, 2024; Magtulis, 2025). The everyday impacts of bordering regimes within universities have been previously explored by Grayson (2012) and Jenkins (2014) among others. Analysing the British context, they argued that the Conservative Party's ‘hostile environment’ policies had transmuted universities into permanent border checkpoints, conscripting university staff as border agents and discriminated between domestic and non-domestic students, creating a two-tier identity, resulting in race-based de-studentification (see also Miller and Rose, 2008). The contemporary examples highlighted above extend this logic, accompanied by a particularly racialised and militarised enforcement strategy, where activism is criminalised, and the university campus is placed under siege. As such, the impact of far-right politics on the everyday life within university campuses, particularly relating to bordering, racialisation, depoliticisation and militarisation should be research priorities.

Economic geographies

Universities have also been conceptualised as an economic space, engaged in economic development, employment provision, service delivery, shaping particular political-economic geographies (Meusburger et al., 2018). One thread of research has focused on universities and globalisation, particularly how universities have refashioned themselves as ‘ideal institutions of the global knowledge economy’ (Britez and Peters, 2010). Urban and economic geographers have focused on the relationship between universities and the region in which they are located. Goddard and Chatterton (1999) have studied the role played by university campuses in regional development, and how that influences the relationship between local communities and students. A key facet of this research has focused on the process called ‘studentification’, analysing the physical, economic, social and cultural transformation of universities towns associated with a high and seasonal influx of students in higher education (Smith, 2005). Student economic geographies have become a core topic of research within various urban contexts (see Smith, 2009; Zasina et al., 2023). Increasingly, the role of universities as financial actors, their involvement in real estate markets, and the attendant reconfiguration of the campus space has also garnered spatial analysis (McNeill et al., 2022). The neoliberal turn of universities has also been critiqued by geographers, who have analysed the changing institutional structures, experiences of staff and students within neoliberalising universities, and the social role of the university in a neoliberal society, among others. This is an extensive area of research focusing on shifting temporalities, financial insecurity, transformation of teacher-learner relations, consequences on wellbeing, social reproduction, scholarship, everyday experiences, configuration of campus space and more (Amsler and Motta, 2019; Anderson, 2006; Larner and Le Heron, 2005). At the same time, there have been several interventions, that have posited possible avenues of action to challenge and reorient the ways of the neoliberal university (see Analogue University, 2019; Gandy, 2024; Mountz et al., 2015), to rescue universities from being repositioned as ‘servants of the knowledge economy’ (Brady, 2012).

Research on contemporary transformation of universities under far-right regimes also requires a renewed focus on the economic geographies of the university, particularly in the context of defunded public education. As has been identified, public funding for universities is being retrenched and made increasingly conditional on the perception of where they make a direct contribution to the economy, forcing universities to look elsewhere, mainly the private sector, for financial support (Kwiek, 2000). The confluence of the corporate and imperial university (re)produces the violence of consumer culture through academic containment and institutional control (Carey, 2016). The neoliberal logic of private capital that privatises universities becomes intertwined with logics of militarisation and the criminalisation of dissent, where privatisation requires a militarised enforcement strategy using the legal-political resources of the neoliberal state complicit with private capital paired with the neoliberal disinvestment in the concept of education as a political food (Godrej, 2016). As Newfield (2011) highlights, the current financial and political crises of the public university is the result of conservative campaigns to end public education's democratising influence on society. Three economic geographies are particularly pertinent. Firstly, the impacts of migration policies of far-right regimes on the international students and staff, and the consequent impacts on the global missions of universities, have significant economic consequences. As evidence shows, strict migration regulations cause reduced intake of international students leading to unmanageable financial crises of universities across UK, USA and Europe (Hymas and Wood, 2025; Weale and Syal, 2025; Zacharek, 2024). ² Secondly, the conditional withholding of public funds to force universities into complying with a conservative agenda, as seen in the US and elsewhere, has significant economic consequences for the higher education sector. Shown by incoming evidence, these funding cuts have forced redundancies, freezing essential research, leading to large-scale institutional reorganisation; the spatial impacts of which should become a key question within further research (Helmore, 2025; Shamim, 2025). Finally, the new economic geographies produced by and through universities under far-right politics, focusing on their entanglements with military and carceral nexuses, the conflicts (if any) with neoliberal profitability, amid calls for divestment are also crucial points of consideration.

