Radicalisation and Counter-Radicalisation in Higher Education

Catherine McGlynn, Shaun McDaid

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781787560048
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Études supérieures

Higher education institutions have increasingly been identified as potentially radicalising locations. The 2015 Counter-Terrorism and Security Act consolidated this belief in the form of a legal duty of "due regard to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism". This duty made engagement with counter-radicalisation mandatory for universities and has required the development of systems that monitor potential avenues for the propagation of the extremist and radicalising ideas that are deemed to be the cause of contemporary political violence. This book explains why radicalisation has become such an important and controversial issue in contemporary higher education. The authors chart the ascent of radicalisation as a central explanation for the causes of modern terrorism and document the development of counter-radicalisation in the UK using higher education institutions as a unique case study. Drawing on a comprehensive assessment of university policy documents and original focus group research with university lecturers and undergraduate students, this book demonstrates the risks involved in taking the 'safeguarding route' to counter-radicalisation and provides recommendations for how universities can better navigate these policy challenges in the UK and elsewhere. McGlynn and McDaid provide a critical assessment of these counter-radicalisation policies upon higher education institutions in the UK making this an invaluable text for students, researchers and policy makers in the field of terrorism studies.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

In February 2015, the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (CTSA) was passed by the British Parliament (HM Government, 2015a). The act encompasses a broad range of powers, covering everything from the seizure of passports of terrorism suspects to transport security. One of its more controversial aspects, however, was the creation of a legal duty to have ‘due regard to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ (hereafter the ‘Prevent Duty’) which applied to a range of public bodies, including higher education institutions (HEIs). To comply with the legislation, universities were required to develop systems to monitor the potential propagation of what are deemed to be extremist ideas, for instance having policies on external speakers and the acceptable use of Information Technology infrastructure.

The logic underpinning the duty was that individuals who commit acts of terrorism, or join terrorist groups, undergo a process of ‘radicalisation’ prior to such engagement, and that, in higher education, university staff are uniquely placed to spot the potential students who may be experiencing this. Radicalisation is essentially seen as a pathway towards violent extremism (see e.g. McCauley & Moskalenko, 2008; Taylor & Horgan, 2006; Neumann, 2013). Put simply, it has been defined as the processes that happen ‘before the bomb goes off’ (Sedgwick, 2010, p. 479). Radicalisation is inextricably linked to the concept of extremism, and the latter is usually seen as a precursor to the former.

Successive UK governments have been keen advocates of the theory of radicalisation, and, along with Belgium and the Netherlands, early adopters of strategies to deter it. In the UK, counter-radicalisation falls under the PREVENT strategy (HM Government, 2011a), which was part of its overall counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) along with PURSUE, PROTECT and PREPARE. Universities are, and have been, regarded as potentially risky areas where students could be drawn into terrorism by active recruiters. If such students showing signs of radicalisation can be spotted, so the argument runs, they could potentially be referred to the government’s (voluntary) counter-radicalisation programme, Channel and ‘de-radicalised’, thus saving themselves, and others, from the consequences of engaging in violence.

The political context that surrounds the creation of the Prevent Duty was the rise of the Islamic State (IS) group, which emerged from the chaos following the Iraq war, insurgency and occupation. IS, a recalcitrant off-shoot of Al-Qaeda which began operations in Iraq and Syria, declared a Caliphate at the al-Nuri mosque in Mosul in 2014. The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, argued that there was a religious duty on Muslims to hasten to the region in defence of the newly declared Caliphate (Stern & Berger, 2015). This prompted an influx of foreign fighters to the region, primarily from the Middle-East and North Africa. However, significant numbers of Europeans, predominantly young males, fled to fight jihad, especially in Syria, which since 2011 has been in the grip of civil war between the regime of Bashar al-Assad (backed by Russia, Iran and the latter’s Lebanese proxies, Hezbollah) and a rag-tag of rebel groups, including a Syrian Al-Qaeda franchise (Lister, 2015). According to recent research, approximately 850 British nationals have gone to Syria, and about half of these have since returned (Barrett, 2017). For policy-makers, therefore, there are two key challenges: what to do with those who have been away and returned, and how to stop them going there in the first place?

The Syrian civil war has not been the only factor in the ascent of counter-radicalisation to a position of centrality in contemporary counter-terrorism, and concerns about extremism and radicalisation of university students predate the creation of the Prevent Duty. Much media attention has been paid to the fact that a number of jihadists have been educated at UK universities, including Mohammed ‘Jihadi John’ Emwazi, Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, and Mohammed Awan, the Sheffield dentistry student convicted of terrorist offences in 2017, to name but a few. This, combined with the contemporary political developments outlined above, saw an increasing scrutiny of universities as potential sites where people could be drawn into terrorism.

