Written by Cameron Baillie
Halfway through my fly-by twenty-week taught MSc degree, I learned that our centrepiece, award-winning, marble-and-glass edifice, the Marshall Building, is named after none other than Sir Paul Marshall, father of ex-Mumford & Sons banjoist Winston Marshall. This news, very quickly, was to my utter consternation — and not because of Winston.
My disappointment grew, realising that the building was not only named after Sir Paul but also contains, within its highest reaches, the ‘Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Social Entrepreneurship’. The Institute sits chiefly above Management, Accounting, and Finance departments, alongside the Financial Markets Group and Systemic Risk Centre. My qualm is not with the finance/management bros (today), however.
The Institute was founded in 2015 by multi-millionaire financier-cum-media-magnate Sir Paul, alongside fellow financier-knight Thomas Hughes-Hallett, with a donation of £30m to LSE. Another £50m came in 2021. Marshall’s wealth derives from the £57bn-asset-holding hedge-fund Marshall Wace — Europe’s wealthiest hedge-fund — which no doubt numerous Marshall Building-dwelling finance-bro types might aspire to work for one day.
LSE’s affiliations with Big Money are hardly news. “What about Gaddafi?” Granted: the natural home of ‘Third-Way’ mastermind Anthony Giddens is situated at politics’ Extreme Centre, such that money talks and management duly listens, irrespective of ‘ideology’. Indeed LSE claims, like many contemporary British universities, to have abandoned ideologies, instead opting for ‘apolitical’ Institutional Neutrality. Which brings us closer to the problem…
The notion that any institution can be ‘Neutral’ is, frankly, utter nonsense. The idea is deeply flawed, let alone for world-renowned bastions of social-political ideation and inquiry like LSE. It is premised on the fallacy that philosopher Gilbert Ryle termed a ‘category mistake’: the university is nothing beyond the sum of spaces and people which comprise it; similarly, its ‘position’ on any given issue is nothing above or beyond all the cumulative decisions made by the relevant people (i.e., its managerial administration) pertaining to given issues. They cannot not decide things, including issues of profound political consequence.
At the very least, any institution which claims ‘Neutrality’ — and which adheres closely to whatsoever ‘Neutrality’ supposedly means — will by default perpetuate whichever ideology is hegemonic in the society it inhabits. For example, when the theoretically neutral or ‘apolitical’ Metropolitan Police are found to be institutionally racist or misogynistic, this probably signifies broader societal undercurrents of racism or misogyny. Similarly, if your country declared neutrality during the bipolar ‘Cold War’ epoch, the CIA would assume that non-alignment with US-interests was, by default, alignment against them: East-West dichotomy was hegemonic.
So, if we accept British academia’s claim of ‘Institutional Neutrality’ — c.f., oft-purported ‘Cultural Marxism’ allegedly consuming universities — then we can assume that LSE, by default, is a neoliberal institution. Given that our present age is dominated by neoliberalism — what Wendy Brown calls the “persistence of politics amid the destruction of public life and especially educated public life, combined with the marketization of the political sphere” (italics mine) — this hegemonic political mentality would apply to LSE.
Conversely, if evidence points contrariwise, and LSE’s ‘Institutional Neutrality’ claims are unpersuasive, then the School might tilt in other ideological directions, or perhaps some sort of Neoliberalism+… So, what does the record show?
In pursuing its ‘Institutional Neutrality’ — an idea typically used in similar proviso to ‘academic freedom’ and/or free speech — LSE absconded from Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, which tracks employers’ inclusivity records. This was presumably done on account of the WEI’s stipulations about discrimination against trans people, which naturally contravenes certain institutional or individual rights to discriminate against trans people. (LSE has failed to provide any justification yet, so this remains best-guesswork.)
LSE also permitted notoriously racist historian Benny Morris to speak on campus, whereupon he boldly professed that he’d “rather be racist than boring” when challenged on his justifications for ethnic cleansing and dehumanising Arabs (“a wild animal…to be locked up”). Again, this took the guise of ‘academic freedom’ and ‘Institutional Neutrality,’ purportedly providing ‘balance to debates’. But this overlooks its inherent moral-political miscarriage: platforming believers that Arabs’ basic humanness is debatable. This deeply political move numbers among mounting evidence of LSE’s institutional Islamophobia — hardly ‘Neutrality’.
Then LSE was reported to invest, at minimum, £89m in egregious enterprises including crimes against Palestinians (i.e., apartheid, illegal occupation, and plausible genocide), the arms and fossil fuel trades, and the financings thereof. Students protested all year for change, culminating in the spectacular five-week Marshall ‘Bloom’ Building occupation. Legal orders still stand from the Bloom Building eviction, prohibiting protest within that same building.
