Just a thought, Dr Thornton isn’t a professor.

Did you see the tweet from Dr Fielding offering to give his input? Would be interesting to see.

Soz, that’s PROFESSOR Fielding. I look stoopid now.

I’ve changed the text from ‘Professor’ to lecturer. Thanks for correcting that.

You can now sign a petition supporting the call for a public inquiry and Dr. Thornton’s reinstatement here – http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/support-whistleblower-at-nottingham/

I am a student studying Politics at the University of Nottingham, and whilst I think there is perhaps more to this story than is being let on, the utter hypocrisy of senior management at Nottingham are a complete and utter embarrassment to higher education in this country.

The secretive and downright anti-democratic attitude of the university as described in Dr. Thornton’s is not just unique to this story, but merely an example of the oppressive and regulated regime at Nottingham University where free speech, free protest and free press are censored quite regularly, yet applied somewhat selectively. The university is notorious for its heavy handed regulations on any political events carried on on the campus or for actions as harmful as leafleting.

There is a serious culture change needed in the management of the University of Nottingham and I hope it happens before the university’s otherwise fantastic reputation is damaged.

*Freudian slip!

*harmLESS as leafleting

How times change. I’m a Nottingham grad from half a century ago, majoring in economics. Speaking with lecturers then, they tended to regard us undergrads as a politically docile lot. Of course, in those times there weren’t exciting options for the politics course on terrorism and asymmetric warfare.

Sunny, where has the report gone that was being hosted here? It is something to do with your conversation with the guy from the uni this morning?

Damn, the report has gone before I had a chance to download/read it. Any other places it can be found?

I would repost it, but I’m guessing it was taken for a reason. If you search on Twitter for ‘Rod Thornton’ you should be able to find it.

I think the title of it was something like Radicalisation by Universities or Radicalisation at Universities

Search for “the report nottingham university does not want you to read”

Thanks all.

FWIW there are allegations flying around that the vanished paper is defamatory, which probably explains why there are no links to it on the news reports posted on websites of the BBC or the Guardian. Are there any rumours of super-injunctions flying around?

Googling on this should lead to the paper: The article Nottingham University doesn’t want you to read

It worked for me.

Interesting that the report has now gone after Prof Fielding offered to share his reasons for asking BISA to take it down. Looks like his ‘reasons’ amounted to little more than a legal threat.

Perhaps if Prof Fielding would actually share his reasons for objecting to Dr Thornton’s account publicly we might stand a chance of getting nearer to the truth. Legal threats followed by a total lack of any reasoned clarifications help nobody.

One of the other academics dissing Dr Thornton has responded to an article in the local paper, worth a look

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Academics-publish-letter-defence-professor/article-3538329-detail/article.html

If Steve Fielding or whichever person from the university believes that the whole truth is not being said in Thorntons report, then i’m sure they will support the call for an inquiry into the University of Nottingham. Defamatory or not, the evidence that many fishy things went on is compelling!

I agree with the import of this article but I am a little perplexed because, if I recall rightly (and I may misremember, of course), Sunny and many others on here defended the right of Amnesty to suspend Gita Sahgal for exactly the same kind of indiscretion. I seem to remember a lot of comments around here along the lines ‘no employer can be expected to tolerate a member of staff criticising its policies in public like this’. Why the change of tack? What gives?

It is too early to decide whether this is a cause for complaint or not. We don’t know what was said in the report. It looks as if this is not political nor motivated by the University’s desire to cover up what they did, but rather legal threats of defamation action. Any University would be in a bind if two of its employees threatened to sue over a report one of them wrote.

Not that I don’t think for a second that the University’s actions were anything but spineless and cowardly. That is the nature of heavily bureaucratic structures, especially those run by third rate minds. As most Universities are.

Still it *is* a dilemma. Material was found that related to terrorism. What were they to do except call the police? Remember that in modern Britain, denouncing other people is often a legal obligation.

The article is still linked from the top, though I’ve taken off the embed.

I’ve not received any legal threats over it. However, I’ve been in touch with more than one lecturer / professor mentioned in the report, and it has been pointed that more than one fact in the paper about the staff members was wrong. In one case Dr Thornton admitted he had got the fact wrong.

I think there is still an issue here with the allegations around what happened during the time the Nottingham two were arrested. I also believe that Dr Thornton himself should be re-instated.

“Remember that in modern Britain, denouncing other people is often a legal obligation.”

In this particular case, as I understand it, the sense of obligation to denounce seems to have extended to reporting evidence of a student’s interest to view particular material accessible in the university library and on the internet, something which, in the context, could reasonably have been expected of a curious post-grad taking a course option on terrorism and asymmetric warfare.

What is to be made of the Blair government in 2003 sourcing from the internet, without attibution, text about Iraq’s “Security and Intelligence Network” for one of its dossiers on Iraq in order to justify war? Would any citizens coincidentally searching for similar material be automatically suspect as Iraqi agents?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Dossier

If so, we have reached a position where mere curiosity is regarded as suspicious.

Some years back out of idle curiosity, I thought to see what was available on the internet about the construction of atom bombs (a great deal) and about how to make nerve gases of the kind used on the Tokyo Metro by the Aum Shinriko cult in 1995:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarin_gas_attack_on_the_Tokyo_subway

20. Bob B – “In this particular case, as I understand it, the sense of obligation to denounce seems to have extended to reporting evidence of a student’s interest to view particular material accessible in the university library and on the internet, something which, in the context, could reasonably have been expected of a curious post-grad taking a course option on terrorism and asymmetric warfare.”

I am not convinced by that myself. I am not sure there was a work-related reason but clearly it was curiosity. But who was to know that at the time? This is much like Health and Safety issues. The litigious intolerant culture of modern Britain means you have to assume the worst and cover your exposure or you will regret it later. No one will stand up for you. So someone saw it, saw it was clearly related to terrorism – and was in no position to evaluate it – and did the only possible thing – reported it. Those people were in no position to evaluate it and they did the only possible thing they could do and reported it to the police. And so on. Can anyone point to the moment in the chain where someone knew enough to stop what happened? Not in retrospect but at the time.

“If so, we have reached a position where mere curiosity is regarded as suspicious.”

I find it very suspicious that Pete Townsend was merely curious. So we have been there for a long time. But in this situation, of course, what other sensible response was there?

“Some years back out of idle curiosity, I thought to see what was available on the internet about the construction of atom bombs (a great deal)”

But most of it useless.

@ So Much for Subtelty:

1) You write: “We don’t know what was said in the report. It looks as if this is not political nor motivated by the University’s desire to cover up what they did, but rather legal threats of defamation action.”

Firstly, there is an easy way of knowing what was said in the report: it is available on the net, despite attempts by the UoN to have it removed from the public domain. Therefore it can be read, and you can judge for yourself (there is also a three page summary of its major findings available, if reading the full paper itself is too time consuming: http://www.scribd.com/doc/55057018/KEY-FINDINGS-THE-EXPOSE-THAT-NOTTINGHAM-UNI-WISHES-YOU-NEVER-READ).