Warnings about the attractiveness of university students as potential recruits, and of university campuses as places for extremist groups to organise have featured in security discussions about contemporary terrorist threats. A New York Police Department report on radicalisation, for example, claimed that middle-class ‘clean skins’ at British universities were sought after by local extremists (Silber & Bhatt, 2007, p. 85). Furthermore, the UK Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) warned in Prevent guidance documentation that more than 30 per cent of those convicted of Al-Qaeda-related offences between 1999 and 2009 had been to university, and that extremist groups were targeting campuses (ACPO, 2012). It should come as little surprise, therefore, that government, on receipt of these warnings, should begin to regard the higher education sector as an arena for scrutiny.

The introduction of the Prevent Duty has, however, attracted considerable controversy, and raised a number of pertinent questions for academics and policy-makers alike (Lewis, 2018). One of the key criticisms of the duty, and PREVENT policy in general, is that it could lead to undue state interference in an arena where it is perfectly normal for radical, and even potentially offensive ideas, to be explored, debated or researched (see e.g. Spiller, Awan, & Whiting, 2018). In this view, universities are seen as arenas where free speech and expression should be the norm, and students able to freely engage in debate. Critics of the duty see university staff taking an active part in the facilitation of this free exchange of ideas, and are concerned that the duty may cast them in the role of ‘thought police’, resulting in a ‘chilling effect’ on free and open debate. To the contrary, there are those who argue that the duty is, in itself, nothing to worry about and largely based on misconceptions about what PREVENT does (Greer & Bell, 2018).

Advocates of university counter-radicalisation initiatives, including the government, contend that it is particularly important to have policies and procedures in place during what for many young adults is a transitional period in their lives. A report for the European Commission found that university campuses were not direct recruiting grounds for violent extremisms, rather it was where ‘gateway organisations’ could draw people into a process of radicalisation (Neumann & Rogers, 2008, p. 45). The report observed that ‘there can be no doubt that universities have always been ‘hotbeds’ for radical thought, and that – like prisons and asylum reception centres – they are places in which individuals are prone to experience feelings of isolation and vulnerability’ (Neumann & Rogers, 2008, p. 45). These themes of exposure to ideas, of processes of radicalisation and of crisis points for the vulnerable are, as we will show, crucial to how radicalisation and counter-radicalisation have been operationalised in currently policy-making. The notion of vulnerability is particularly important to these narratives, where the tumult of the undergraduate experience could see students struggle to cope with changes in identity, status or social and familiar relations to the extent that they may be susceptible to what is effectively a form of grooming by violent extremists. Interventionist counter-radicalisation initiatives are here portrayed as part of what we define as a ‘safeguarding route’ approach.

The safeguarding route portrays counter-radicalisation initiatives, which are an intrinsic part of counter-terrorism policy, as a proactive intervention, designed to protect vulnerable people. The would-be recruit is infantilised and stripped of personal agency, in ways that those who joined ‘traditional’ terrorist groups such as the Irish Republican Army (IRA) or Basque separatists Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA) never have been. Here, conventional notions of perpetrators and victims are turned on their heads, with a person who has become involved in violent extremism seen as little more than a lost soul in thrall to a nefarious recruiter, who carries responsibility for the young person’s journey into terrorism.

Universities have thus become a key site of contestation in the debates about counter-terrorism and counter-radicalisation policy and practice. Given the implications of these developments, which extend well beyond the domain of HEIs, it is crucial to understand more about the operation of the Prevent Duty on campuses, its impact on staff and students, which will in turn be useful to policy-makers tasked with implementing, improving or reviewing the duty.

This book is the first study which examines and contextualises these developments, with a focus on how the Prevent Duty is implemented in English Universities with reference to the experiences of both staff and students. The findings are drawn from the analysis of a range of new, original empirical research, including university policy documents and published correspondence to staff and students as well as focus group studies carried out with staff and undergraduate students enroled or employed at English HEIs. The focus groups involved both control groups, who had not studied or taught terrorism-related topics, and groups which had studied or taught these subjects.

As is detailed in subsequent chapters, the book uses a number of research methods to scrutinise this data, inspired by approaches in qualitative psychology, including a thematic analysis of the published documents of 106 English HEIs outlining how they comply with their statutory duties, and an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) of four focus groups with staff and students sharing their experiences of teaching and learning in HEIs as the Prevent Duty took effect.

