By Michael Rainsborough
Reading Between the Lies
So, what does my SAR file expose about 'them'—and the entire mess? If you're determined enough to dig, there are some nuggets of truth buried under layers of nonsense. It's essentially like discovering the draft of a painfully bad novel: a lot of cringe-worthy drivel that only underscores how comically incompetent the authors are. From this farce, eight insights stand out.
1) The Reality of Free-speech-phobia
From an almost clinical standpoint, it's fascinating to observe the agitated reaction that both academic colleagues and managers had to the very mention of 'free speech'. You'll recall the name of the speaker series, 'Endangered Speeches: Debating the Culture War'. It didn't screech, 'Let's launch a free-speech carnival'. It simply suggested that differing viewpoints might be aired. It didn't mention the term freedom of speech at all. Yet, the comments in the file both introduce the term and proceed to obsess over it as if it were a biohazard requiring immediate quarantine.
An email from one of my self-appointed accusers declared: 'It is inappropriate for a Department of War Studies to be running a series on freedom of speech'. Just in case the recipient missed the point, the message was promptly hammered home with an almost identical repetition: 'War Studies is not an appropriate place for an academic debate about freedom of speech'. The comments are beyond parody. The idea of academic departments as sanctuaries for the free exchange of ideas? Heaven forbid! How could such a dangerously subversive notion be allowed to exist within the hallowed halls of a modern university? The horror of it all. Imagine the upheaval that could follow—debate, discussion, maybe even dissent.
What's particularly enlightening is that these proclamations are coming from within an institution that supposedly exists to foster intellectual exploration. Yet, not a whiff of understanding about the university as a space for open debate—only well-guarded fortresses for the most meticulously chosen opinions. The sheer existential dread around free speech is so thick, it's almost impossible not to diagnose these people with a severe case of free-speech-phobia—a crippling affliction that sends ideologues into a full-blown panic at the faintest whisper of dissenting views.
2) The Iron Law of Projection in Action
The phenomenon of free-speech-phobia exemplifies the psychological reflex of projection. This reflex involves attributing to others the very tendencies one prefers not to acknowledge in oneself. Put simply, it's the intellectual equivalent of pointing fingers while standing in front of a mirror—a fascinating exercise in self-avoidance, dressed up in scholarly language.
An instructive passage lurks in my 'Stasi file', offering a chillingly clear snapshot of this mentality. One especially self-righteous entry claims that free-speech events were 'damaging to the reputation of the Department and the College because they played into the strategy of provocation on these issues by the Right'. The language is so rich with ideological rigidity and moral superiority, it practically conjures up images of Eastern European politburos, where grim-faced bureaucrats solemnly accuse poets, playwrights and musicians of being dangerous counter-revolutionary subversives.
What is striking, of course, is not the invocation of reputational risk but rather the underlying fear of free speech itself. The premise is clear: encouraging debate or exposing oneself to differing perspectives cannot possibly be an honest or principled undertaking. No, such efforts must instead be interpreted as a tactical, bad-faith, manoeuvre by a nebulous and menacing 'Right', a term employed as a predictable smear within elite discourse.
The absurdity intensifies when one examines the contention that a 'strategy of provocation' is a characteristic of the 'Right'. History, it seems, has other ideas. Provocation, as a deliberate strategy, has long been a hallmark of left-wing movements from the 19th-century Russian anarchists and their theory of the 'propaganda of the deed', to Carlos Marighella's Minimanual of the Urban Guerrilla in the 1960s, to the Baader-Meinhof Gang in the 1970s. Notably, the provocation as praxis of the latter enjoyed the enthusiastic backing of none other than the East German Stasi. What a coincidence.
In the end, what's truly illuminating in these objections isn't the preposterous accusations of provocation themselves but the deranged obsessions they lay bare. In this paranoid worldview, free speech is no longer a pillar of intellectual engagement but an existential threat. Projection, it seems, has become the go-to method for dealing with their crippling, self-inflicted neurosis, flipping their own inner turmoil outward in a display that's as pitiful as it is ironically revealing.
