On Tuesday, Student Rights’ National Organiser, Elliot Miller, was hosted by the York University Conservative Association as he gave a lecture on extremism and the Prevent Strategy at the university. Elliot examined many of the complaints from students about Prevent, seeking to debunk misunderstandings and make the case for Prevent when it comes to extremist […]
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Student Voice: Prevent and the NUS’ credibility gap on tackling extremism
Queen Mary student, Jacob Kishere, attended last month’s ‘Students not Suspects’ event at his university which saw NUS vice president, Shelly Asquith, criticised for encouraging students to ensure universities were unable to fulfill their legal duties around Prevent. Here, he gives his take on the positions taken by the speakers. All views are his own, […]
Continue readingNUS Black Students’ Officer attends Al-Quds Day march
On Sunday, hundreds of anti-Israel activists gathered in central London to take part in the annual Al-Quds Day march, following a tradition inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini. The march was organised by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a group Student Rights has written on a number of times in the past. This has included highlighting […]
Continue readingStudent Rights in Brussels
Yesterday, Student Rights’ director, Rupert Sutton, spoke in Brussels at an event, hosted by the European Policy Centre (EPC), which sought to address the issue of jihadist radicalisation in schools, universities, prisons and mosques. He was joined on the panel by Muhammad Manwar Ali, Chief Executive of JIMAS, Rodrigo Ballester, the European Commissioner for Education, […]
Continue readingStudents Not Suspects Conference: Campaigning with Extremists
Founded last summer, the ‘Students Not Suspects‘ campaign has now spent an academic year working to undermine Prevent, the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, on university campuses. While students should of course be free to oppose and challenge policy, Student Rights has repeatedly criticised the campaign, which is led by high profile National Union of Students (NUS) […]
Continue readingMP writes to SOAS over extreme speaker events
Last week, it was reported that ‘Helping Households under Great Stress’ (HHUGS) had campaigned at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) during an event calling for the release of convicted terrorists. Journalists were given a card claiming Islamist terrorist Adel Abdel Bary was detained without charge, despite Bary’s 2014 conviction for his involvement […]
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 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 […]
Continue readingNUS motion pledges to work with CAGE
Over the past two days, delegates from the National Union of Students (NUS) have been meeting in Liverpool for the organisation’s Annual Conference. Voting on new policy, the NUS once again showed its inability to challenge extremism, instead passing a motion resolving to oppose government counter-extremism work. Motion 517 declared that “NUS officers will not […]
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