LSE’s Council decided that it would not divest, against extensive collective campus campaigns, a record-breaking LSESU referendum’s overwhelming support (89% voted in favour), and multiple petitions representing over 3,000 voices including students, staff and faculty, Jewish staff and students, and LSE alumni. Divestments were deemed — *GASP* — ‘political’. But apparently their corollary, LSE’s actually-existing investments, are somehow not equally political. This clearly makes no sense; politics cannot disappear from such decisions.
LSE’s ‘Neutrality’ and ‘free-speech-haven’ status were further blatantly revealed as illusory when the LSE_7 were suspended for six months over one peaceful pro-Palestinain protest, threatening six visa-dependent students with deportation. LSE dropped the allegations without further explanation, or apology for the distress and upheavals caused unto the students. Nor, of course, was there any recognition of this being unmistakably a political act.
Meanwhile, management remain ‘Neutral’ when senior Council member Stuart Roden was video-recorded verbally attacking peaceful pro-Palestinian protestors in 2023. Roden is an investment banker who chairs an Israeli venture capitalist startup fund (Hetz Ventures), and funds a Zionist education initiative (I-gnite). These affiliations are clearly politically significant. Pretending that such members bring no political persuasions and interests into Council meetings is laughable, especially when their political antagonisms are so publicly evident, and so directly relevant to issues like that above.
These instances aren’t the totality of LSE’s problems, but clearly display the facetiousness of ‘Neutrality’. The term implies absent partiality, a fictitious, decided ‘non-sidedness’. Yet each of the above decisions was made — presumably by managerial consensus — in awareness of their respective contexts and political implications. Their inverses are equally active political decisions — I do not deny this — but they are no less ‘Neutral’. Neutrality is a chimaera.
The former case grants at least some licence to those who would use academic status to further marginalise or delegitimise trans peoples’ existences, while the Morris decision ‘opens debate’ on whether Arabs are actually humans, and therefore worthy of full respect, rights, and recognition. (Perhaps similar motivations inclined LSE to remain ‘Institutionally Neutral’ towards continuous sexual misconduct by faculty…) Yet LSE is content to be blatantly non-Neutral when it comes to certain protests. Lastly, the notion that money can ever be entirely devolved from politics makes a mockery of Britain’s purportedly top site of political thought: political-economy is not just an academic discipline, but society’s structure itself.
Which brings us back to LSE’s financier-knight Sir Paul. Marshall faced much controversy over tweets he shared including climate-change denialism and extreme xenophobic content, ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theories, and apparent revelling in future intra-religious conflict, according to Hope Not Hate’s 2023/24 investigation, which surfaced numerous posts from Marshall’s anonymous Twitter/X account. The account was subsequently purged of content, while Marshall’s spokesperson said sampled tweets do “not represent his views”. Perhaps not, but they certainly represent some views for which he has at least some sympathy. Marshall, allegedly, apologised directly to Eric Neumayer — so that’s…fine?
But Marshall’s accolades don’t end there. He is described as a “key figure in Conservative Christian circles in the UK” and crowned Britain’s seventeenth-most-influential right-wing political figure by the New Statesman. He’s funded Michael Gove personally, alongside half-a-million pounds to the Tories in the 2019 ‘Brexit election’ year, and £100k to Vote Leave prior. He owns political news website UnHerd and is GBNews’ major stakeholder-owner, single-handedly covering £41m of its £42m losses in 2022–23. He briefly replaced Andrew Neil as GeeBeebies’ chair upon Neil’s resignation.
Broadcasting furniture-piece Andrew Neil said that GBNews became an “outlet for bizarre conspiracy theories…basically the nutty end of politics”. The channel has been under constant criticism from broadcasting watchdog Ofcom, including Laurence Fox’s “clearly and unambiguously misogynistic” remarks about one female political journalist. Its opinionated arenas are overwhelmingly stocked with Tories, especially those on the Radical Right or who — like ‘30p-Lee’ Anderson — have stumbled so far-right as to fall into Reform UK’s breaches.
GBNews is not intended as a profit-seeking venture, because LSE’s Sir Paul fronts its meagre standing regardless, thereby further polluting and debasing Britain’s already fraught, elite-owned, right-wing mediascape. Marshall makes GBNews “too rich to fail,” even amidst the channel’s largest-ever fine for breaching Ofcom rules again with its ‘serious bias’.
More recently, Marshall purchased stalwart right-wing think-piece The Spectator – formerly owned by Telegraph media-magnates the Barclay brothers – for £100m, after landmark legislation blocked Emirati buyers. Quickly enough, Michael Gove was made its new editor. To clarify any doubts, the Financial Times describes Marshall as “an enthusiastic combatant in the UK’s own version of America’s culture wars.” In that vein he recently hosted the world’s favourite alt-right culture warriors at the ‘Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’ conference.