Secondly, the UoN has claimed that the article is defamatory. They have not, however, produced a single piece of evidence – not one shred! – to prove that this is the case. In all likelihood, this is due to the fact that Dr. Thornton’s paper – as becomes clear upon reading – is a forensic analysis of internal university communications, acquired under the Freedom of Information Act, over the course of three years. Either way, the only dignified manner in which to settle the debate over whether or not the paper contains defamation is an independent public inquiry into the claims made by Thornton in a paper which in my opnion, as an academic, conforms to the highest standards of scholarship.

2) You write: “Material was found that related to terrorism. What were they to do except call the police?”

The UoN could, for example, have followed their own AND governmental regulations, as well as the stipulations of the European Convention on Human Rights, as to how to respond to suspicions about extremism on campus. One of the KEY FINDINGS of Dr. Thornton’s paper is precisely the fact that there was no risk assessment involved in this incident on the part of the UoN. Instead, the top management of the UoN got directly in contact with the police, and this in turn led to the wrongful arrests of two young men, their week-long detention, and a shameful attempt by the Home Ministry to have Hicham Yezza deported to Algeria.

The arrests were devastating for the two people involved – read, for example, Hicham Yezza’s account from 2008 here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/terrorism.civilliberties. It is ONLY by following strict guidelines that are designed to prevent laws that in some cases are draconian in their nature that we can protect the civil liberties and personal dignity and well-being of individuals against violations such as these arrests – and this is more important than ever in the context of the culture of fear and suspicion that has been generated as a result of governmental responses to the threat of international terrorism over the last decade.

3) You write: “I am not sure there was a work-related reason but clearly it was curiosity. But who was to know that at the time?”.

You CAN be sure that there were work-related reasons for the fact that Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were in possession of the three documents that ultimately led to their wrongful arrest. As both of the two men – against whom charges were never brought, and who were entirely innocent – these are the reasons:

a) Rizwaan Sabir was an MA student at the UoN, and had accessed these documents as part of his MA research and his work on a PhD proposal on radical Islam. Note here that two of the documents are from highly recognized academic journals, and that the infamous Al Qaida manual was an open source, declassified document available on the US Department of Justice website, AND in the UoN library. Indeed, had Sabir been silly, he would have spent money on obtaining the document by buying it in extended form from Amazon.

A direct question to you: If you research a topic like radical Islam, is not then relevant to access documents produced by an organization like Al Qaida?

b) Hicham Yezza is a close friend of Rizwaan Sabir, and has also studied at the UoN for more than ten years (he pursued his PhD there until just before the time of his arrest in 2008). Hicham Yezza functioned as an academic mentor and discussion partner for Sabir, and Sabir would regularly send him the literature and source materials that he used for his dissertation and his PhD proposal for comment and discussion. Isn’t this entirely legitimate?

Now, if the UoN had bothered to conduct a risk assessment of the documents and the reason why Yezza had come to be in possession of them, they would have discovered these facts and the wrongful arrests of innocents – with all the harm to individual lives that this entails, and it is considerable – could have been avoided. However, they didn’t. They didn’t – and this is despite the fact that Yezza was a well-known and distinguished figure at the UoN. He had pursued undergraduate and graduate studies there, and embarked on a PhD project. He had been very active in the student community and, among other things, served on the University Senate for several terms. In other words, he was and is the kind of person that any university should feel privileged to have as part of its student community.

All this, however, amounted to nothing when the documents in question were found on his computer. Is that not a dreadful thing? Does it not warrant scrutiny? I think so, especially after having read Dr. Thornton’s paper. Indeed, by suspending Dr. Thornton, the UoN has achieved nothing by way of instilling confidence among the public that it takes the civil liberties of its students and staff seriously and that it honours the basic precepts of academic freedom. It is only the immediate reinstatement of Thornton, and the establishment of an independent inquiry into the claims that he makes, that can achieve this. It is in everybody’s interest, and it should be done sooner rather than later.

@21: “But most of it useless”

The information on the internet about the construction of atom bombs may have changed between now and then (c. 2000) although there was text reporting the critical masses of uranium235 and plutonium239 and the different constructions of the (uranium) Hiroshima and (plutonium) Nagasaki bombs. Even so, there remains the challenging practical issue of how to obtain sufficient fissile material to make either.

Very likely security has tightened as al-Qaeda has become more active and especially since this:

Khan, lionised as the “father” of Pakistan’s atomic bomb, confessed in 2004 to selling nuclear secrets to Iran, North Korea and Libya. He was immediately pardoned but detained in his home.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/06/nuclear-pakistan-khan

However, it is sad when it has become suspicious if uni students exhibit curiosity.

As Alf says central criticism by Dr Thornton is that UoN very much were in a position to evaluate exactly how dangerous the material concerned was but failed to do so. Later, faced with the reality of their bungling, rather than simply admit their mistake and apologise, they first tried to claim that it was the police who told them Sabir and Yezza had no academic reason to be in possession of the ‘Al Quaeda Training Manual’ only for this to be later flatly contradicted by the police, whose position was that it was for the UoN to advise them on what was academically appropriate for its students to be reading. Dr Thornton then alleges that UoN then repeatedly tried to misrepresent the nature of the documents involved in order to imply guilt on Sabir and Yezza’s part int he hope that this would excuse the Uni’s actions.

Have a look at this opinion piece in the local paper by two of UoN’s chief defenders -

http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/news/Column-Dr-Macdonald-Daly-Dr-Sean-Matthews/article-1038831-detail/article.html

Note the opening concentrating on Yezza’s conviction on immigration offences which in fact had nothing to do with the any terrorism claims and appears to be an attempt to cloud the issue and, again, imply a wider sense of guilt. See the attempts to discredit the campaign to defend Yezza, claiming that it didn’t even report on his trial and conviction. I’m sorry but they did as a central point of the campaigns were that the charges were a revenge action and that a serious miscarriage of justice occurred.

Note the frankly desperate claim that students don’t benefit from ‘academic freedom’ which is a claim that no individual academic is in a position to make. And as Dr Thornton says, at what point do you get to join the academic freedom club, when you’ve graduated (as Sabir clearly had done, being a postgrad student), when you’ve got your PhD, or when you finally get your first academic post? Again, it looks like a further attempt to delegitimise Sabir and Yezza’s possession of one of the documents.

The whole discussion as to whether Yezza’s possession of the document was justified by ‘academic freedom’ is a red herring anyway. His justification for possession was simply that his mate had asked him to print it out for him, nothing to do with so-called academic freedom. Sabir’s own justification was that he had an academic reason to be in possession of the document, a claim tat has always held up despite Dr Daly’s attempts at misinformation.

And now Dr Daly is reduced to claiming that he has been defamed by Dr Thornton’s erroneous claim that he owned the publisher of his little academic freedom pamphlet. While he is entirely justified in pointing this error out it’s difficult to see what difference this really makes, it’s hardly a central plank of Dr Thornton’s criticisms. I would have thought that he would have been more concerned about Dr Thornton’s claims that Dr Daly was one of the parties attempting to misrepresent the nature of the documents in Yezza and Sabir’s possession, a far more serious accusation and one that is far more central to the issue. The fact that he doesn’t might lead us to draw our own conclusions.

