Fellow(oathe) the rise of Cambridge’s New Populist Right

Most observers would say Cambridge, like most universities, occupies a clear space within the liberal left. However, where progressives have failed to make full use of their potential influence, conservative Cambridge academics have become persistently better organised, networked and engaged within public life.

Cambridge has long been home to an academic Right. One of the most influential was Roger Scruton. He emerged from Peterhouse – establishing the deeply reactionary  Salisbury Review in the ‘80s, with fellow academics Maurice Cowling on the editorial board and John Casey as a frequent contributor (and current senior Treasurer of CUCA). The strange phenomena of ‘Scruton Café’s’ dotted around Viktor Orban’s Hungary are a reactionary testament to his influence - which Cambridge acted as a launching pad for. Yet - something new and more aggressive is afoot today. In the past decade, the New Populist Right have helped cultivate a new kind of media-savvy right-wing Don. 

Roger Scruton / Pete Helme

If I were to ask who has been described as ‘JD Vance’s ‘Philosopher’ King’ – one might guess they’d have emerged deep from the world of ultra-conservative think-tanks like the Heritage Foundation. Well, nope. Instead, it’s a drab Lecturer from the Cambridge Divinity Faculty – Dr James Orr - self-proclaimed best mates with JD. They’ve apparently hung out together in his house in Cambridge, dined together in the Senate, having ‘hit it off on long walks together’. I’m all for a flirtatious bromance between two devoutly catholic men, if only it were not built on the unfortunate foundations of ethno-nationalism. 

“I’m all for a flirtatious bromance between two devoutly catholic men, if only it were not built on the unfortunate foundations of ethno-nationalism.”

Orr is a key figure among a broader group of Divinity Faculty reactionaries who view themselves as counterrevolutionaries swimming against the tide of Cambridge’s liberal culture. Their alleged links to Republican billionaire Peter Thiel have been well documented, as well as their activities, which include reportedly lobbying for Jordan Peterson to receive a visiting fellowship.

Orr is incredibly vocal on X. Some of the most reprehensible tweets include one where he stated, ‘import the Arab world, become the Arab world’, in response to a video of pro-Palestine protestors. He has heaped praise on the AfD and proclaims ‘soft tyranny’ is spreading to Britain. Bizarrely, he even felt the need to opine that the Former Scottish First Minister ‘Humza Yousaf is not Scottish in any sense that would have been intelligible to an actual Scot prior to 1975’.

This epitomises the new kind of Right-wing Don: savvy for rage-bait, embedded in an American-led-transnational movement, and viewing themselves at the public vanguard of preventing civilizational decay. In The Telegraph and Spectator, such academics are lauded as counter-cultural warriors who have put their necks above the parapet of groupthink. Professor Arif Ahmed of Caius, was certainly presented this way, as the ‘Free Speech Tsar’ consulting Rishi Sunak’s government. 

The rise of the academic Right has brought with it a set of complications and contradictions. Right wing populists are increasingly obsessed with the idea of the authenticity of the forgotten man and woman. They claim only they can represent the ‘real’ (read white) working class, which has been left disenfranchised by out-of-touch elites. Meanwhile, this new obsession has made Cambridge students a particularly attractive punching bag. After all, to be a Cambridge student is to live in a variation of gothic, neoclassical or medieval architecture. This is treated as irrefutable proof of hypocrisy and inauthenticity when left-wing students express their views. 

The aesthetic of Cambridge is used by this New Populist Right to narrate any progressive activism as a pantomime - an inauthentic charade. However, they can’t quite make their mind up about Cambridge’s pomp-and-circumstance. They love visibly working with Oxbridge academics who cloak themselves in our university’s traditional aesthetic like a warm blanket. Orr is the epitome of this.If you have the misfortune of stumbling on the YouTube videos he pops up in, Orr is often sitting on old leather chairs with ornate bookcases behind him. His X account has a dreamily romantic painting of Kings college Chapel in the backdrop. This is no coincidence. The aesthetic of Cambridge tradition permeates Orr’s brand like the whiff of overly strong aftershave on a first date. And before you know it – ta-da – the Cambridge aesthetic gives the New Right the veneer of being part of a venerable Enlightened tradition, rather than sprouting from an authoritarian American-led radicalism. In the same stroke, the New Populist Right selectively uses this very same aesthetic as a stick to bash its chosen blob of university students and academia for being part of an ‘out-of-touch elite’, in contrast to a narratively-constructed Working Class they claim to speak on behalf of. In other words, the New Populist Right have their cake and eat it.  