This mini-Murdoch is only growing in wealth and mediated power, seemingly unashamed of evident damage and divisiveness being wrought among British media/politics. And yet, Marshall’s name is plastered smack-bang-central on LSE’s campus, while the Marshall Institute looms from the ivory-coloured tower’s ninth floor. How ‘Neutral’ can media-mogul Marshall or his elevated Institute be — nevermind the broader university, which so readily swallows his lucrative funding?
The Institute was founded on the basis that private contributions to public welfare are insufficient, and require better guidance and financing. That is, rather than regulating and funding social welfare, and initiating tax regimes which permit wealth redistributions away from multi-millionaire hedge-fund-owner types — in pursuit of equality, social justice, or mere public services — governments ought to enable exuberant wealth accumulation, and then let the mega-rich decide post-hoc where and how to allocate money and resources.
In that vein, Marshall won his knighthood and was crowned Britain’s most generous ‘philanthropist’ by the Sunday Times Giving List, recognising the scale and scope of his money-power-influence in many domains of British privatised-public-life. Including, of course, millions funnelled into LSE’s physical and academic infrastructure, not least its narrow MSc programme dedicated to faux ‘socially-focused’ equity capitalism. The neoliberal glove fits the in(creasingly)-visible hand very comfortably indeed.
LSE is not Marshall’s sole venture into education, either. He’s a founding trustee of ARK, which manages academy schools across England. Academisation abdicates local authorities’ and communities’ roles in education, ushering in third-party businesses’ and philanthropists’ funding, like Marshall’s. Scandals have gone badly wrong, including at ARK schools.
The UK has good and bad academies, but the academy-trust system overall is problematic. Questions still linger over academies’ funding transparency, with trusts often retaining 3-5% of budgets. All this is done on scant evidence of tangible educational benefits, costing over £750m, while academy schools close regularly and frequently depend on substitute teachers. Trust-led schooling is now Britain’s new normal — except, of course, for fee-paying schools attended by political-economic elites’ offspring.
The academy craze stems from Blairite-Thatcherite faith in PFI-style, market-driven public service provision. But, as Education Secretary, Michael Gove properly pushed the academy market-boom, swivelling academy schools from minority to majority, before receiving personal Tory leadership backing from Sir Paul. Coincidence? Nah. Marshall stepped down as ARK Schools’ board-chairman following his troubling tweeting tirade, but is reportedly repentant, being a ‘good Anglican’.
None of this presents particularly well for LSE’s claims to ‘Institutional Neutrality’. It appears to contain about as much honesty as its claim to ‘Carbon Neutrality’ (the Assets in Apartheid report also documented LSE’s continued £7m-ish investments into fossil fuels, alongside vaster funding to destructive arms trades). To distance from figures like Marshall or decide to divest from these ‘egregious investments’ would, surely enough, be political. But we cannot continue pretending that the present situation is any different. Accepting that ‘The Political’ is inescapable, we must collectively reflect and articulate what, and who, our politics are for.
Antonio Gramsci notably explored capitalism’s cultural dimensions — its ‘hegemony’, now given distinctly neoliberal political impetus — and civil-society institutions’ roles in producing ‘common-sense’ consent to capital’s power relations. Education and media were Gramsci’s principal focuses in the (re)production of consent. Deeply embroiled in both, Sir Paul Marshall possesses unimaginable influence on British (and Euro-American) political, media, educational, and financial spheres — and not for purely ‘philanthropic’ motivations. LSE’s wilful sponsorship by such figures is thus far from ‘Neutral’. It’s time to recognise this plainly.
So, what is to be done? For starters, LSE and wider academia must end its façade of ‘Institutional Neutrality,’ and accept the obvious fact that universities play fundamental roles in setting the terms of acceptability in public life and discourse. Academia, possibly more than any other institutional practice, cannot be decoupled from normative influence. If we are “to know the causes of things”, we must begin by accepting institutions’ embeddedness in social-political structures and events, and acknowledge outright the irrepressibility of this fact.
I hope to encourage honest conversations about the social-political-economic implications of university administrations’ decisions, rather than let us continue denying their obvious value-ladenness. You may guess my views towards Morris, the protests, LSE’s vast financial complicity in egregiously destructive and inhumane activities, the LSE_7, etc…. But, lastly, let us decide — institutionally and non-neutrally — to bin Paul Marshall.
The Beaver requested a comment from LSE Media Relations and Sir Paul Marshall’s office. The former has chosen not to provide a response, whereas the latter has not responded.