@BobB: It is not about curiosity; it is about research, and the all-important right to be able to carry out research without fearing for infringements upon one’s most basic civil liberties. In other words, this is a matter of academic freedom, which the UoN has now violated TWICE, at great personal cost for those at the receiving end of their actions.

@25:

I accept that but was envisaging situations where uni students were just being curious – as I was when looking to see what was on the web about the construction of atom bombs or the Aum Shinriko cult in Japan.

I could hardly have pleaded “academic freedom” and, presumably, a student researching for a thesis on, say, Goethe would also have difficulty in claiming that defence. Perhaps there is an interesting subject for a thesis on the ethics – and boundaries – of academic freedom. After all, it was Edmund Burke, as I recall, who wrote in the 18th century: Liberty, too, must be limited in order to be possessed.

@BobB: But – the Al Qaida manual was and is an open source document, declassified, published on a US Government website, and also avaiable for sale on Amazon. That means – IMHO – that anyone, absolutely anyone, irrespective of what they study or if they study at all – should be able to download and read it if they are interested in doing so. No one should have to fear infringements of their civil liberties as a result of possessing literature that is freely available in the public domain.

We live in a day and age when the internet is enhancing public access to information about a rapidly changing world, and this is to be cherished, not squashed. It is very sad that the UoN, going by its official statements, does not recognize this.

@27:

I take it that you are unimpressed by Edmund Burke’s dilemmas about whether freedom for some could impinge on the freedom of others.

I am generally unimpressed with anyone who wishes to restrain popular access to the rights and liberties that are at the heart of democracy – and Edmund Burke, with his fears of “the swinish multitude” and so on, is nothing if not such a person.

Can you tell me where the freedom to read open source, declassified documents about current affairs impinges on the freedom of others?

“I am generally unimpressed with anyone who wishes to restrain popular access to the rights and liberties that are at the heart of democracy – and Edmund Burke, with his fears of “the swinish multitude” and so on, is nothing if not such a person. ”

Never mind about Edmund Burke, if, as you are suggesting, “academic freedom” is some sort of universal, categorical imperative, perhaps you can explain whether you regard it as a “positive” or “negative” freedom and whether it over-rides the fundamental dichotomy JS Mill makes in his essay On Liberty between self- and other-regarding actions:
http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html

But not to worry, I feel confident that contemporary students of politics at UoN can easily resolve such ethical puzzles

@Bob: You’ve read Mill. Well done and good for you.

However – your attempt to turn this into an abstract debate about abstract principles does not impress, as it is simply a rather feeble attempt to mask your failure to reply to my very simple question, posed in the previous comment I made in this thread.

My question was the following: can you tell me where the freedom to read open source, declassified documents about current affairs impinges on the freedom of others? Now, can you?

I agree with you, though, on one thing. Most contemporary UoN students will be able to resolve such ethical puzzles rather easily.

This was made clear to me in 2008, when 500 of them came out in the largest demonstration the University of Nottingham had ever seen, to protest the wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, and to protect academic freedom. The decision that these students made to voice their dissent in the public domain in this manner carries more weight, IMHO, than any distinction that Mills might have made, and any dilemma that Burke, bless his cotton socks, might have struggled with.

And to conclude, I’d like to quote and ask for your views on some paragraphs that I penned – along with two brave colleagues – when I was still an employee of SPIR, UoN, and at the forefront of the 2008 campaign for academic freedom at Nottingham:

“The Nottingham arrests set a dangerous precedent for intellectual freedom and the scope of academic and journalistic research. How can we follow political scientist Hedley Bull’s injunction to “pursue the question” if we are only to examine squeaky clean sources? Where does Nottingham’s response leave terrorism studies in the UK? We cannot combat terrorism by adopting an approach in which we see no evil or hear no evil. A panicky response can only undermine vital research on terrorism and public understanding of the problem. What about our PhD student researching Arabic-language sources on the Iraq war? What about those researching or studying al-Qaeda propaganda at the University of Leeds? What about those wanting to research the recruitment to terrorist organisations? What about those who want to go beyond internet sources and venture into the messier world of fieldwork?

Where do the Nottingham arrests leave the much-hyped citizen journalist or blogger? University managers are narrowly interpreting intellectual freedom to authorised academics and registered students. Indeed, university managers appear reluctant to concede that a non-academic might legitimately possess sensitive open-source documents. Citizen journalists and bloggers beware!

Academic and intellectual freedom is one of the values we should be defending in the War on Terror, and we are doing the terrorists’ work if we submit to a climate of fear and suspicion. The way for us to defeat obnoxious ideas is not to bury our heads in the sand, but to have more engaged and informed citizens. Individuals are more likely to become susceptible to obnoxious ideas if we let those ideas fester or glamorise them through censorship rather than exposing them to the light of critical analysis.

The problem of terrorism cannot be defeated militarily, it must be defeated politically. The more informed and open public debate we have, the more we as a society can address obnoxious ideas and expose their weaknesses. Yet if universities choose to run to the police when confronted with documents expressing extremist views instead of tackling these ideas head on, they are ducking their intellectual and moral responsibilities. Panicking in the face of extremist ideas might be an expected response from shocked maiden aunts, but it will not combat terrorism or political threats. A vibrant intellectual climate fostering an engaged and informed public might.”

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=402258

“However – your attempt to turn this into an abstract debate about abstract principles does not impress, as it is simply a rather feeble attempt to mask your failure to reply to my very simple question, posed in the previous comment I made in this thread. ”

As expected, abuse rather addressing the issues of principle at stake.

I was following your lead. You staked this out as as an issue of the abstract principle of academic freedom apparently regardless so I was just trying to work out how that relates to JS Mill’s fundamental dichotomy between self- and other regarding actions.

Sadly, that remains unresolved here. No cigar so far.

As for links to readings on the characteristics of British reflections on political theory, try this earlier thread in Liberal Conspiracy:
https://liberalconspiracy.org/2011/04/29/plans-for-may-day-occupation-of-trafalgar-square/

@Bob:

Actually, it’s not abuse. It is a legitimate, albeit somewhat sarcastic, criticism of your debating strategy, which seems to be geared towards steering the discussion away from the concrete case at hand – the actions of the University of Nottingham in relation to the arrests in 2008 and the suspension of Dr. Rod Thornton, and the ways in which these actions so clearly threaten academic freedom.

I did not argue that academic freedom is a categorical imperative. That is your misrepresentation of my argument – nothing else.

Besides rejecting the relevance of a hopeless reactionary like Burke in this context, I have quite simply said that the principle of academic freedom is very, very important and needs to be taken very, very seriously – both by scholars and by the institutions they inhabit, and that it should certainly not, under any circumstance, be compromised with the apparent ease that the University of Nottingham displays in this affair.

As far as abstract principles and academic freedom go, I am of the firm belief that these are only interesting in so far as they are gauged against the actual dilemmas that researchers face when they proceed to investigate contentious subjects and conflictual social or political phenomena. That is my humble opinion after having spent ten years conducting fieldwork on contentious politics and social protest in South Asia – abstractions alone do not go very far.

And finally – you have STILL not answered my very simple question: Can you tell me where the freedom to read open source, declassified documents about current affairs impinges on the freedom of others?