3) The Unseen Elephant in the Ivory Tower
So, according to the file, College managers—radiating the sort of godlike authority typically reserved for ancient deities—pronounced that a speaker series advocating civil discourse is nothing more than a malicious provocation. Meanwhile, the Bruges Group article I co-wrote gets slapped with melodramatic labels like 'conspiratorial', 'inflammatory', and my personal favourite, 'clearly against liberal democracy'. It's almost impressive how they manage to be so sanctimonious while ignoring the elephant of their own biases and hypocrisy doing cartwheels around the room.
As usual, the familiar sleight of hand pulls back the curtain on the underlying dishonesty. The Faculty Dean, naturally, had no qualms about broadcasting his political leanings. Back in 2017, told staff how thrilled he was that President Emmanuel Macron and Prime Minister Mark Rutte were heroically saving Europe from the scourge of populism. During the Brexit meltdown university staff on the pro-remain side freely unleashed (sometimes venomous) hot takes, without any fear of repercussions. As usual, it's free speech for those with the right—but not 'the Right'—opinions. Fast-forward to 2020, and this hypocrisy reached a crescendo. Official College webpages overflowed with pro-BLM and progressive cheerleading. There was not even a pretence of institutional neutrality.
It's still going strong. One side of the King's Strand campus—formerly the proud home of the BBC World Service, now a sad, semi-pedestrianised eyesore—has been graced with a mural, The Quiet Enchanting, which solemnly declares that the 'climate crisis calls for a fundamental shift in how we live.' Paired with the flatulent musings of environmental scholars, the mural presents a 'rewilded' London, where society has collapsed into post-apocalyptic chic. People forage for food, draped in peasant cosplay, while waving green flags as if leading the charge for the Great Environmental Leap Backward. It's less 'Workers of the World, Unite!' and more 'Sustainable Poverty for the Proletariat'—a vision that could have been lifted straight from a climate-themed Cultural Revolution, where the Little Green Book is required reading.
This grandiose performance of activism is, of course, a distraction from what universities are supposed to do: provide neutral spaces for ideas to clash and evolve. Instead, self-proclaimed scholars are trading in their academic robes for Mao suits. As the author, Substacker, and sceptical former King's masters graduate, Jenny Holland, aptly put it, 'They are foot soldiers for the ideology. And, honestly, they wouldn't even be terribly offended if you called them that'.
And the pièce de résistance? Right across from this eco-warrior mural sits a Porsche dealership. So, after hectoring the masses on green utopias, these terribly concerned environmental professors can breeze over to pick out their next gas-guzzling chariot, ready to whisk them off to their coastal estates. Because nothing says more about one's commitment to the climate cause than sliding into a climate-controlled, handcrafted leather interior.
4) The Self-Sabotage Chronicles
Such an embarrassing lack of awareness can only flourish in the hothouse of elite-level cognitive dissonance. My very own Stasi file was brimming with grave pronouncements about how these speaker events were 'damaging to the reputation of the College'. One especially self-important foot soldier gravely declared that they were 'very seriously bringing the department and King's into disrepute'—naturally, without offering a scrap of evidence. Meanwhile, a quivering middle manager wrung their hands over the terrifying possibility that future events 'might bring more student protests and media attention'. Quick, someone sound the alarm, deploy the emotional support teddy bears, and activate DEFCON 1 in the trigger-warning bunker!