Spaces of resistance

A fourth way to think about the relationship between far-right politics and university spaces, is to focus on the possibility of universities to act as spaces of resistance. Universities have also been envisioned as critical institutions, where in addition to the pursuit of truth, they embody creativity and resistance, aiding in the prevailing of truth over ideologies and vested interests. As Kumar (2002) notes, the function of universities is ‘not to swim with the tide but do against it’. The university can also be idealised as a crucial mediating context through which the forces associated with commodification may be displaced, restructured or even subverted (Naidoo, 2003). Such a model of university is underpinned by the normative position that the pursuit of truth in universities should be underpinned by a dedication to the advancement of knowledge and training of scholars for its own sake, as well as for the betterment of the lives of individuals and the society. Here, critical thinking is understood to be foundational to university research and teaching through which resources are developed to improve the human condition (Alemu, 2018). Delanty (1998) echoes this by highlighting that universities are not just spaces of critical thinking but also sites of critical and transformative action, a central institution in society from which social change could emanate. Contemporary universities are often defined as contradictory spaces: they are imperial, yet one that offers academic freedom to teach and learn anti-imperialism (Falcón et al., 2016). They are at the same time disengaged and engaged, hegemonic and counter hegemonic. Another way to think about the university is as a site of struggle between domination and contestation, such that research, teaching and learning are always political (Stavrianakis, 2006). Exploring the university as a political space thus often explores the role played by university spaces in developing resistance, whether as sites of activism (see Silvey, 2000) or as spaces of political socialisation (see Crossley, 2008).

Examining contemporary protests against far-right politics within university contexts should be a key component of this research. Geographical research has been focusing on movements like Campaign Against Arms Trade in universities (Stavrianakis, 2006), abolition of carceral-university nexus (Mokhtari, 2023), Black Lives Matter movement (Cole and Heinecke, 2018), as well as broader fights against neoliberalisation of the university (Risager and Thorup, 2016). This research has explored creative geographies of resistance, imagined alternative universities, and called for greater praxis and direct action in realising a more just and emancipatory universities. The Gaza Solidarity Encampments, for instance, are an important resistant space, that reimagined the university, reclaimed and produced new spaces, becoming a site of alternative existence (Demasi, 2024; Ranz-Lind, 2024). Thinking about such resistant geographies should also be considered crucial within a broader research agenda on far-right politics and universities.

The ongoing far-right attack on universities also requires a rethinking of our responsibilities as geographers. Writing about Gaza and geographical responsibility, Agha et al. (2024) make the salient point of the need to develop an academic praxis that actively supports Palestinian calls for liberation; there is a need to defend the right to speak out, to pursue an ethical and intellectual commitment to knowledge production. Centring and building on this, I argue that geographical responsibility should also extend to developing a praxis against the far-right attack and subversion of university spaces. Research on far-right geographies should be accompanied by a commitment to fostering anti-fascist geographies; there is a need to think and act in prefigurative terms, both as a principle of analysis and action (Ince, 2019). Universities are seen as a core component of developing such anti-fascist geographies, through the creation of pedagogies that seek to destabilise and question existing modes of academic power, building grassroots power through unions and collectives, and experimenting with alternative ways of being as academics and workers. Practically, this would involve utilising academic expertise, funds and privilege to support anti-fascist initiatives, engaging in research that seeks to understand the nature and dynamics of far-right movements, and producing an intellectual project of thinking about the possibilities of an ‘anti-fascist’ university (Ince, 2019). The university space should be reclaimed as bulwarks against authoritarianism, for futures free of genocide, fascism and militarism (Ranz-Lind, 2024; Stanley, 2024).

Conclusion

This review paper has provided a starting point to think about the contemporary far-right attack on universities from a geographical perspective. It first identified that while geographical research on universities has examined various components of the university space, there is a lack of theorisation on the contemporary far-right attacks on the university. To address this gap, this paper argued that a greater engagement with the emerging literature on far-right geographies can provide potential avenues of research as well as theoretical and methodological tools for a fuller exploration of the transformation of university spaces. The paper suggested four potential arenas of research, focusing on knowledge production and education, everyday spaces, economic geographies and spaces of resistance, to theorise the entanglements of far-right politics and universities, while highlighting some potential themes for future research. A geographical perspective illuminates not just the spatial impacts of these processes on the university, but also brings forth considerations of the multiscalar role of the university, and its spatial imaginaries, all of which are influenced by far-right politics. This paper has shown that both universities and far-right politics are complex, multifaceted and intersect in multiple ways; researching these intersections are necessary and timely to gain a fuller understanding of the relationships between far-right politics and universities.