@alf nilsen

You made this an issue of the abstract principle of academic freedom and I was just examining the implications of that claim, in particular whether there could be reasonable boundaries to academic freedom relating to the dichotomy JS Mill drew between self- and other-regarding actions.

Evidently, you are unwilling to engage in such analysis.

One simple, direct response that occurs to me would have been to simply deny that the activity of seeking out the text of a publication accessible in the university library, via the internet or on purchase from amazon (if true) is hardly likely to have significant other-regarding implications as an activity:

JS Mill: “That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant.”
http://www.utilitarianism.com/ol/one.html

But anything as quite as simple and direct as that is probably because I’m a just pensioner now and no longer a student reading politics at the UoN.

@Bob

As you seem to indicate doubt, this link takes you to the Al Qaida training manual on Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Studies-Jihad-Against-Tyrants/dp/1907521240/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305216031&sr=1-1

You can also buy it from Waterstones, though:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/jerry+m-+post/military+studies+in+the+jihad+against+the+tyrants/3382449/

At the UoN library it is stocked with class mark HV6431.

Beyond this, I simply wish to note that I am happy that you, like me, seem to think that consulting these documents – i.e. conducting research, or informing oneself about on-goings in the world that one inhabits – is unlikely to impinge on the freedom of others.

That is very good news.

@Alf

“That is very good news.”

Fine but there are the further very practical security issues about whether universities should be sensitive to student – or staff – behaviour indicating terrorist or subversive intentions and, if so what indications should university authorities look for and what might they do about discovered indications?

These last are very practical issues and not ones to be brushed aside as trivial and insignificant. Consider these news reports in the media from 1999 about academics:

“Also named [in the BBC2 series: The Spying Game] is Vic Allen, a retired professor of economics at Leeds university, who was a founder member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and went on the first Aldermaston march. A firm Stalinist, it is alleged he passed on information about CND to his East German handlers.

“After the revelation this weekend that he had been ‘an agent of influence’, he said he had no regrets. . .

“Prof Allen was an ally of Arthur Scargill during the 1984-85 miners’ strike. In 1987 he published a book, The Russians Are Coming. His pro-Soviet views were well known. . .” [September 1999]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,271697,00.html

“I regret nothing, says Stasi spy” [September 1999]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/09/99/britain_betrayed/451366.stm

“East Germany’s secret police, the Stasi, knew Dr Robin Pearson by his codename Armin, according to the BBC Two series, The Spying Game.

“But to the staff and students at Hull University – and his neighbours nearby – Dr Pearson, 44, is a respected senior lecturer and author in economics and social history.” [September 1999]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1999/09/99/britain_betrayed/450921.stm

By the time those media reports surface, the significance of the news had long since passed its use-by date for Britain’s security services but I suspect that for them, the news wasn’t fresh anyway – except possibly recent in respect of Melita Norwood:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/444519.stm

Btw an interesting insight is that the present PM of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was a KGB liaison agent serving in East Germany from January 1985 through 1990. Presumably, he was placed to read the feedback reports of the Stasi handlers of their agents in Britain. I wonder what the agents were reporting back about those Labour politicians who were active in the CND movement during the 1970s and 1980s.

@Bob

Firstly – I apologize for the truism, but one person’s “subversive intentions” are of course another person’s worthy cause, so that part of your argument takes us on to very dodgy terrain. Who is to be the judge and jury there?

Secondly – the whole point is that there are guidelines on how universities should relate to issues of campus extremism. These guidelines, however, also contains certain provisions to safeguard people’s civil liberties – for example, universities are supposed to conduct a risk assessment before bringing in the police. The fact of the matter in the Nottingham case was that university management flouted these guidelines and brought in the police straight away. We know the result of their actions – it is not something that the UoN should be proud of.

And here’s the wider crux of the matter – in a day and age when ever more draconian anti-terror laws couple with and feed the fires of a culture of fear in ways which have caused and continues to cause far too many young Muslims in Britain and elsewhere to be made suspects of and to have their human rights trampled on, the need of the hour seems to be to safeguard civil liberties – among them academic freedom – irrespective of race and creed. To me, at least, this is a greater worry and more urgent concern than the issues you flag in your last comment.

22. Alf Nilsen – “Firstly, there is an easy way of knowing what was said in the report: it is available on the net, despite attempts by the UoN to have it removed from the public domain.”

And there’s the rub. We don’t know what in the document is defamatory or otherwise justifies the legal efforts to take it down. We are in no position to judge.

“Secondly, the UoN has claimed that the article is defamatory. They have not, however, produced a single piece of evidence – not one shred! – to prove that this is the case.”

I am not sure that it is the responsibility of the University to do so. If I alleged that you were a sex offender, you think it would be up to you to prove you are not? How is that fair?

“The UoN could, for example, have followed their own AND governmental regulations, as well as the stipulations of the European Convention on Human Rights, as to how to respond to suspicions about extremism on campus.”

Would you mind quoting the relevant regulations and stipulations?

“One of the KEY FINDINGS of Dr. Thornton’s paper is precisely the fact that there was no risk assessment involved in this incident on the part of the UoN. Instead, the top management of the UoN got directly in contact with the police, and this in turn led to the wrongful arrests of two young men, their week-long detention, and a shameful attempt by the Home Ministry to have Hicham Yezza deported to Algeria.”

There clearly was a risk assessment. But they are *academics*. It is not their job or within their area of competence to make such risk assessments. They simply handed the task over to the professionals and the police did their job. That was not only entirely appropriate, it was the only possible response. Wrongful arrests? How much compensation did they get? How were their arrests in any way wrongful – at the time? Yezza, as I understand it, overstayed his visa. There is nothing shameful about deporting people who abuse the immigration system.

“You CAN be sure that there were work-related reasons for the fact that Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza were in possession of the three documents that ultimately led to their wrongful arrest. … a) Rizwaan Sabir was an MA student at the UoN, and had accessed these documents as part of his MA research and his work on a PhD proposal on radical Islam.”

No, he *says* he accessed those documents as part of his work on a PhD proposal. But then a bad guy would, wouldn’t he – not that I am suggesting Sabir was, but if your standard is whatever a suspect says few criminals will ever be caught. I notice that he did not actually use them for his PhD which is now on a related but different field.

“A direct question to you: If you research a topic like radical Islam, is not then relevant to access documents produced by an organization like Al Qaida?”

If. Sabir was not. He says he was going to. I also have a direct question for you – if someone is going to research child porn, is it not relevant to have access to actual child porn and should we waive the laws of the land just because someone is an academic?

“Hicham Yezza functioned as an academic mentor and discussion partner for Sabir, and Sabir would regularly send him the literature and source materials that he used for his dissertation and his PhD proposal for comment and discussion. Isn’t this entirely legitimate?”

Again you have missed out a whole lot of “he says” in this. It may be. But it may not have been – and which was not apparent at the time. It is easy to sit back pat with hindsight. But at the time the University did the only thing it could. They had no way of knowing.

“Now, if the UoN had bothered to conduct a risk assessment of the documents and the reason why Yezza had come to be in possession of them, they would have discovered these facts and the wrongful arrests of innocents – with all the harm to individual lives that this entails, and it is considerable – could have been avoided.”

Except they did a risk assessment and what do you think they should have done – called the two in and, had they been terrorists, tipped them off? I do not see any harm to anyone here. What harm do you think has been done?