In reality, the situation was quite the reverse. The speaker events ran smoothly, without so much as a whisper of trouble. It's actually been the College's remarkable knack for walking into the spotlight with its pants down that's been the true source of bad publicity. King's College has been regularly roasted in the press for alleged woke indoctrination, being 'hooked on identity politics', which included excluding white lecturers from extra-curricular classes and promoting 'race-segregated' teaching, a suffocating intellectual climate driven by ever-expanding 'sinister diversity and inclusion policies', and some eyebrow-raising donor relationships—particularly with individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party. At this point, King's isn't so much managing its reputation as performing an elaborate slapstick routine
The crowning achievement in the College's peerless 'reputation management' came in May 2021, following Prince Philip's death. Despite the fact that the Prince was a Life Governor of the College, the university still issued an apology for the 'harm' caused by the Library's photo tribute to him, citing his 'history of racist and sexist comments'. Unsurprisingly, the apology was met with widespread derision. One commentator mocked the 'unhinged culture of offence-taking' burgeoning at the university, while an MP noted that King's was 'at the extreme end of inhibiting free speech', accusing it of a 'Maoist zeal to close minds'. Even donors were reportedly aghast, with some threatening to cut the purse strings—a rare moment of actual accountability in this endless circus ineptitude.
Frankly, if there were an award for shooting oneself in the foot, King's would have the trophy case full. The moral of the story? The loudest finger-waggers screeching about 'damage to the College's reputation' seem to be doing a spectacular job of torching it all by themselves.
5) When Silence is the Loudest Applause
For all the rich irony and tragicomedy in the double standards on display in my 'Stasi' file, it does offer a few sobering lessons. Chief among them is this: when the whole farce finally reaches its inevitable conclusion, and you're left out in the open like a contestant who's just failed miserably on a game show, no one steps forward to throw you a lifeline. Not a soul. Despite the quiet discomfort of otherwise decent colleagues, there's no moment of collective conscience where anyone thinks, 'Hey, maybe we should step up and do the right thing'. You're left alone, stranded in the glare of attention, stuck in a performance nobody really wants to see, least of all those watching from the sidelines.
It's easy to roll one's eyes, decry the herd mentality and bemoan the absence of bravery, but I'm not pointing fingers. Human nature is remarkably consistent. Courage is rare—practically an endangered species—and when principles clash with self-preservation, most people will do what they've always done: stay quiet, keep their heads down, and pray the trouble passes them by. Who wants to risk it all by rocking the boat when the waters are already turbulent?
But even understanding this instinct doesn't make it less disheartening to see good, well-intentioned people retreat into ever-smaller enclaves, clinging to the hope that if they don't move or make eye contact, the crocodile will, if not overlook them, eat them last. There's no malice in their silence, only fear—but that doesn't make it any less sad to behold. Sometimes, the hardest part is realising that the very people who see the wrong clearly are the ones who choose to stay out of the fight. I just hope they'll enjoy the view from under the bus.
6) It's Sadly True What They Say about Subjects Ending with 'Studies'
Another melancholy truth I gleaned is that nothing, it seems, will resuscitate the Department of War Studies I once knew. My critics, no doubt, will label me a misty-eyed nostalgist—and true to form, those self-appointed accusers seized on my concern for the 'identity of the department'. To them, my insistence on safeguarding its character wasn't just eccentric; it was an outright threat. After all, the 'identity' I sought to preserve—rooted in pluralism, intellectual tolerance and the unruly give-and-take of open debate—clashed sharply with their vision of ideological conformity. What I saw as the lifeblood of scholarship, they regarded as a relic begging to be swept aside.
There's an old jibe about how subjects ending in 'studies' are soft targets for ideological takeover: social studies, cultural studies, media studies, and the like. They lack the sturdy disciplinary boundaries of, say, physics or chemistry. The accusation is that such fields are uniquely vulnerable to critical theorists and post-structuralists, who sneak in under the guise of scholarship before staging a quiet coup. Their goal? Not to expand knowledge and understanding but to commandeer the institution for ideological ends—something between a Trojan Horse and a faculty meeting gone horribly wrong.
For years, I trustingly believed War Studies would be immune. Surely the gritty, grounded nature of its subject matter—war, that most un-abstract of human enterprises—would shield it from this creeping malaise. Multidisciplinary? Yes. Robust? Certainly. But vulnerable? Surely not.