“The Cambridge aesthetic gives the New Right the veneer of being part of a venerable Enlightened tradition, rather than sprouting from an authoritarian American-led radicalism.”

The contradictions don’t end here. The New Populist Right is also tied up over Free Speech. They have thrived on their narrative that universities, once bastions of free intellectual thought, have now become straightjackets of left‑wing cultural conformity. However, this narrative has become increasingly awkward over the past five years, as the New Populist Right has found itself enjoying an authoritarian exercise of state power to intimidate critics. Many of its adherents not only embraced the pre-injunction banning pro-Palestine protestors, but called for the University to intensify its aggression . ‘Anti-woke’ Don at Emmanuel College, David Abulafia, stated ‘universities have a special role in the promotion of free speech’ in one article written for the Spectator. Yet in another article five months later, he declared without a hint of irony; ‘Cambridge’s Palestine vandals must be expelled’ and that ‘daubing ancient buildings in Cambridge University with red paint…is surely a  low-level form of terrorism’.  So, how has the New Populist Right dealt with this contradiction of being the free speech warriors who want to criminalise  free speech? They have retreated into weaponizing the aesthetic of Cambridge once again. Their chosen academics are presented as enlightened suit-wearing exponents of polite discourse, sitting on leather chairs, who narrate student protestors as ‘scruffy’  and ‘disruptive’ counter-cultural subversives. Their selective weaponisation of the Cambridge aesthetic seeks to ensure all cognitive dissonance melts into air.   

David Abulafia / Marit Hommedal

‘Anti-woke’ Don at Emmanuel College, David Abulafia, stated ‘universities have a special role in the promotion of free speech’... Yet… five months later, he declared without a hint of irony; ‘Cambridge’s Palestine vandals must be expelled’

A brief word is needed on how the Left should resist – particularly the academic Left. To counter a media savvy, Populist Right; the academic Left needs to become more popular, if not more populist. That means clearer writing. Yes, obtuse and clunky writing is a problem which afflicts the entire culture of academia. However - if you are trying to communicate ideas which are running against the tide of the dominant conservative and neoliberal narratives, poor writing is a particular weakness. Yet, there is no sense of urgency. Instead, academics tend to grow content with adoration in  obscure, half-filled seminar rooms. Put simply, to cope with the prospect of obscurity, too many academics have collectively learned to relish in it. 

Moreover, I suspect many of Cambridge’s leftwing academic Left have become too worried about their aesthetic of elite privilege being used as a stick to beat them with, by this New Populist Right. The cultural capital which left-wing academics potentially gain from having wood-panelled rooms and ornate bookcase behind them on their YouTube videos, would leave them open to the charge of elite hypocrisy by snappy Telegraph commentators. As a double whammy, this aesthetic would risk alienating a critical audience of online socialists. Therefore, I accept that Leftwing academics are unable to leverage a traditional Oxbridge aesthetic to bolster their legitimacy, in the way someone like James Orr has been adept at. However, leftwing academics too often retreat from the public engagement all together.

Pop-academic work often becomes sneered at as sensationalist and intellectually compromised. This is an entirely wrongheaded approach.The Academic Left should learn from those who are succesfully advocating for progressive ideas, like a ‘wealth tax’. The unlikely champion of which has become the fast-talking ex-Banker, Gary Stevenson. There are only a small number of academics who have even attempted to push this policy publically, and none have managed to do so anywhere near as effectively as him. To his credit, the iconic progressive economics professor, Ha Joon-Chang, joined Gary for a recent podcast. This is a rare exception for an Oxbridge academic, and indicative of how much of a gap there is to fill. If a former Banker won’t allow their aesthetic to be weaponised against them; Cambridge professors of the Left should be less afraid.