“In other words, he was and is the kind of person that any university should feel privileged to have as part of its student community.”

Tell that to UCL.

“All this, however, amounted to nothing when the documents in question were found on his computer. Is that not a dreadful thing? Does it not warrant scrutiny?”

No. It is perfectly reasonable. Again, suppose that child porn had been found. Suppose that ultra-right wing racist material had been found. What do you think should have been done then?

29. Alf Nilsen – “Can you tell me where the freedom to read open source, declassified documents about current affairs impinges on the freedom of others?”

I am not sure. But suppose that an academic had been caught reading the Turner Diaries or some other piece of work by a violent racist group. And a group of BME students at Nottingham asserted they no longer had confidence in said lecturer’s impartiality. What should the University do?

Before you answer, I point you to the case of Frank Ellis.

Universities these days are highly restricted in what can be said – or read. Why should an exception be made for Islamist related materials?

37. Alf Nilsen – “Firstly – I apologize for the truism, but one person’s “subversive intentions” are of course another person’s worthy cause, so that part of your argument takes us on to very dodgy terrain. Who is to be the judge and jury there?”

Not the University of Nottingham. I don’t know, how about the people we actually train and pay to make such decisions? Like the police? The Courts? You see the problem and yet you do not draw the only sensible conclusion.

“The fact of the matter in the Nottingham case was that university management flouted these guidelines and brought in the police straight away. We know the result of their actions – it is not something that the UoN should be proud of.”

No they should not be proud of it but they were in a bind. They did a risk assessment. They realised the material related to bomb making and that they were out of their depth. So they called in the professionals. As is entirely appropriate and sensible.

“And here’s the wider crux of the matter – in a day and age when ever more draconian anti-terror laws couple with and feed the fires of a culture of fear in ways which have caused and continues to cause far too many young Muslims in Britain and elsewhere to be made suspects of and to have their human rights trampled on”

You have no case as long as you continue to make this dishonest claim. The problem is not that some young Muslims in Britain and elsewhere have been made suspects. Is it that a large-ish number of British people have been murdered. Muslims as well as non-Muslims. By Islamists. Deal with it and perhaps we can have a sensible conversation.

31. Alf Nilsen – “However – your attempt to turn this into an abstract debate about abstract principles does not impress”

Academic freedom is not an abstract principle?

“My question was the following: can you tell me where the freedom to read open source, declassified documents about current affairs impinges on the freedom of others? Now, can you?”

Terrorism creates a hostile learning environment. Just knowing that some people on campus may be intending to blow you up makes it hard to engage fully and freely with the academic community and hence restricts everyone else’s freedom of speech and thought. This is not rocket science.

“This was made clear to me in 2008, when 500 of them came out in the largest demonstration the University of Nottingham had ever seen, to protest the wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, and to protect academic freedom.”

The University of Nottingham has about 40,000 students. So about 1.2% of them gave enough of a damn to come out and protest? Something the hard core of Trots would usually do at the drop of a hat.

“The decision that these students made to voice their dissent in the public domain in this manner carries more weight, IMHO, than any distinction that Mills might have made, and any dilemma that Burke, bless his cotton socks, might have struggled with.”

Ha! So much for academia. It seems that the larger philosophical questions need to take a back seat to mob justice. To think people wasted all that time debating the death of Socrates when all they had to do is realise that the abstract principle is outweighed by the mob voicing their dissent.

“How can we follow political scientist Hedley Bull’s injunction to “pursue the question” if we are only to examine squeaky clean sources?”

There being no evidence that Sabir or Yezza were following the question. Just a claim that Sabir was preparing to.

“Individuals are more likely to become susceptible to obnoxious ideas if we let those ideas fester or glamorise them through censorship rather than exposing them to the light of critical analysis.”

So James Crick had a talk at the Science Museum canceled because he said some bad things about a sub-set of the human race. You think this was wrong? LC would have deleted those comments had they been made here. You think this is wrong?

“The problem of terrorism cannot be defeated militarily, it must be defeated politically.”

I think that is open to debate. But it is also irrelevant. The issue here is not whether Sabir was debating terrorism but whether everyone in the chain at the UoN had reason to suspect a terrorist act was being prepared. They were, in hindsight, wrong to think so. But they could not have known that at the time. Whether or not two people are preparing a terrorist act is not an issue for free speech, or a political problem, but a police problem. They did the only thing open to them and called the police. What else should they have done?

“…if so what indications should university authorities look for and what might they do about discovered indications?”

A good start may be to do a proper check on the nature of the document involved, say, by getting someone who knows what they’re talking about to read beyond the title and, hells, checking your own library?

“If. Sabir was not. He says he was going to.”

He was already part way through an MA and was in the process of preparing for his PhD according to Dr Thornton. If you believe that to be be wrong and have evidence put it up here.

“Just knowing that some people on campus may be intending to blow you up makes it hard to engage fully and freely with the academic community and hence restricts everyone else’s freedom of speech and thought.”

In isolation that is fair enough. But knowing that someone is planning on researching the conditions that foster an individual’s desire to blow the campus, or elsewhere, is not the same thing.

41. Andy – “A good start may be to do a proper check on the nature of the document involved, say, by getting someone who knows what they’re talking about to read beyond the title and, hells, checking your own library?”

Which is, of course, exactly what they did. The person who knew what they were talking about was a member the police. How are Academics to judge? How precisely does a background in Walter Benjamin or whatever prepare you for judging the validity of someone’s explanations for why they have bomb-making related materials on their computer?

“He was already part way through an MA and was in the process of preparing for his PhD according to Dr Thornton. If you believe that to be be wrong and have evidence put it up here.”

Sure. Preparing for a PhD. He says the information was for his PhD proposal. So not work he was working on but stuff he said he was going to work on. Although, as it turned out, he did not do that topic for his PhD and is now working on other topics. So not work related.

“In isolation that is fair enough. But knowing that someone is planning on researching the conditions that foster an individual’s desire to blow the campus, or elsewhere, is not the same thing.”

Sorry but no one *knows* that. They certainly did not know that at the time.

“And there’s the rub. We don’t know what in the document is defamatory or otherwise justifies the legal efforts to take it down. We are in no position to judge.”

If this is your honest opinion of Dr. Thornton’s carefully crafted and densely referenced article, then surely you will support the establishment of an independent inquiry to look into his claims about the conduct of the UoN in this matter?

“I am not sure that it is the responsibility of the University to do so. If I alleged that you were a sex offender, you think it would be up to you to prove you are not? How is that fair?”

The UoN has made the claim that Dr. Thornton’s article is defamatory. Surely, anyone who makes a claim such as this should submit evidence to substantiate their claim. Dr. Thornton has done so, so why not the University?

Would you mind quoting the relevant regulations and stipulations?

I don’t have to. Please read pages 28-30 in Dr. Thornton’s article, and pay particular attention to footnote 91.

“There clearly was a risk assessment.”

Please read pages 25-30 in Dr. Thornton’s paper. Also read pages 18-20. Contrary to the misleading claims of the UoN, there was no risk assessment, and hence university and government guidelines were violated.

“But they are *academics*.”

