[4] Hayward has allegedly spread propaganda to his students, supporting Putin's Russia and Bashar al-Assad's Syrian regime.
[8] In 2017, he co-founded the Working Group on Syria, Propaganda and Media (SPM), a group whose stated purpose is to "facilitate research into the areas of organised persuasive communication (including propaganda and information operations) and media coverage, with respect to the 2011-present conflict in Syria including related topics".
[10][11] According to The Times, in April 2020 Hayward "retweeted to his 13,000 followers a Canadian environmentalist's claim that the WEF, United Nations and Imperial College London might be part of a scheme to exploit the [COVID-19] pandemic by promoting vaccines and creating genemodified flu-resistant chickens".
[12] In March 2022, the chair of the British parliament's Education Select Committee, Robert Halfon, spoke in the House of Commons about "pro-Putinist propaganda at some of our leading universities", citing Hayward amongst several other academics.
Along with the comment "As long as we’re still able to hear two sides of the story we should continue striving to do so", Hayward had previously shared a tweet from a Russian representative to the United Nations describing the Mariupol hospital airstrike as "fake news".