fbpx
Search Donate

Show results for
  • News
  • Videos
  • Action Alerts
  • Events
  • Resources
  • MEND

Proposals to police "free speech" on campus back on the agenda

Proposals to police "free speech" on campus back on the agenda

Categories: Latest News

Tuesday January 27 2015

Former Director of Public Prosecutions and Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Ken MacDonald of River Glaven QC, has a guest column in The Times today criticising the Government’s insistence, in the Counter-terrorism and Security Bill, on requiring higher education institutions “to play a formal role in an apparatus of surveillance”.

Lord MacDonald reflects on the provisions in Part 5 of the Bill and the Prevent Guidance, currently under consultation, which expects universities to “operate an ‘extremist’ speakers’ policy’ (without defining extremist); to vet in advance “content” of an event taking place on university premises including an outline of topics to be discussed and sight of any presentations; risk assessment procedures in relation to booked events to determine whether they should go ahead and sufficient notice of bookings, 14 days’ notice to allow for checks to be undertaken prior to scheduled date.

Apart from the unwelcome workload that will follow from the proposed measures, the requirements are too prescriptive to allow universities the flexibility to deal with debates that arise from current events. As centres that should lead with ideas and critical debate, it is hard to see how universities will play this role to the fullest when expected to operate under these restrictions. Lord MacDonald is right to point out the onerous burdens officers will be compelled to carry as they traipse through powerpoint slides ad nauseum as they “grimly polic[e] other people’s poorly argued speaking notes.”

The ridiculousness of the measures are summarised by Lord MacDonald thus:

“In future, apparently, it will be forbidden for anyone at a university to argue that democracy is wrong in principle (goodbye Plato), or to give a talk that fails “to respect individual liberty” or to offer “mutual respect and tolerance (to) different faiths and beliefs” (adieu to whole swathes of our Western intellectual history).”

In their quest to get universities to police “non violent extremism”, the Government is undermining the most valuable tool in the ‘war on terror’, young minds that are able to analyse, dissect and scrutinise ideas weighing up their value and virtue objectively. By insisting that universities operate under such guarded boundaries of “non violent extremism” the parameters for resisting “violent extremism” are narrowed further. If ideas cannot be aired and contested – where do they go but underground?

The emphasis on “non violent extremism” as Spinwatch researchers postulate in their brilliant study, the Cold War on British Muslims, is a doctrine coined by neo-conservatives to entrap “politically active Muslims” and place them under the security radar as a latent threat to western democracies. It is a doctrine which has strong champions in the Conservative Party whose neo-con affiliations are no secret.

Of course the Guidance the Home Secretary is charged with devising pays little heed to more credible factors that influence young people into pursuing a “sought-after death in the desert”, and which universities are well placed to mitigate through education: employment prospects for young Muslims.

The overemphasis on universities in counter-terrorism policy has been well documented over the years with the Home Affairs select committee inquiry into the Roots of Violent Radicalisation noting “We consider that the emphasis on the role of universities by government departments is now disproportionate.”

The Caldicott Inquiry, called after the arrest of Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab amid suspicion of his radicalisation while a student at University College London, concluded that “there is no evidence to suggest that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was radicalised while at UCL.”

Provost of UCL, Professor Malcolm Grant responded to calls for professors to do more to identify potential extremists back in 2011 calling the idea “stupid” adding, “It was stupid to say that of those convicted of terrorism offences, more than 30 per cent had been to university, and to suggest that there was a link. It is simply a reflection of the fact that a large proportion of the population have been to university. There seems to be no evidence of a causal connection between attendance at university and engagement in religiously inspired violence.”

And the chief executive of Universities UK, Nicola Dandridge, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2011 further added that “You cannot draw the conclusion that because wild things are said at university that automatically equates to radicalisation.”

It is depressing to say the least that years after trying a policy that was shown to be flawed and unworkable, the Coalition is trying to fast-track it through parliament. Of course there will be some beneficiaries of the Government’s approach: neo-con linked organisations.

Newsletter

Find out more about MEND, sign up to our email newsletter

Get all the latest news from MEND straight to your inbox. Sign up to our email newsletter for regular updates and events information

reCAPTCHA