Reports

This report catalogues the events which took place in November 2017 under the banner of Islamophobia Awareness Month (IAM), run by MEND. It finds that the campaign gave a platform to extremism-linked individuals, with some events hosting people with a high-profile extremist history – including incitement to violence, sympathy with convicted terrorists and support for corporal punishment against Jews, homosexuals, minority Muslim sects and ‘disbelievers’.

This report finds that the Government and UK universities are consistently failing to do enough to combat extremism on campus. The National Union of Students (NUS) campaign ‘Students Not Suspects’ exacerbates, and even facilitates, this problem.

This report explores the extreme speakers and events in the 2016-17 academic year.

This report analyses the speaker policies of 76 English universities to assess the extent to which the higher education sector has responded to the legal duty to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism imposed by the Counter Terrorism and Security Act 2015.

The government has repeatedly highlighted the threat posed by extremists seeking to use the UK’s university campuses to spread their views, and has rightly made ensuring these speakers face robust challenge a priority.

As a result, the Higher Education Funding Council England (HEFCE) now requires universities in England to have procedures in place for managing the risks around external speakers and events on campus, as well as institution-branded events taking place off campus.

With this in mind, Student Rights is releasing a new briefing, ‘A Model External Speaker Policy: Assessing the Risks Posed by External Speakers On-campus’, which provides institutions with advice while highlighting some of the challenges such policies face.

The policy seeks to provide a structure which gives a high level of oversight from staff and student union officials to mitigate the risk associated with external speakers while allowing as many events as possible to go ahead.

This briefing examines the number of events featuring speakers with a history of extreme or intolerant views or a history of involvement with extremist organisations logged across London in the first four months of the 2015-16 academic year.

The briefing documents how speakers with a history of making antisemitic remarks or recycling antisemitic tropes have been given platforms on several UK campuses, as well as detailing incidents of verbal and physical abuse against Jewish students.

​It also makes clear that too often student society social media pages have been ungoverned areas where antisemitic abuse and conspiracies are freely shared.

The briefing documents a number of posts made on these pages that spread hatred or repeat antisemitic conspiracy theories which would likely not be tolerated were they repeated by a student or speaker at an event.

This report finds 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.

This report reveals Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) in Britain received more than £100 million in tuition funding from some of the world’s most repressive regimes over the past decade, including money from Syria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

Recent media reports have focused attention on the issue of gender segregation on the UK’s campuses, with events at UCL and the University of Leicester leading to investigations by university authorities;

Student Rights event monitoring programme enables an in-depth analysis of this issue, with 180 events logged in the period March 2012 to March 2013 investigated for evidence of segregation;

46 of these events (25.5%) at 21 separate institutions were found to have either explicitly promoted segregation by gender, or implied that this would be the case, with six of these cancelled before taking place;

As all 21 of these institutions have equality and diversity policies which prohibit discrimination on the grounds of gender, as well as a legal responsibility to do so under the Equality Act 2010, this briefing uncovers potential failings in these duties;

Institutions should therefore communicate equality and diversity responsibilities to the student body repeatedly throughout the year, and monitor events where risk of a breach exists.

Institutions should also ensure that management/executive or elected positions in student societies are bound to compliance with university policies against segregation or discrimination on foundation and/or re-election.

This report documents the formation of a new Far-Right group linked to the British National Party (BNP) operating on campus at the University of Liverpool.

This report uncovered evidence of Islamist-inspired extremism being promoted to students via social media.

​It highlights the extent to which the ideology of groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir remains influential and details practical ways to challenge such ideas.

Co-authored by Student Rights’ researcher Rupert Sutton, the report provides evidence that external speakers continue to be invited to address students.

These include individuals who promote ideas of a Western war against Islam, support for paramilitary violence in Israel, encourage intolerance of non-believers and obligate Islam as a political system for law and governance.

It also demonstrates that some student society social media pages are used to share extremist material, including the speeches of the deceased senior Al-Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki.

In other cases, an external individual shared video of a man designated by the United States government as an al-Qaeda linked fighter, recruiter, facilitator and propagandist, and an audio recording of a speech by Abdul Rahman Saleem, convicted in 2008 of inciting terrorism overseas.

A small number of student activists at London universities, as well as recent graduates that they interact with, also engage in Islamist political activism and disseminate Islamist-inspired material. This is often sourced from Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the report details evidence of students attending Hizbut-Tahrir rallies and events as well as interacting with senior figures in the party.

However, the report does not just highlight the problems, but also offers policy makers who work in the field a number of workable recommendations that can help address the issue.

Utilising analyses of previous convictions where Islamism-inspired rhetoric has broken the law, it provides universities and student unions with guidelines which would enable them to make informed decisions when authorising speakers, and to ensure that free speech on campus is preserved whilst unlawful intolerance is challenged.

This report into online radicalisation has revealed dangerous new trends in the way British Muslim students are being directed to jihadist materials online.

The report uses the case study of the London South Bank University (LSBU) to highlight the dangers of Islamic Societies (ISocs) distributing information such as videos and audio links to lectures by the likes of the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

Al-Awlaki, who in 2011 was killed by a US drone in Yemen, is promoted on the LSBU ISoc Facebook account nine times between November 13th 2011 and January 2012. The links to videos have included comments such as ‘so many lessons’ and also lead to an online hub for extremist material – Kalamullah.com. The Facebook account has over 3000 subscribers.

In a recent interview to the London Evening Standard, the provost at University College London, Malcolm Grant once again asserted that extremism and radicalisation on campuses was a ‘non-issue’.

In a new report, Student Rights has outlined not just why this attitude towards an increasingly virulent threat is irresponsible, but is endangering lives and the reputation of University College London.

Our latest report uncovers the links with the Saudi Arabian Regime which has resulted in SOAS directly receiving £755,000 from the Saudi Arabian Royal family. Further scandals are also uncovered by this report.

​The briefing unveils the fact that SOAS provided MutassimGaddafi, the National Security Advisor to the Murderous Gaddafiregime, with private English tutoring and that an agreement between SOAS and Al-Fateh University in Tripoli was signed just months before the uprisings began in Libya. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a cleric who is banned from the UK and US for endorsing suicide bombings and the killing of pregnant women, is on the editorial board of the SOAS journal of Quranic Studies.

Our latest report uncovers the links with the Saudi Arabian Regime which has resulted in SOAS directly receiving £755,000 from the Saudi Arabian Royal family. Further scandals are also uncovered by this report.

​The briefing unveils the fact that SOAS provided MutassimGaddafi, the National Security Advisor to the Murderous Gaddafiregime, with private English tutoring and that an agreement between SOAS and Al-Fateh University in Tripoli was signed just months before the uprisings began in Libya. Perhaps the most shocking revelation is that Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a cleric who is banned from the UK and US for endorsing suicide bombings and the killing of pregnant women, is on the editorial board of the SOAS journal of Quranic Studies.