Applicants wishing to enter the UK now require the endorsement of one of four bodies designated as competent by the UKBA …No doubt the learned societies will say that they are trying to make the best of a bad lot and, as the Lib Dems like to say, without them things would be much worse. However, this situation is an intolerable conflation of a xenophobic immigration policy with the role of the UK’s academic institutions. What is particularly insidious is the conflation of peer review as the determination of research excellence, the competing interests of imaginary mission groups, and moral panic over the immigration of non-European citizens.

Howard Caygill, ‘Also Sprach Zapata: Philosophy and Resistance’, Inaugural Lecture at Kingston University, London (6th October, 2011). To listen, click here