Controversy: Is Prevent Harming Universities?

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The UK government’s Prevent anti-extremism strategy places a duty on universities to report ‘changes’ in students’ political behaviour and outlook. Chris Allen argues that this approach to spotting radicalisation is futile, and even counterproductive.

In March 2015, Mohammed Umar Farooq was studying for an MA in Terrorism, Crime and Global Security MA programme at Staffordshire University. Among the recommended readings was a text entitled, Terrorism Studies. While sitting in the University’s main library reading that book, a member of the University’s staff quizzed Farooq about his religion and his attitudes towards homosexuality, and Islamic State and al-Qaida. Following the conversation, Farooq was reported to University security guards who proceeded to interview him on many of the same topics. After three months of investigations, Staffordshire University eventually apologised to Farooq for the distress caused. It chose, however, not to extend the apology to the fact that the member of staff in question was suspicious about a terrorism student’s motivations for reading on a book on terrorism – because Farooq had been identified as a Muslim. As the University put it, while the member of staff had ‘misjudged’, the sight of seeing Farooq reading Terrorism Studies had raised ‘too many red flags’ not to act.

Under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, the Government made significant changes to Prevent, its existing strategy for preventing violent extremism. Under that legislation, a new statutory duty was created. British universities – identified as ‘special authorities’ because the government believed they were uniquely placed to prevent people from being drawn into violent extremism and terrorism – were duly required to provide specialist counter-terror training for staff, carry out risk assessments on students identified as being vulnerable to extremist ideologies, and provide appropriate welfare programmes for them. The rationale was that those working within universities would be best placed to see ‘changes’ in behaviour and outlook among those being radicalised or at least vulnerable to becoming so.

The notion that such ‘changes’ are easily identifiable are, however, far from new. Over a decade ago, then New Labour Home Secretary John Reid told Muslim parents in East London that they needed to be vigilant in watching their children for the ‘tell-tale signs’ of extremism. While oft-repeated since, no politician has yet to set out exactly what those ‘tell-tale signs’ might be. Nor indeed have any of the subsequent iterations of the Prevent strategy.

As naïve as it is dangerous, there is evidence to suggest that those looking for the ‘tell-tale signs’ are simplistically reducing them to markers equitable with merely being ‘more Muslim’. Whether visual as in growing a beard or wearing the niqab, or vocal as in talking openly about your religion or voicing political views about British foreign policy, students who appear ‘Muslim’ are increasingly finding themselves being unfairly scrutinised. The UK advocacy group Cage claims that since the new duty was put in place there have been more than 100 reports of similar incidents to Farooq’s across a number of Britain’s campuses.

One response to this has been the Students not Suspects campaign organised by the National Union of Students (NUS), the NUS Black Students’ Campaign, Federation of Student Islamic Students, University and College Union, and Defend the Right to Protest. Condemning the duty for effectively turning higher education staff and other public sector workers into ‘spies’, Students not Suspects argues that not only does this have the potential for normalising Islamophobia within the higher education sector but it is also blurring the line between dissent and criminality. As evidence it cites how some university Islamic societies have been pressured into providing membership lists to police while at other universities swipe cards have been introduced outside prayer rooms to monitor who are using the spaces. Recently, Kings College London publicly admitted to monitoring the emails of staff and students as part of the Prevent duty. It is widely believed that many others are currently following suit.

But there is an even more insidious side to all of this and that is the inference that being ‘more Muslim’ is an inherently bad thing. In some ways this reflects the dichotomous idea of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims that has gained traction since 9/11. The inference is also likely to resonate with the increased emphasis being placed on Britishness and the need to teach ‘British values’ in the wider education system. Underpinned by the view that Muslims go against what are seen to be the norms of ‘being British’, not only do Muslims become identified as a homogenous ‘Other’ but they also become known and understood through a series of negative stereotypical attributes and characteristics that merely seek to demarcate ‘them’ from ‘us’. This reinforces stereotyped notions of Muslims as inherently violent, manipulative, anti-Western and supportive of terrorism. Against this backdrop it quickly becomes ‘common sense’ to not only be suspicious of those who become ‘more Muslim’ but to monitor them, too.

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Another potentially insidious impact of the Prevent duty is the extent to which universities become spaces for covert policing and surveillance. Research undertaken by Brown and Saeed (2015) found that existing counter-extremism programmes have resulted in Muslim students being increasingly suspicious about the motivations of their institutions. Consequently, many Muslim students already feel that it is increasingly difficult for them to reconcile being publicly Muslim while also being an ‘ordinary’ student. The Prevent duty has very real potential for further exacerbating this situation, quite irrespective of whether monitoring and scrutiny is taking place or whether it is merely suspected. The risk is that Muslim students may not only feel that there is a tension between being a Muslim and an ordinary student but, even more worryingly, that a similar tension exists between Muslims and the ‘liberal traditions’ of British universities. Consequently, Muslim students may find themselves feeling even more pressured, marginalised and excluded than they already do.

The Prevent duty has another potentially detrimental impact. The onus on universities to monitor campuses is likely to exacerbate tensions and mistrusts between Muslim and non-Muslim students and staff. It is also possible that the duty could end up reinforcing the narratives of extremists who seek to stress the incompatibility of Islam and ‘the West’. Founded on the premise that Muslims will never be accepted by or within Western societies, extremists could hijack the duty as evidence in support of their own ideological view.

Advocates of Prevent argue that some degree of greater suspicion is a worthwhile payoff if it reduces the threat of extremism and in turn, terrorist atrocities. But this is a false trade off. Even the most ardent critic of Prevent wants to avert any future terrorist incident. But the Prevent duty placed on universities could easily lead to greater marginalisation and vilification of some students while also curbing dissent and suppressing freedom of speech. More importantly, it does this for what can at best be described as a vague policy, at worse an indeterminable one. In part, this reflects the reluctance of this – and previous – Governments actually to codify and define extremism. Clearly, this begs the question that if we do not know what extremism is, how can we even begin to know what we are trying to stop, let alone measure if we are being successful at it?

There is still no empirical evidence to suggest that the various iterations of the Prevent agenda have prevented any of those who were identified as being vulnerable to extremism from actually being radicalised and thereby going on to commit terrorism. Instead, the Prevent programme and its duties continue to be fraught with possibilities and uncertainties rather than fact and evidence. This is why Prevent is flawed and why the statutory duties placed on universities will continue to be unworkable.