By 2015, I began to believe I might be wrong, as the atmosphere thickened with the acrid aroma of jargon-infused nonsense and the gradual replacement of scholarly rigour with moral posturing. War Studies, I realised, wasn't immune. In fact, it was a sitting duck. The very idea of studying war—an inherently uncomfortable, non-utopian topic—was itself offensive to progressive sensibilities. It's hardly a stretch to imagine the current departmental leadership coming under pressure to rebrand itself as 'Peace Studies' to better align with the dominant narrative.
My file confirmed just how far the rot had set in. My late friend David Martin Jones, a man also exiled from the department for the crime of intellectual clarity, once quipped: 'How did War Studies go from Clausewitz to critical theory?' He had a point. By the end, it seemed less like a department devoted to understanding conflict and more like a group therapy session where everyone apologised for even thinking about war.
I'll admit, there's a touch of schadenfreude in seeing 'war studies' slide into 'woke studies', if only because it confirms what I suspected all along. But mostly, there's sadness—for what has been lost and for all those poor students who signed up to study war and got a crash course in ideological compliance instead.
7) Getting Annoyed by Bad Strategy
By disciplinary background, I specialise in strategic theory, which, unlike anything with 'studies' tacked on the end, actually has some foundation and clear boundaries. In short, it's the study of the ends, ways and means of social action. So, reading through my Stasi file, I had an interesting reaction—one part of me was genuinely exasperated by the staggering incompetence with which my antagonists crafted their plan to get rid of me. It was like watching a chess player who can't even remember how the pieces move.
If I had been tasked with dealing with someone like me—a perceived irritant—there are obvious moves. The smart play would have been to kill with kindness. Let this bane of your life serve out their term of office with a subtle pat on the back and polite yet empty praise. Assure them that they are still part of the team. Then quietly sideline this nuisance from anything that actually matters. When they stepped down from their role, throw them a modest farewell bash. Hand them a plaque, a medal, maybe a coffee mug. Then, gently usher them off the stage and let them spend the rest of their days quietly reorganising their bookshelf.
If the time came for this recalcitrant individual to leave your esteemed institution for pastures new, you could at least make the exit look dignified. Host a farewell party filled with smiles and pleasantries. Hand over a meaningless token—a gong, another coffee mug, who cares? Send them off with an obligatory 'Take care! Don't be a stranger, but if you do, we totally understand!'—all while secretly high fiving yourself. Would I have fallen for it? Probably not, but that's not really the point, is it? Who knows how a little well-placed flattery would have landed.
But why go for subtle diplomacy when you can just kick someone when they are on the ground? As the files reveal, my final month's salary adjustment as Head was taken away in an act of pure spite. Any subsequent initiatives I brought forward were swatted away like a fly at a picnic. Then there was the character assassination: the narrative of me as some shadowy, mercenary figure, lurking in the wings. When I finally left, the send-off was striking in its absence—no farewell, no handshake, just the cold, sentiment of 'Off you go… don't let the door whack you on the way out… would be such a shame if that happened'.
Now, all of this might seem like trivial, parochial nonsense—par for the course in today's British universities—but here's the catch: it's self-defeating. Once again, it follows the pattern described by Václav Havel about how dissidents are created. Due to their perceived ideological disloyalty, he explains, they are 'cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them'. Essentially, when you brand someone an ideological deviant and social exile, you're not just booting them out of the system. You're essentially providing them a VIP pass to permanent opposition. Congratulations! You've created a lifelong adversary. A move so magnificently counter-productive, it makes Mr. Bean look like a Machiavellian mastermind.
8) East Berlin-on-Thames
What should a university—or any higher education institution—ultimately aim for? Ideally, it should promote a love of learning, encouraging the evaluation of ideas, theories, experiences and the quest for improvement. It's about understanding that learning is endless, and there's no single 'truth', only a constant evolution of thought. But my Stasi file reveals a harsh reality: the system you're in is incapable of learning. It's a closed loop, much like the East German communist regime that Anna Funder depicted. Fuelled by ideological rigidity and a conviction of moral superiority, it has no feedback mechanism.