The choice of England as the research focus has a sound methodological imperative. Firstly, as one of our focus group participants pointed out, PREVENT is ‘to all intents and purposes’ an English strategy which has ‘a tiny footprint in Cardiff [and] Swansea’ in Wales (M3, male). CONTEST recognises the threat of Northern Ireland related terrorism (NIRT), but the Prevent Duty is not applied in universities in Northern Ireland, nor does Northern Ireland have a Prevent strategy per se. Equally, the policy has little traction in Scotland. Secondly, education policy in the UK has always been subject to considerable sub-state variation. Funding and policy for HEIs has diverged further since the advance of devolution in the late-1990s, creating a distinctly English educational experience in the part of the state that PREVENT is most firmly focused.

This, coupled with the fact that English HEIs are now among the most expensive in the world, means they are subject to many performance management measures that put an emphasis on students as consumers, in a marketised system (Molesworth, Nixon, & Scullion, 2009). We argue that these two frameworks for English HEIs complement each other, and that an ethos that universities provide a service, articulated as the student experience, underpins the safeguarding route approach to radicalisation, the genesis and implications of which we will systematically outline in this work.

Whilst the geographical focus of the research is on English HEIs, the findings of the book have implications that span well beyond the United Kingdom. The UK is a pioneer of counter-radicalisation in a university environment, and its experiences have much to teach policy-makers, and academics interested in radicalisation and its prevention, in other national settings. The UK is often referred to in the policy documents of other states in this regard. In this respect, our study is a particularly timely one, since it coincides with the recent rollout, or examination of the potential to implement, counter-radicalisation initiatives in universities in several other countries. In North America, the United States government sees universities as forming a central part of the government’s countering violent extremism (CVE) initiatives, assisting local communities in building capacity in this area, and seeks to engage university students in efforts to counter violent extremist messages (Stewart, 2017; White House, 2015). Likewise, Canadian government funding for countering radicalisation to violence (CRV) is available to universities and other educational institutions (Public Safety Canada, 2017).

In Asian countries which have suffered a great deal from political violence, such efforts are also being expanded. The Higher Education Commission for Pakistan urged universities to develop protocols to tackle the radicalisation of students (The News, 2017), and in Indonesia, universities have agreed to collaborate with state security agencies to monitor campus activities (Times Higher Education, 2018). Critics could, of course, justifiably point to concerns about the actions of state security services in both countries, and their suitability to monitor educational institutions. Closer to home, the Norwegian government has begun investigating the ways by which universities can contribute to the fight against radicalisation and extremism among students in the higher education sector (Kingdom of Norway, 2017; Wille, 2017). Thus, research on the experiences of universities in England, where the Prevent Duty has been in operation for three years, can provide academics and practitioners with valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the policy, offering the potential to improve any interventions in other national settings. But it is not just in the arena of social policy that the book makes a contribution; it also engages with broader debates of international significance, as the following chapter outlines demonstrate.

STRUCTURE AND CONTRIBUTION

The purpose of the book is not only to present the findings of new research into the implementation of the Prevent Duty and its impact on university staff and students. It also seeks to situate this discussion alongside broader debates concerning the nature of radicalisation and the efficacy of attempts to counter it, and to demonstrate that universities – across a range of national settings – have long been sites of radical political activity, but also arenas where states have intervened and surveilled, justified in terms of public safety and security.

Chapter 2 explores the genesis of radicalisation as a concept, including the ways in which it has been related to notions of extremism, and applied in practice in contemporary counter-terrorism policy. We examine a number of models of radicalisation in both academic and policy research, and provide a history of the UK’s PREVENT policy and its efficacy. As well as detailing how radicalisation and counter-radicalisation have become entrenched in British security policy, the chapter argues that the conceptual flaws and evidential weaknesses in many of these theories has migrated into the policy arena, potentially undermining the efficacy of counter-radicalisation initiatives in the UK and beyond.

Chapter 3 will focus directly on radicalisation and higher education. It explores how university campuses have long played a role in political radicalism, and been sites of contestation. Equally, universities and student radicalism have played central roles in the development of violent movements, as the experience of Northern Ireland demonstrates. The chapter explores how Islamist movements became embedded in English universities during the 1990s, and how their presence fuelled security concerns around students, particularly those of a Muslim background – often with extremely damaging consequences for particular individuals. The chapter argues, however, that historical cases suggest the Prevent Duty is not particularly well-suited to spotting a would-be terrorist, due to the aforementioned flaws underpinning the policy.

