Universities and the new terrorism act

I accidentally happened across an interesting discussion on this afternoon's BBC Radio 4's "The Learning Curve", where Libby Purves interviewed Dr Steve Wharton, President of the Association of University Teachers and Professor Les Ebdon, Vice Chancellor of Luton University, who is updating guidance on terror and intolerance for Universities UK. (The relevant interview starts about 16 minutes into the programme).

Both Wharton and Ebdon raised serious and legitimate concerns about the potential impact of the "glorifying terrorism" provisions of the new anti-terrorism bill, Education Secretary Ruth Kelly's recent call for academics to play an active part in "cracking down on campus extremists" and the government's use of a report (the Gleeson report) published by a think tank known as the Social Affairs Unit, which if it is to be believed, Purves says, "paints a disturbing picture" of extremism in universities.

Wharton runs courses in political discourse and persuasion propaganda and could theoretically be directly targetted by law enforcement authorities if the bill were to become law in its present form. He expects his students to engage with difficult subjects and to acquire the tools to critically analyse propaganda and had been planning to introduce a course specifically on the discourse of terrorism.

Ebdon dismissed, as "widely discredited," the Gleeson report which claims UK universities are riddled with terrorists. He was particularly keen to point out that claims in the report about the so called "4th bomber" being associated with Luton were based purely on a story in the Daily Mail that the paper had withdrawn and apologised for.

Wharton also rejected Ruth Kelly's call for vigilance amongst academics in the cause of anti-terrorism as an effort at turning academics into "a kind of 21st century stasi by the back door." The notion that academics should be "obliged to hunt out people in the classroom" was ridiculous.

I doubt the interview will get much exposure but at least it gets it's 15 minutes here on b2f. :-)