Leading academics affiliated with the University of Cambridge have taken the unusual step of weighing in on contentious governance reforms proposed at the University of Oxford. The measures, which will be debated this month by Oxford’s supreme governing body, include a proposal to shrink the size of Oxford’s Council, which runs the university day to day, and to include on the Council, for the first time, lay members from outside the university. The plan is opposed by many at Oxford.

In a letter that is to be published shortly by Oxford Magazine, 38 Cambridge-affiliated academics say they fear the implications for Cambridge if Oxford is run by “a Council dominated by external members.” Like Oxford, Cambridge has an ancient governance system that gives great weight to academics, and the authors of the letter say that if the changes proposed at Oxford are approved, “it will be significantly more difficult to resist the same in Cambridge. In this sense the Oxford electors may be deciding for Cambridge as well as Oxford. What is at stake, it seems to us, is nothing less than the survival of our universities as self-governing institutions.”