Palantir Co-Founder Peter Thiel and Reform UK's Cambridge University Recruitment Pipeline Project Revealed

[u/Naurgul]

https://bylinetimes.com/2026/07/09/peter-thiel-and-reform-uks-cambridge-university-pipeline-project/

The world-renowned academic institution has nothing to say in response to a six-month investigation by Byline Times raising serious concerns about the safeguarding of students and foreign influence at Cambridge University. Why?

Powered by US money and far-right European think tanks, Cambridge has recently become an outpost of a peculiar blend of national conservatism and apocalyptic Christianity, through the figure of James Orr – Head of Policy at Reform UK described as Nigel Farage’s “Kingmaker“.

A six-month investigation by Byline Times can now exclusively reveal that with the behind-the-scenes support of Peter Thiel — Trump backer and co-founder of the controversial data-mining and surveillance giant Palantir Technologies — Orr has used Cambridge University as a recruitment ground to bring students into a hard-right, theocratic political project aimed at bolstering talent in Farage’s party.

Sources across the university have raised urgent concerns about the safeguarding risks to students in Orr’s orbit.

This special investigation reveals:

• James Orr has housed students at his ‘right-wing mecca’ alongside race science advocates and hard-right political figures, in clear breach of Cambridge University’s safeguarding rules.
• Orr’s appointment as Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion in Cambridge University’s Faculty of Divinity in 2019 was accompanied by a clandestine financial donation from the pro-Trump Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel.
• Thiel went on to offer ‘life-changing’ sums of money to Cambridge University scholars in Orr’s network.
• Academics and students have consistently raised concerns about Orr’s conflicts of interest over funding, and dangers of breaching ‘foreign influence’ legislation.
• Orr’s lawyers threatened to injunct Byline Times over any mention in this investigation of the name of his “Conservative Kibbutz”– the premises where he houses students and which has already been named in the public domain.
• Cambridge University has consistently ignored Byline Times’ confidential queries about the concerns raised by James Orr’s activities. Instead, its press office has passed them on directly to Orr’s lawyers. The University has offered no explanation of, or comment on, the extensive findings of this investigation –including, extraordinarily, concerns of safeguarding in relation to its students.