Since the referendum’s narrow passage in June, May has promised to end the freedom of movement between Britain and Europe, one of the four freedoms enshrined in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which affords European citizens the right to work and live in Britain, and vice versa for British citizens. Given that universities depend on students, faculty, and staff from around the world, for everything from basic services to intellectual capital and tuition revenue, Brexit could threaten their very existence. From 2014-2015, EU, non-UK, and foreign students numbered 437,500, making up roughly 20 percent of the national student population. Overall, 13 percent of undergraduate students, 38 percent of postgraduate students, and 28 percent of academic staff nationwide are from outside the UK.

With their fates unknown, the academics who gathered at King’s College that day sought to devise a plan of action to present to university administrators. Among those in attendance was Lucia Pradella, an Italian academic and lecturer in the European Studies department whose professional life would be radically altered by Brexit. The vast majority of instructors in her department hails from the EU; Europeans make up some 20 percent of the staff at King’s overall, yet the subject of how the referendum result could alter their lives has gone largely undiscussed in the months since the vote.

British universities are already suffering losses of funding and talent stemming from Brexit-related concerns. Many British academics have reported being dropped from EU projects, or have been quietly asked to take less visible roles. More recently, reports surfaced that the British government allegedly told Sara Hagemann, a European professor at the London School of Economics (LSE), that she was no longer qualified to advise the government because she is not a British citizen. Meanwhile, Home Secretary Amber Rudd has announced plans to crack down on all student visas in an effort to curb overall immigration, from both within Europe and outside it—the government includes visiting foreign students in its immigration count. For some universities, that threatens anywhere from 15 to 50 percent of their student bodies, as well as the higher tuition revenue that foreign students provide (students from the EU pay the same reduced rate as British students).

In a melodic Italian accent, Pradella ticked off her list of demands she hoped to present to the university’s higher-ups: the preservation of free movement between the UK and Europe, the immediate removal of foreign students from immigration targets, guarantees against any changes in the employment status of workers or enrollment of students from the EU, and more.

Pradella argued that the uncertainty at Brexit’s core opened an opportunity for the universities to influence it—a reference to the referendum’s vague wording (“Should the United Kingdom remain in the European Union or leave the European Union?”), and the fact that May will not invoke Article 50 until March at the earliest. “The nature of Brexit hasn’t been decided, so to accept that this is the end of free movement is defeatist,” Pradella told her colleagues. An organizing meeting and demonstration was planned for the following Saturday, in partnership with unionized professors from the University College London. But organizing around a cause is difficult when the precise nature of what one is organizing against remains unknown. Still, Pradella preached resilience. “Many people are quite depressed in general, they don’t think we can change things,” she told me. “People need to get a bit more confidence about what we can achieve.”