terror on our campuses

The Government called for a crackdown on extremist activity on campus after a report was released last term.

The report ‘When Students Turn to Terror’ was written by Professor Anthony Glees of Brunel University, and named 24 universities “where extremist and/or terror groups have been detected”.

The universities named included Birmingham, Brunel, Durham, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan, Luton, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Reading, Swansea, and Wolverhampton.

However, academics have questioned the report and its claims, suggesting that evidence upon which these claims were made was questionable.

The report was released at the time Ruth Kelly, the Education Secretary, was calling for increased vigilance over student activity on campus following the terror attacks of July 7th.

Smaart Talent sent Magnus Franklin to City University, one of those named in the report for Muslim extremism, to ask:

Have you seen any signs of Muslim extremism on City University campus?

“From what I can remember, City was only mentioned in conjunction with other universities in London. There was no suggestion of wrongdoing on City’s part and it is unfair for us to be bunched with other universities and that they don’t differentiate between different universities.” – Tom, Journalism student

“I read the report and I’m rather worried, but no I haven’t seen anything on campus” – Gertrude, optometry student 

“That’s ridiculous, I don’t believe it and it’s complete nonsense” Sayfur and Noor, law students

“I’m slightly worried. On Thursdays there’s a stall here and there’s a lot of forcing people to take books and tapes going on.” Natasha, Information Systems student

 “I heard about the report. I’ve seen Muslims handing out literature about jihad, so you do wonder” – Jesper, journalism student

“I didn’t hear about the report and I haven’t seen anything” – Yana, computing student

“I only have minimal contact with students, but as far as I’ve seen, there’s none of that going on” Kate, Administrator for Air Transport Management course [pic 6]