Last Monday, the University of East London (UEL) hosted an event entitled ‘After Paris Horror…Don’t let the Racists Divide Us. No to Islamophobia. Defend Civil Liberties’. It is important that universities remain spaces in which students can both raise awareness of anti-Muslim hatred and freely discuss and criticise government policies. Unfortunately, the event was instead […]
Continue readingTag Archives: counter-radicalisation
SOAS speakers claim undermined by event history
Last week, following a government press release which ‘named and shamed’ several universities for hosting extreme speakers, one of the institutions identified hit back at these claims. Laura Gibbs, registrar of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), argued in a statement that the college had “not hosted any extremist speakers in the last […]
Continue reading‘Students not Suspects’ continues to work with CAGE
Yesterday, the government launched its Counter-Extremism Strategy, which included the expectation that the National Union of Students (NUS) “avoid providing a platform for extremist speakers”. This follows a week in which NUS officers have toured the country spreading misinformation about Prevent, and shared platforms with a CAGE official at a number of events. They have […]
Continue readingPreventing Prevent at SOAS
CAGE Director of Outreach, Moazzam Begg, whitewashed his history of radicalism during a controversial student event at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) earlier this week. The former Guantanamo Bay detainee claimed that: “before Guantanamo and Bagram I wasn’t politicised”. This is stark contrast to what he told the FBI in 2002, when […]
Continue readingNUS campaign works with IHRC to attack PreventOur recent report, ‘Preventing Prevent? Challenges to
Our recent report, ‘Preventing Prevent? Challenges to Counter-Radicalisation Policy on Campus’, highlighted how student opposition to counter-radicalisation policy has been influenced by extremist narratives. Student groups have also compounded this problem by working alongside the very extremists that such programmes seek to oppose. This was demonstrated again last week, as the NUS Black Students’ Campaign […]
Continue readingPrime Minister addresses campus extremism in speech
Yesterday, the Prime Minister used a visit to Ninestiles School in Birmingham to give a speech addressing the challenges posed to the UK by extremism. In outlining the ideology espoused by Islamist extremists and detailing how it could be opposed, the Prime Minister touched on many of the issues Student Rights has sought to highlight […]
Continue readingNew Student Rights report examines challenges to Prevent
A new report by Student Rights has found that the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, is being prevented from functioning effectively due to widespread student opposition, despite significant concerns about on-campus extremism. ‘Preventing Prevent? Challenges to Counter-Radicalisation Policy On Campus’, released today, has recorded over 100 on-campus events each year since 2012 hosting speakers with extreme views or a history […]
Continue readingOpen letter shows concerns about student campaign against Prevent
Last week saw an open letter published in the Independent which targeted the UK’s counter-radicalisation strategy, Prevent, and called for it to be scrapped. Signed by over 40 senior National Union of Students (NUS) and individual student union officers, the letter damned the policy as one which: “…reinforces an ‘us’ and ‘them’ view of the […]
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