The vote to leave the EU, the era of ‘post-truth’ politics and a seeming lack of public trust in expert knowledge poses a series of existential questions for individual academics and higher education institutions. Analysis of the Brexit vote highlights a clear relationship between different demographic variables and voting preference, particularly in the areas of age, class and educational attainment. As a result, the referendum brought to the fore the developing ghettoisation of British society whereby social groups increasingly exist in ‘echo chambers’ in which social interaction is confined to likeminded others. As such, the question of how universities regain their legitimacy in the public sphere, particularly amongst disadvantaged communities, is of pressing concern. This paper explores the process of making universities more inclusive spaces in an era in which ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ (Gove, 2016) and the responsibility of universities to provide arenas for social mixing as public spaces of social interaction disappear under the politics of austerity.