At the UoN there are a number of academics – among them Dr. Thornton – who are leading experts on international terrorism. Therefore, they would have been very well put to explain to the UoN the nature of the documents found, which were a widely available open source manuscript and two academic articles, and that there was no reason why the discovery of these documents should raise concern. Even a simple Google-search would in fact have revealed this.

“It is not their job or within their area of competence to make such risk assessments.”

It is their job and it is within their competence – see comments above.

“They simply handed the task over to the professionals and the police did their job. That was not only entirely appropriate, it was the only possible response.”

The problem is precisely that they went to the police without proper risk assessment, and evidently without taking any notice of the impeccable track records of the person who had saved the document on the desktop of his computer. The alternative response would have been a thorough risk assessment as stipulated in government guidelines, which in all likelihood would have defused the entire situation, and prevented the attack on academic freedom and civil liberties that took place at the UoN in May 2008.

“Wrongful arrests? How much compensation did they get? How were their arrests in any way wrongful – at the time? Yezza, as I understand it, overstayed his visa. There is nothing shameful about deporting people who abuse the immigration system.”

This is a thinly veiled attempt at character assassination. Please recall that the legal fight that ensued after the Home Office tried to deport Yezza – in what an MP at the time correctly described as an attempt to deflect attention from an embarrassing mistakes – resulted in victory for Yezza, as the Home Office confirmed his right to live and work in the UK.

“No, he *says* he accessed those documents as part of his work on a PhD proposal. But then a bad guy would, wouldn’t he – not that I am suggesting Sabir was, but if your standard is whatever a suspect says few criminals will ever be caught. I notice that he did not actually use them for his PhD which is now on a related but different field.”

No – by my standards, people are innocent until proven guilty. And suspicions are carefully investigated before acted on. Not radical ideas, I think. And btw, as an academic I collect vast amounts of material that I never use directly in my research – much of which is highly contentious – but for some reason, I’ve yet to be arrested and detained for six days without charge …

“A direct question to you: If you research a topic like radical Islam, is not then relevant to access documents produced by an organization like Al Qaida?”

“If. Sabir was not. He says he was going to. I also have a direct question for you – if someone is going to research child porn, is it not relevant to have access to actual child porn and should we waive the laws of the land just because someone is an academic?”

Sabir was. There are no two ways about it. It was the topic of his MA, and a PhD proposal he was working on. You seem to insist in sowing doubts about Sabir’s claims, and in the process you disregard that he was release without charge for the simple reason that he was and is innocent of any wrongdoing. The implications of your statements amount to slander, and that is not very impressive.

And yes – if someone is going to research child pornography, it is relevant to have access to child porn. How you access it, and the terms of access are open to debate and have to be established according to rigorous ethical standards, but they should have access. And the same goes for other contentious, distasteful, and in some cases criminal areas of our societies which, unless they are thorougly researched, we will be ignorant of, and therefore not in a position to address or combat.

“Again you have missed out a whole lot of “he says” in this. It may be. But it may not have been – and which was not apparent at the time.”

Hicham Yezza was an outstanding member of the UoN community. Over a decade as a student across undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels; several terms on the university senate and student union executive; general secretary of the International Students’ Bureau and leader of the Nottingham University Islamic Society; editor of two prominent student magazines; and the university’s go-to person whenever they wanted to reach the UoN community of Arab/Muslim students.

This is a CV above the average, and it was very well known to the UoN and its management. I wonder if you have any reasonable grounds to sow doubt about them? And I wonder why the UoN decided to pay no attention to these credentials in May 2008.

“Except they did a risk assessment and what do you think they should have done – called the two in and, had they been terrorists, tipped them off?”

See comment above. Or – when you are done repeating claims for which there is no basis – read pages 25-30 in Dr. Thornton’s article.

“I do not see any harm to anyone here. What harm do you think has been done?”

Have you ever been arrested and detained for six days despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong? I do not assume that you are particularly generously endowed with empathy, but is it beyond the bounds of your comprehension that such an experience – and in Yezza’s case, the shameful attempt at deportation that ensued – is absolutely devastating for the people affected by it?

You seem to place little credence on what Sabir and Yezza have to say, so this might be wasted on you, but they have given their own accounts of how they experience the arrests here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/terrorism.civilliberties
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/16/uksecurity.terrorism

“Tell that to UCL.”

I don’t see the connection between Yezza and UCL. Please refer to my summary of Yezza’s career at UoN above. As an academic, I can say, with hand on heart, that any university community should cherish a person like Yezza and the many ways in which such engaged and committed young people enrich campus life.

“All this, however, amounted to nothing when the documents in question were found on his computer. Is that not a dreadful thing? Does it not warrant scrutiny?”

“No. It is perfectly reasonable. Again, suppose that child porn had been found. Suppose that ultra-right wing racist material had been found. What do you think should have been done then?”

I think an investigation should have been carried out based on (a) soliciting the advice of QUALIFIED academics on the nature of the, and (b) contextualizing the discovery of the documents/materials, followed by a careful discussion of steps to be taken.

“I am not sure. But suppose that an academic had been caught reading the Turner Diaries or some other piece of work by a violent racist group. And a group of BME students at Nottingham asserted they no longer had confidence in said lecturer’s impartiality. What should the University do?”

Well, unless the teacher is using her or his position to advance violent racist views that endanger the life and safety of people of colour, but is using the material for valuable research into a contentious political phenomenon – violent racism, in your example – which may generate knowledge that can aid in addressing the manifold challenges that this phenomenon poses to society in general and people of colour – i.e. the targets of violent racism – then I would argue that the university has good grounds for telling the student group that their complaints are “baseless” (a favourite term at UoN, btw).

I’m not sure whether you are able to see this, so I want to point it out to you: my comment above is also informed by a consideration of how the exercise of freedom by some could impinge on the freedom of others (I see you make snide comments about my approach to abstract principles elsewhere).

“Universities these days are highly restricted in what can be said – or read. Why should an exception be made for Islamist related materials?”

Actually universities are not restricted in what they can read. A look at my bookshelf, which contains a wide range of materials published by organizations that have been outlawed by the respective states that they operate in, will testify to that. And if universities were highly restricted in what they can read, then there would be good reasons to fight this tooth and nail, as it would amount to a restriction on the scholarly search for genuine insights about the workings of social, political, and cultural phenomena that we need to be able to address in a knowledgeable and informed manner (such as radical Islam, for example).

“Not the University of Nottingham. I don’t know, how about the people we actually train and pay to make such decisions? Like the police? The Courts? You see the problem and yet you do not draw the only sensible conclusion.”

The police should decide what is and what isn’t subversive? The same police that, just to name some recent, is responsible for the death of Ian Tomlinson, and that is only too eager to engage in policing democratic protests in a manner which the London High Court has ruled was illegal? (Please refer to this article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/apr/14/kettling-g20-protesters-police-illegal).

And have you ever given some thought to the implications of the (important) truism that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?

“The fact of the matter in the Nottingham case was that university management flouted these guidelines and brought in the police straight away. We know the result of their actions – it is not something that the UoN should be proud of.”

“They did a risk assessment.”

They didn’t. And you know which pages in Thornton’s paper to go to in order to establish that they didn’t.

