University severs ties with academic over anti-migrant paper

Professor Steve Fothergill claims he was dismissed by Sheffield Hallam University after publishing a paper critical of the impact of foreign workers.  

The research found that migrants filled half the jobs in former coal mining areas, a conclusion he alleges displeased university management. He said his short-term, part-time contract was not renewed after expressing their dissatisfaction with the study.

Prof. Fothergill described the move as an “assault on academic freedom,” suggesting the university rejected the paper’s findings.  

Sheffield Hallam University, however, denied suppressing the research, clarifying that the professor was on secondment.

‘Issue with quality of academic work’

Speaking to The Telegraph, Prof Fothergill, an economist specialising in urban and regional development, said: “I was told there was an issue with the quality of the academic work, which is nonsense – the paper is a very thorough evaluation of the numbers.”

His paper, which explored employment growth in former mining areas in England and Wales in 2011-21, found that almost half the jobs created had been filled by foreign workers.

It concluded that given the substantial “effort, energy and funding” ploughed into these areas over the decade to regenerate local economies and communities, the outcome was a “poor rate of return”.

It suggested that the high numbers of jobs going to non-UK workers could explain why “vast numbers” of coalfield residents – 590,000 in the autumn of 2023 – were on out-of-work benefits.

The paper also suggested the need to “better regulate migration to the UK, to bring down the numbers so that more of the benefits of local regeneration feed through to local residents”.

But the academic claimed that days after an article was published in October referencing the research, he was called into a meeting at the university’s Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research and told that the university was unhappy with the piece of work.

Prof Fothergill claimed his short-term, part-time contract, which he said had been renewed consistently since 1992, was terminated.

He said he had run the study past half a dozen very senior academics around the country for their comments.

“These are leading professors, in Cambridge, Birmingham and Newcastle, whose views I respect. No one came back saying ‘Oh no Steve, you’ve got this wrong’,” he said. “They were all saying ‘Wow, this is rather shocking in terms of the numbers’.”

In a series of emails seen by The Telegraph, the director of the university’s Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research said that while there was no suggestion “that the data are wrong or your conclusions cannot be substantiated”, the study had “not been presented in a way that is sufficiently robust academically to substantiate the policy conclusions it draws and the language that is used to propose them”.

It said the report “fails to engage critically with wider debates around migration” and uses language which is “at best a little careless and at worst will be seen as offensive or inflammatory”.

The email also stated “you are talking about people who have legally moved to the UK – just as many from the UK have legally moved to other countries” and that some of the conclusions come across as “jingoistic”.

‘This isn’t about race or culture’

Prof Fothergill denied the claims, adding: “I made sure that it was an objective, numbers-driven economic analysis, couched in very careful language where it reaches its conclusions.

“This isn’t about race or culture, it is a number-crunching exercise. But people in the university didn’t like the conclusions that we came to.”

Prof Fothergill claimed that Sheffield Hallam saw itself as a “very liberal university” so “didn’t want these things being said”.

Accusing the university of “overriding academic integrity”, he said: “There is a point of principle in this. I don’t really want to be the centre of a news story but I need to be brave and put my head above the parapet here.

“Political correctness is beginning to override academic integrity – that is how I put it. Other academics I know are really quite shocked by this behaviour.”

Sheffield Hallam University, a former polytechnic, has around 28,000 students, including a substantial number of postgraduates. About 18 per cent of students are from overseas.

More than half of the student body are the first in their family to attend university and nearly a quarter are from neighbourhoods where low numbers of young people attend university.

Frank Furedi, emeritus professor of sociology at Kent University, warned: “There is now considerable pressure to conform to the dominant values of the higher education hierarchy.

“Whereas universities used to be one of the most hospitable sites for free thought, today they have become the most censorious institutions in British society.“

A spokesman for the Sheffield Hallam said: “Professor Steve Fothergill is not employed by Sheffield Hallam University, he has been seconded to the University for one day per week on an external contract from another employer.

“The contract is due to end earlier than planned in January 2025 as we have taken the decision not to renew a number of external contracts due to the financial pressures being experienced right across the HE sector.

“Sheffield Hallam University takes its responsibility to protect and promote both free speech and academic freedom seriously. At no point was there any attempt to suppress the research project or its findings.”