Even worse, this system thrives on deceit. It is almost as if the institution, as Havel might have put it, wants to live within the lie. Truth-tellers are punished, while those who peddle in deceit rise through the ranks. The system doesn't demand excellence so much as acquiescence. This warped incentive structure doesn't breed skill. It breeds laziness, sloppy thinking, unchallenged assertions, corner-cutting and incompetence. Those who oppose it must show proficiency, diligence and professionalism just to stay afloat. By contrast, the modern university, judging by the sorry contents of my Stasi file, only demands ideological conformity—rewarding mediocrity at best.
So, with this broken system in motion, what is this place I used to work for? It's no longer a learning institution; it's just East Berlin-on-Thames.
Conclusion: The King of Ironies
East Berlin-on-Thames. King's Communist London. It's got a ring to it, doesn't it? Reflecting on the whole experience—tongue firmly in cheek—I was struck by one further bittersweet irony. Back in the early 1980s, as a wide-eyed student, I organised a trip to the USSR (yes, that USSR). Later, I found myself attending NATO-sponsored events in West Germany and working at the European Parliament in Luxembourg, which, of course, included a trip to East Berlin in 1986. Given my résumé of somewhat unorthodox tourism, where grey was both the fashion and the mood and where laughter was monitored by state security, I've often wondered if I might have a genuine Stasi file floating around somewhere. If it exists, I imagine it's a page-turner compared to the damp squib I received from King's College London.
According to Hertwig and Ellerbrock, those who chose to view their Stasi records found it liberating. So, what was it like, peering at my college 'Stasi' file? Liberating? Not really. It didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. But it did confirm what I'd long suspected: modern universities are rife with petty vindictiveness, ideological orthodoxy and an aversion to dissenting viewpoints—just like the old German Democratic Republic in fact, but with fewer ideas and more hollow radicalism. It wasn't liberation, it was déjà vu with a tedious EDI PowerPoint thrown in.
I harbour no illusions that my musings will prompt King's—or any comparable academic juggernaut—to indulge in even the slightest moment of soul-searching. These institutions are not bastions of critical thought so much as lumbering behemoths, powered entirely by their own self-regard. And that's more than enough to keep the applications flowing in and the globocrat parental class happily shelling out vast sums for the privilege of having their AirBnBourgeoisie offspring credentialed at a 'prestigious' institution. After all, London's excitement is undeniable, and a diploma does make a rather impressive piece of wall art.
Still, in a strange way, I'm grateful. Grateful to see the college bureaucracy in all its tawdry glory. Grateful to those who denounced me with such gusto. Why? Because their efforts—though squalid—helped sharpen my resolve. This whole saga has only deepened my commitment to free expression and made me more determined to stand against the creeping authoritarianism infesting higher education.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn wrote in Live Not by Lies that, while we may not prevent falsehoods from entering the world, we can refuse to be their conduit. Indeed, if not for the events chronicled in my very own Stasi-lite file, I might not have become a founder member of the Free Speech Union or joined its Advisory Council. I doubt I'd be half as productive in my writing or as involved with organisations like the Committee for Academic Freedom. And, poignantly, I might never have thought to apply for my very own Subject Access Request from King's in the first place. Therefore, in a twisted way, I owe my denouncers a thank-you card. Their manipulative tactics have only made me more determined to defend the core values of open-mindedness, pluralism and honest debate.
So, yes, they staged a sordid little coup. But if they choose to learn anything—and let's be honest, they probably won't—then let it be this: you picked the wrong person to coup against.
Michael Rainsborough is a writer and academic. Between 2016 and 2019 he was Head of the Department of War Studies at King's College London. The full text of 'What I Learned in My College Stasi File' was originally published by the Committee for Academic Freedom, which can be found here. His most recent book, A Front Row Seat at the End of History: The Untimely Essays of David Martin Jones and M.L.R. Smith, 1999-2024, has recently been published by Bruges Group Publishing