“They realised the material related to bomb making and that they were out of their depth.”

If that is what they realized, then that only testifies to their failure to assess the documents. Please confer with pages 12-15 in Dr. Thornton’s paper for a detailed discussion of the contents of the Al Qaida manual, and its common usage on university courses.

If you want to check Dr. Thornton’s assessment, you can always nip down to Waterstones to buy a copy of the manual:

http://www.waterstones.com/waterstonesweb/products/jerry+m-+post/military+studies+in+the+jihad+against+the+tyrants/3382449/

Or log on to Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Studies-Jihad-Against-Tyrants/dp/1907521240/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1305269402&sr=8-1

Of course, in Sabir’s case, he could just have got the document out from the UoN library. So could Yezza, as he held a valid library card. They could have found the book under class mark HV6431.

“So they called in the professionals. As is entirely appropriate and sensible.”

No – it was in contravention of university and government guidelines. You know where to go in Dr. Thornton’s rich and detailed paper in order to ascertain this.

“You have no case as long as you continue to make this dishonest claim. The problem is not that some young Muslims in Britain and elsewhere have been made suspects. Is it that a large-ish number of British people have been murdered. Muslims as well as non-Muslims. By Islamists. Deal with it and perhaps we can have a sensible conversation.”

Right, then. That puts me in my place.

Honestly – I have taken a lot of time out to address the argument you level againt me, but this I will not dignify with an answer, only with a question: do you think that terror arrests would have been made in Nottingham in 2008 if the documents had been found on a computer that belonged to a white person? If you read page 18 of Dr. Thornton’s paper, it is quite obvious that even the police personnel investigating the case at the time were not of this opinion. And that testifies to the way in which innocent young Muslim men are made suspects of in contemporary Britain, and in Europe more generally. I have a case. It is as simple, and as sad, as that.

“Academic freedom is not an abstract principle?”

Academic freedom is about the interface between abstract principles – in this case, the freedom to carry out research and to present the result of that research in the public domain without fear of disciplinary action, dismissal, or infringements upon our civil liberties – and the actual, concrete situations in which scholars, intellectuals and public citizens carry out research. That is what is meant by my remark, which you then choose to misrepresent. I was rejecting a purely abstract debate, as it has little purchase on actually existing scholarship and the situations that we as scholars confront in the everyday conduct of our work.

“Terrorism creates a hostile learning environment. Just knowing that some people on campus may be intending to blow you up makes it hard to engage fully and freely with the academic community and hence restricts everyone else’s freedom of speech and thought. This is not rocket science.”

But – unless you have failed to pick up on this – there was no terrorism in the budding in Nottingham in 2008. There was merely an MA student researching the topic within the context of a Politics department specializing in the study of international terrorism, and an intellectually astute staff member that had been asked to comment on said student’s materials. Does that warrant arrest and detention, in your view?

And are you of the general opionion that terrorism should not be studied at institutions of higher learning and research? If so, you may well find that you are disarming yourself in the face of extremism, which is hardly advisable.

“This was made clear to me in 2008, when 500 of them came out in the largest demonstration the University of Nottingham had ever seen, to protest the wrongful arrests of Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, and to protect academic freedom.”

“Ha! So much for academia. It seems that the larger philosophical questions need to take a back seat to mob justice. To think people wasted all that time debating the death of Socrates when all they had to do is realise that the abstract principle is outweighed by the mob voicing their dissent.”

No – not mob justice. But: Members of a university community mobilizing on the basis of their perception of a wrong being committed by university management, civil liberties being infringed upon, and academic freedom being under attack. The notion that a demonstration is an expression of mob justice is a familiar trope in much conservative and reactionary thought, of course, but as any serious student of popular protest will tell you, such expressions of discontent are always animated by individual normative reflection and collective moral debate.

“There being no evidence that Sabir or Yezza were following the question. Just a claim that Sabir was preparing to.”

There being plenty of evidence that they were following the question, and no evidence that they were not. Their release as innocent men is testimony to that.

Are you really too knuckle-headed to see that? I’m starting to feel a bit concerned about you, you know.

“Individuals are more likely to become susceptible to obnoxious ideas if we let those ideas fester or glamorise them through censorship rather than exposing them to the light of critical analysis.”

So James Crick had a talk at the Science Museum canceled because he said some bad things about a sub-set of the human race. You think this was wrong? LC would have deleted those comments had they been made here. You think this is wrong?

Well, not knowing the case in detail, I would – as I take my leaves out of a rather different book than you – be careful in making very categorical remarks about this particular example, but here goes: Yes, it probably was wrong. It would probably be more effective to combat his views with rigorous public criticism that would discredit his ideas about racial superiority/inferiority. In this way, the exponent of such repugnant notions would have been made a public mockery of, and hence his ideas would not be given the extra attraction of being “illegal”, something one reads in the dark, underneath the duvet, torch in hand.

“The issue here is not whether Sabir was debating terrorism but whether everyone in the chain at the UoN had reason to suspect a terrorist act was being prepared. They were, in hindsight, wrong to think so. But they could not have known that at the time.”

They would have known had they not chosen to violate university and government guidelines.

“Whether or not two people are preparing a terrorist act is not an issue for free speech, or a political problem, but a police problem. They did the only thing open to them and called the police. What else should they have done?”

Conduct a risk assessment as per university and government guidelines, thus avoiding the infringement of civil liberties that took place, and the deeply harmful impact this had on the lives of two innocent people.

Anyone remotely endowed with human empathy and a capacity for basal moral reflection would realize this.

Have a good day!

“Which is, of course, exactly what they did. The person who knew what they were talking about was a member the police.”

That’s not what the police said. Police can judge whether a document is potentially useful to terrorist but they cannot judge whether there is an alternative academic reason for its possession, they rely on academics for that. But…

“How are Academics to judge? How precisely does a background in Walter Benjamin or whatever prepare you for judging the validity of someone’s explanations for why they have bomb-making related materials on their computer?”

I think you have common ground with Dr Thornton here as the academic that the police initially approached for advice was Prof McGuirk, a Professor of Romance Literatures and Literary Theory, who was patently unsuited to give it. They should have perhaps contacted the course tutor, or maybe an expert on terrorism should there happen to be one around. Dr Thornton for example.

And there were no ‘bomb-making related materials’. You are clearly persisting in the willful misinformation that UoN has been engaged in from the start of the case.

“Sure. Preparing for a PhD. He says the information was for his PhD proposal. So not work he was working on but stuff he said he was going to work on.”

Hair splitting.

“Although, as it turned out, he did not do that topic for his PhD and is now working on other topics. So not work related.”

Goodness! You don’t think something might have happened to put him off do you? And, as it happens, his current research does include a special focus on counter-terrorism but at a different Uni after having been hounded out of UoN.

“Sorry but no one *knows* that. They certainly did not know that at the time.”

That’s because they didn’t check, they just stampeded forward with pre-determined conclusions about what brown skinned men must be doing with documents that happen to mention terrorism (and to re-iterate, NOT bomb-making as you falsely claim).

As one of the police officers was quoted as saying -

“This would not be happening if the student had been blonde, Swedish and at Oxford University”.

Is there an established threat from blond Swedish Oxonians?

