A petition to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Theresa May, to “safeguard UK higher education” has over 1,200 signatories. Created by philosopher Helen De Cruz of Oxford Brookes University, the petition focuses on anti-immigrant rhetoric and the consequences of Britain exiting the European Union.

The concerns in the petition include:

• a loss of European Union funds for research
• a loss of “the knowledge, skills, and innovations that is afforded by a culturally and intellectually diverse community of students, teachers, and researchers”
• a loss of participation in the Erasmus program, a foreign exchange program
• the threat of caps on the numbers of foreign students, which “will impoverish academia both intellectually and economically”
• the weakening of recruitment capacities by UK institutions of higher learning
• a weakening of academic values, including “a sense of the importance of cooperative community, of diversity as a source of richness, of solidarity as a condition of shared progress, and the deep desire to pool our intellectual and institutional resources.”

For further details, or to sign the petition, go here.