Chapters 4 and 5 present the findings of our research on how the Prevent Duty has been implemented in a university setting, and within each chapter we provide detailed information about our chosen methodologies. In Chapter 4, we suggest that there is little evidence to suggest that the way universities interpret and implement their statutory duties has led to a chilling effect on either research practice or freedom of expression in the classroom. What is more significant, we contend, is the ways in which universities have un-problematically and uncritically adopted the discourse of vulnerability and safeguarding regarding those who seek to engage in political violence. Such a flawed understanding might ultimately weaken attempts to address a genuine security concern about young people being drawn to violent extremist groups.

Chapter 5 presents our findings from the student and staff focus groups. Our research with these groups further reinforces the idea that concerns about the potential of the Prevent Duty to negatively impact on freedom of speech on campuses have not materialised. If students do watch what they say in classrooms, then this is due to a desire to avoid offending their counterparts rather than a fear of expressing a political viewpoint. Indeed, students themselves would be among the harshest critics of any institution that sought to censor debates about controversial topics. Moreover, the conversations with staff suggest that universities implement the Prevent Duty in a ‘tick box’ manner, and do not approach the issue in an unduly Orwellian manner. Nevertheless, the focus group data does call into question how necessary the duty is in conjunction with existing legislation. Reinforcing the findings in Chapter 4, the discussions further evidence the proliferation of safeguarding and vulnerability tropes in university settings.

In the conclusion, Chapter 6, we explore the implications of these findings, making recommendations for policy-makers as well as university staff and students to take forward. At a time when universities worldwide are receiving considerable attention from governments and security services, this discussion is both timely and necessary.

CHAPTER 2

RADICALISATION: DEBATE AND POLICY

This chapter explores and analyses the genesis of radicalisation as a concept and explains how it has been applied to contemporary counter-terrorism. We will show how the term originated in policy circles after the 2001 attacks in the USA known as 9/11 and the Madrid bombing of 2004, demonstrating how, from the beginning, there were two opposing views of the roots of radicalisation, one as the product of alienating circumstances and one (which has become the dominant explanation for policy-makers in Europe and elsewhere) centred on exposure to ideologies deemed extremist. Although the far-right are also targets of counter-radicalisation policies, we demonstrate that the acceleration of the use of the concepts of radicalisation and counter-radicalisation to a position of ubiquity relates to the emergence of IS and its declaration of a Caliphate in 2014. Concerns about this development have played a key role in counter-radicalisation strategies, with increasing focus on online propaganda and threats to young people.

In addition to charting policy developments, we will provide an overview of the very active academic debate around radicalisation. This will include models of the process of radicalisation and will engage with critiques both of the concept of radicalisation and the implementation of policy initiatives which range from the sceptical to the very hostile. Both policy development and academic debate about radicalisation will be brought to bear on the case of the UK through a study of PREVENT under successive Labour, Coalition, and Conservative administrations.

In so doing, we argue that the conceptual flaws in the theories of radicalisation have migrated into the policy arena. Thus, the evidence base that underpins counter-radicalisation initiatives in the UK, and beyond, is compromised to an extent that may inhibit the overall utility of these initiatives. This discussion is of critical importance, if we are to design more effective counter-terrorism policy that is actually able to identify clear and present security threats, rather than divert resources into trying to spot the altogether more nebulous signs of extremism or opposition to western values.

THE AGE OF NEW TERRORISM

The concept of radicalisation has become so ubiquitous that it is now being applied retrospectively to historical conflicts. For example, Roy Foster’s work on the Irish War of Independence a century ago details the ‘overall process of radicalisation’ stemming from family networks, student societies and cultural activity groups (Foster, 2014, p. 71). However, the use of radicalisation as a description for a pathway to extremism and then violent extremism is a relatively modern one. It emerged in the context of a growing number of academics identifying the 1990s as a time in which we were seeing ‘a radical transformation, if not a revolution, in the character of terrorism’ (Laqueur, 1999, p. 4). A typology developed of new groups as compared to ‘traditional’ terrorism of the immediate post-war period and so built upon the idea of a new and radical direction in terrorism.

In the typology, older groups were presented as hierarchical in their structure and pragmatic in their approach to violence. Their demands were based on secular and realisable aims upon which they were prepared to compromise and their geographical reach was limited, usually because they were in conflict with one particular government from whom they wanted liberation for a new nation-state or a class revolution. In contrast, newer groups had ‘amorphous religious and millenarian aims’ and they were ‘less cohesive organisational entities, with a more diffuse structure and membership’ (Hoffman, 1997, p. 2). The aims ...