The Capture of Academia: How Universities Shape Power, Silence Dissent, and Influence Society, Norman Fenton, Aldgate Analytics Publishing, 2026, £11.99.
I knew that something had gone badly wrong with academia when, in 2012, I attended a mandatory training session for staff at the University of Sheffield on conducting employment interviews. I had been here before – often – at the universities of Edinburgh and Hull. These had been straightforward affairs taking us through the necessary procedures and paperwork. But it was clear at Sheffield that something new was afoot.
A very young lady from Human Resources opened the session with the question, ‘How long do you think it takes to form an impression of someone when they step into the interview room?’ My hand shot up, knowing that this was not the answer she wanted to hear, and I responded, ‘About one and a half seconds’.
‘Wrong’ she replied, to which I said, ‘How can it be wrong when that is my answer?’ I tried to soften it for her by saying, ‘I know that first impressions can be wrong’ and explained that is why we have an interview process – to probe more deeply and form a more rounded picture of the candidate. But I was still wrong. To avoid losing my temper, and so that I did not have to suffer any more patronising behaviour from a young person barely out of her teens (I was a full professor), I stood up, collected my papers and left the room. I was never taken to task for not completing the training session.
Clearly, interviewing candidates had become an ideological affair, one where ‘proper think’ was more important than process. I left the University of Sheffield and returned to Hull where, to my horror, Human Resources had been renamed The Directory of People and was led by a Director of People so woke and powerful that, while her staff could access all areas, access to the Directory of People was forbidden and possible only via a combination lock. One had to sit outside having made an appointment and wait, like a naughty schoolchild, until taken to an interview room to discuss whatever issue one came to enquire about. Repeatedly, I was subjected to a stream of patronising psychobabble from a string of late teenagers.
So, I was well prepared for Norman Fenton’s book on the desperate state of academia in the UK. But not for everything that Fenton describes, nor for the persecution to which he has been subjected for his views, which dissented from the prevailing left-wing, woke narrative that is primarily being driven by the execrable ideology of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
Fenton remains an emeritus professor, though there was a delay in the award of the title due to his Covid scepticism. In that respect he has fared better than I did, and the story of the withholding – permanently – of an emeritus position at Hull due to my own Covid scepticism is told in Chapter 2 of the book.
Fenton is a well-respected mathematician who has applied his skills to the disciplines of computer science and statistics. His academic career has been notably successful, with prestigious research grant awards, high-quality and highly cited publications in peer-reviewed academic journals, and several books, some of which have sold well. Reflecting on his career, Fenton realises that some of his success is due to the extent to which he played the game and conformed to the expectations of the UK university system. But he also recognises that the extent to which he has not conformed – principally over the Covid years concerning the accepted norms of lockdowns and mandatory vaccines – has led to his present situation, whereby he has suffered cancellation, castigation and effective expulsion from mainstream academic circles.
At just under 200 pages, The Capture of Academia is a remarkably informative book. The author, already known for his lively style of presentation and interview responses, conjures up some memorable turns of phrase. My favourites include the ‘industrialisation of academic mediocrity’, the ‘moving goalposts of meritocracy’, and ‘meetings as institutionalised waste’. In fifteen chapters, Fenton covers his early life and academic career, which overlaps almost precisely with my own. Born into a Polish Jewish family that changed its name from Finkelstein to Fenton to obviate the prejudice that was held against Jews at the time, his upbringing was working class and far from well-off.
As may have been expected, his early political leanings were leftward. However, exposure to left-wing causes during his student days, especially when they were critical of Israel, opened his eyes to the flaws on both sides of the political divide. Overall, he shifted rightwards in his political views, as exemplified by his stated intention to vote for Brexit. I recall how my own stated intention to do the same ended many conversations abruptly, and Fenton recounts similar experiences at a time when many universities published statements that were plainly anti-Brexit. Clearly, this was an issue on which conformity was expected.
The author’s awakening to the insidious nature of the burgeoning of bureaucracy within universities is illustrated by the hoops that must be jumped through and the paperwork that must be completed simply to take a visiting colleague out for a sandwich lunch. The same applies to policies around hiring staff. In my experience, human resources staff do very little; it is busy academics who take on much of the administration. The process is replicated when it comes to terminating an unsuitable employee’s contract, and Fenton recounts his unsuccessful efforts to have a useless postdoctoral researcher, who never, in the end, turned up for work, dismissed. Nevertheless, her full salary was paid for the duration of her employment at the expense of Fenton’s research grant.
The book goes on to present a kaleidoscopic view of UK academia as it is currently constituted. The chapter on the capture of climate science is instructive, as Fenton was asked to participate in a programme with statisticians Sir David Spiegelhalter and the ubiquitous Hannah Fry to present the case – demonstrable using statistical methods – against the climate change emergency agenda. He was allowed to participate but his comments were edited to convey a completely different message from the one he intended. Few stones are left unturned as Fenton examines the flaws inherent in the peer review systems for research grants and academic articles, the measures of success based on citation metrics, and many other flaws of the research assessment system on which the allocation of research funds to UK universities depends.
I must admit to my own interest here. I am a long-standing editor-in-chief of several academic journals, have served on research assessment panels and sub-panels, and have gone into print to defend some of the metrics-based systems criticised by Fenton. For example, I consider one measure of article citation – the h-index – to be quite robust, provided that a gold standard system such as Web of Science is utilised. Unless you use fraudulent or otherwise unscrupulous means to boost citations, such as citation cartels of like-minded colleagues, the h-index is remarkably resilient. Believe me, I have tried.
In the penultimate chapter, Fenton summarises the activities during the Covid years which ended his academic career. He recounts his invitation and subsequent cancellation from a conference on Covid due to his scepticism about the efficacy the Covid vaccines. Fenton is remarkably modest in this chapter: he and his colleague Martin Neil were the first to expose the method of the ‘cheap trick’ used in Covid vaccine trials, whereby a vaccine that demonstrably had no effect in those vaccinated over those who were unvaccinated could be shown to have an effect depending on the point at which a vaccinated person was considered vaccinated. And that is precisely what was done in the most influential Covid vaccine trials. Without the ‘cheap trick’, the vaccines would have been shown to be ineffective.
The concluding chapter presents an agenda for change in UK universities. For a start, there should be fewer of them, and the myth of near universal university education must be ended. Guaranteed central government funding – with the inevitable political strings attached – should cease; and universities should embrace artificial intelligence by training staff and students to use it properly and by ending the pretence that they are managing the challenges it presents. Universities should not become politically entangled. They should be bastions of free expression and sound financial management.
The Capture of Academia is both a professional memoir and an indictment of the institution to which Fenton devoted his career. Readers may dispute some of his diagnoses or proposed remedies, but the cumulative case is hard to dismiss: bureaucracy has expanded; intellectual conformity is rewarded; dissent is punished; and the pursuit of measurable performance has displaced the pursuit of knowledge.
Fenton’s book is timely, provocative and highly readable. It should be read by anyone concerned about the future of our universities, preferably before a committee is established to decide whether they are permitted to read it.
