Yet another scandal has emerged at Cambridge University. It concerns James Orr, an associate professor in the Faculty of Divinity who was, until recently, the head of policy for Reform UK and a senior advisor to Nigel Farage.
A six-month investigation by Byline Times exposed that the wheels of Orr’s appointment were greased by a secret five-figure donation from none other than Peter Thiel, the shadowy genocidal tech billionaire and former associate of Jeffrey Epstein.
And that Orr has been using his academic position to create a recruitment pipeline of Cambridge students into Reform!
‘Right-wing Mecca’
Indeed, he never hid that this was the purpose of his appointment. He told The Telegraph last year that his job was to “boost Reform’s acquisition of talent” by building networks of “elite defectors from academia, business, and law.”
Thiel’s donation was funnelled through deliberately obscure channels in order to be concealed from public scrutiny. This is only the tip of the iceberg: by the time Orr was hired in 2019, Thiel and his operatives had already implanted themselves at the University, making regular visits to build networks of right-wing academics.
Orr and his wife have also turned their £1.8 million house on the River Cam into a self-described “right-wing Mecca” and “Conservative kibbutz”, where they host figures from the global far-right including JD Vance, Jordan Peterson, and Thiel himself. A group of postgraduate students also live there, paying rent and doing chores, in flagrant contradiction of University safeguarding rules.
BREAKING: We disrupted genocidal tech founder Peter Thiel at Cambridge Uni
Thiel founded military tech company Palantir, and signed a deal with Israel in January of this year. He is profiting from genocide.
Sick of seeing murderers celebrated? Join us at https://t.co/rqU3Oswm2K pic.twitter.com/v6cCLDq9md
— Youth Demand (@youth_demand) May 8, 2024
The Orrs also have connections to race science networks funded by Thiel that include people like the white supremacist Nathan Cofnas. The same Cofnas who ignited the media furore around Professor Jason Arday’s alleged plagiarism, leading to his death after he was hounded by the racist establishment media.
The University is a tinderbox with students and workers at Cambridge outraged at all of these events.
Already in December 2025, the Cambridge University branch of the University and College Union (UCU) passed a motion condemning undisclosed meetings and informal negotiations that had reportedly taken place between senior University management and Reform.
But we must also ask ourselves: what is the root cause of this scandal? How has Cambridge – the ‘cradle of scientific discovery from Newton to Hawking’, supposedly a home of imagination and innovation – become a puppet of these despicable, creepy racists? And why now?
Real role of prestigious universities
To answer these questions we must first understand the real role that academia plays in class society: it is not the much-touted ‘marketplace of ideas’, nor is it a place where knowledge and understanding are furthered in the interests of raising the living standards of the majority.
On the contrary, under capitalism universities are run in the interests of the ruling class, and are therefore in hock to big companies like Palantir – tied by a thousand threads to the military-industrial complex.
Cambridge, while not (yet) having joined the Defence Universities Alliance, has recently reneged on its commitment to divest from the arms industry fuelling the genocide in Gaza, in which Thiel’s Palantir is an active participant.
Labour-run Camden Council’s investments in Palantir have increased by over 1,200% since October 2023.
At the party conference, a motion calling for Palantir contracts to be cancelled over the company’s links to the Israeli military was blocked. https://t.co/5yPh8iZH7K
— Declassified UK (@declassifiedUK) September 29, 2026
It is no coincidence then that Reform, using Palantir money, wanted to place James Orr here, at this prestigious institution at the heart of the establishment. Cambridge and Oxford, in particular, have historically been factories for the reproduction of the ruling class and their lackeys: politicians, lawyers, journalists, bankers, you name it.
A total of 46 prime ministers attended one of the two universities, 18 of whom attended Eton before that!
What better way for Farage and Orr to attempt to launder Reform’s image and cloak the party in the sheen of establishment respectability than to associate it with Cambridge University?
What Thiel and Orr have been doing is not so new. The playbook of co-opting young people into the ranks of the establishment by playing on their desire to outsmart their peers, and their vulnerability as young people coming of age in a sick society, is one that Cambridge has perfected over centuries.
Meals in the colleges’ gilded dining rooms, exclusive ‘networking’ events, internships at law firms and investment banks, guest lectures by politicians and billionaires – all of these attributes of Cambridge life are, on some level, designed to identify and recruit the future officer corps of the ruling class.
The rarefied atmosphere at these events, the deliberately opaque culture, the unspoken rules – for example, that you do not repeat what you hear behind closed doors – act as glue, binding these people to each other and to the establishment.
For instance, Thiel himself delivered a four-part series of ‘Antichrist’ lectures at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, at the start of 2026.
In this sense, Orr’s brazenness in openly declaring that his purpose at Cambridge is to build a recruitment funnel for Reform, or the racists who have no problem blogging about how much they love going to dinners at his house, are merely exposing what has always been true.
The rule of the capitalist class is maintained not only through economic exploitation, but also through their control of cultural and intellectual institutions.
No trust in Cambridge University
Most recently, Orr was implicated in Channel 4’s undercover investigation that showed him accepting illegal electoral financing from abroad for Reform. He has since resigned from his position in the party and, at the time of writing, is under investigation by Cambridge University.
BREAKING: The University of Cambridge has said it is “looking into these matters” after associate professor James Orr was alleged to have breached political donation rules.
Read more: https://t.co/dhMoJBXeUJ pic.twitter.com/23LDJ6sxIv
— The Independent (@Independent) September 4, 2026
However, we have no trust in management to conduct a proper investigation into James Orr’s hiring, or his corrupt dealings. After all, they are the ones who silently took money from Peter Thiel to hire Orr.
They are the ones who stonewalled the Byline Times investigation – seeking to discredit the journalists – and forwarded their requests for comment to Orr’s lawyers.
They are the ones who have allowed the festering of racist networks on campus. They ‘investigated’ Jason Arday, encouraging the media persecution which led to his death.
Cambridge’s Revolutionary Communist Students demand that Orr be fired with immediate effect.
We demand that all of these dodgy racists, liars, and corrupt two-faced managers be thrown out of our University.
And if the University won’t do this, then we will build a movement of students and staff to chase them out ourselves!
We refuse to allow our campus to become a playground for Palantir, Reform, and all the other racists who serve the system.
If you want to fight with us, join the Cambridge Communists!