There are issues of “academic freedom” specific to this case but also wider issues of whether there are or should be boundaries to the tolerated extent of “academic freedom”.

That was my reason for posting @36 the links to news reports from 1999 relating to academics in British universities who served as agents for the Stasi – which, after the collapse of the East German state in 1990, was discovered to have maintained personal files on some 5 million citizens, about a third of the East German population. Sifting through those files – and the Mitrokhin archive – yielded information about Stasi and Soviet agents in Britain.

The broader question of principle is whether universities should be completely disinterested about whether the principle of academic freedom extends to the toleration of staff – or students – espousing ideologies which advocate terrorism or subversion and which would certainly severly constrain academic freedom were they to gain ascendancy. Would it be acceptable, for instance, if an academic were to advocate National Socialism, with all that entailed? How about academics advocating installing Sharia law in Britain for muslim communities, the rights of paedophiles, unconstrained polygamy for all etc?

Depends on who you ask. Julian Assange would probably argue yes…

46. Andy – “That’s not what the police said. Police can judge whether a document is potentially useful to terrorist but they cannot judge whether there is an alternative academic reason for its possession, they rely on academics for that.”

No doubt the University could have told them if there was. Although there does not appear to be one in this case. But it does not matter. When it comes to terrorism, the University has an *obligation* to consider safety first.

“And there were no ‘bomb-making related materials’. You are clearly persisting in the willful misinformation that UoN has been engaged in from the start of the case.”

Sorry but an al-Qaeda document on how to make bombs is not bomb-making related material?

“Hair splitting.”

No it isn’t. Anyone can say they are *going*to* work on something. That is very different from *actually* working on something.

“Goodness! You don’t think something might have happened to put him off do you? And, as it happens, his current research does include a special focus on counter-terrorism but at a different Uni after having been hounded out of UoN.”

I doubt he has been hounded out. And counter-terrorism is related but does not have any direct need for al-Qaeda produced documents. I expect that the UoN would have been happy to have him – many academics there are, I assume, very unhappy about this, especially in Political Science which is hardly anti-Islamist in its orientation. There is probably a genuine academic reason why he would go to a much less prestigious and academically rigorous university.

“That’s because they didn’t check, they just stampeded forward with pre-determined conclusions about what brown skinned men must be doing with documents that happen to mention terrorism (and to re-iterate, NOT bomb-making as you falsely claim).”

Why would they check? It is not their job to check beyond the first basic risk assessment. That is what the police are for.

45. Alf Nilsen – “Academic freedom is about the interface between abstract principles – in this case, the freedom to carry out research and to present the result of that research in the public domain without fear of disciplinary action, dismissal, or infringements upon our civil liberties – and the actual, concrete situations in which scholars, intellectuals and public citizens carry out research.”

I see. So you’re the one talking abstract principles here. Fine.

“But – unless you have failed to pick up on this – there was no terrorism in the budding in Nottingham in 2008. There was merely an MA student researching the topic within the context of a Politics department specializing in the study of international terrorism, and an intellectually astute staff member that had been asked to comment on said student’s materials. Does that warrant arrest and detention, in your view?”

No it does not. But that is with the benefit of hindsight. No one could know that at the time. There was terrorism in the UK – and Nottingham does not need to have active racists on the campus to have an active policy of discouraging racism on campus to make sure there is a non-hostile learning environment. The threat of same is enough. So too with terrorism, no? Again you are leaving out all those “he says”.

“And are you of the general opionion that terrorism should not be studied at institutions of higher learning and research? If so, you may well find that you are disarming yourself in the face of extremism, which is hardly advisable.”

We have already disarmed ourselves in the face of terrorism, and if we approached this from merely an anti-terrorist perspective, then studying terrorism at University-level would be the last thing we would do because of the reflexive anti-American and hence pro-Islamist approach of most PolSci Departments. However research was not what was going on here. A student was preparing, he says, for future research. Someone else with no connection to said research at all was found with these documents on his computer.

“No – not mob justice. But: Members of a university community mobilizing on the basis of their perception of a wrong being committed by university management, civil liberties being infringed upon, and academic freedom being under attack.”

So …. it is not mob justice when a small number of people you support do it?

“The notion that a demonstration is an expression of mob justice is a familiar trope in much conservative and reactionary thought, of course, but as any serious student of popular protest will tell you, such expressions of discontent are always animated by individual normative reflection and collective moral debate.”

And indeed any other lynch mob is also animated by individual normative reflection and collective moral debate. In both cases they are examples of people who cannot win a normal political debate peacefully and so turn to the violent alternative.

“There being plenty of evidence that they were following the question, and no evidence that they were not. Their release as innocent men is testimony to that.”

There remains only Sabir’s word.

“Well, not knowing the case in detail, I would – as I take my leaves out of a rather different book than you – be careful in making very categorical remarks about this particular example, but here goes: Yes, it probably was wrong. It would probably be more effective to combat his views with rigorous public criticism that would discredit his ideas about racial superiority/inferiority.”

And yet this is not the policy that LC – or any British University – operates. Care to protest against that?

“They would have known had they not chosen to violate university and government guidelines.”

I have yet to see any evidence they did so. You claiming it is not proof.

“Conduct a risk assessment as per university and government guidelines, thus avoiding the infringement of civil liberties that took place, and the deeply harmful impact this had on the lives of two innocent people.”

They did conduct a risk assessment. They correctly identified the documents as relating to terrorism. On someone’s computer who had no official reason for having them. And then they handed it over to the professionals. There was no infringement of civil liberties and no obvious impact on anyone’s life.

44. Alf Nilsen – “Well, unless the teacher is using her or his position to advance violent racist views that endanger the life and safety of people of colour, but is using the material for valuable research into a contentious political phenomenon – violent racism, in your example – which may generate knowledge that can aid in addressing the manifold challenges that this phenomenon poses to society in general and people of colour – i.e. the targets of violent racism – then I would argue that the university has good grounds for telling the student group that their complaints are “baseless” (a favourite term at UoN, btw).”

Then your views have nothing to do with the reality of British academic life whatsoever. Frank Ellis was sacked even though there was no evidence his views in any way impacted a single student. Members of the BNP are routinely removed from teaching posts and other civil service positions like the police without the slightest evidence of their behaviour being influenced. This is also routinely defended on places like LC and by people like Sunny.

Either you are not following what has happened in British academia over the past 40 years or you have some special reason for exempting Islamists. Which?

“Actually universities are not restricted in what they can read. A look at my bookshelf, which contains a wide range of materials published by organizations that have been outlawed by the respective states that they operate in, will testify to that.”

The fact that some other state bans something does not mean that UoN will ban it as well. But my statement stands. Universities do, indeed, restrict what people can read. What they can hear. What they can say. Universities are probably the most restrictive workplaces in Britain – not merely informally as is usually the case (try defending George W. Bush in a British Common Room) but with actual regulations.

“And if universities were highly restricted in what they can read, then there would be good reasons to fight this tooth and nail”

Although you are not doing so. Defend Frank Ellis then.

“The police should decide what is and what isn’t subversive? The same police that, just to name some recent, is responsible for the death of Ian Tomlinson, and that is only too eager to engage in policing democratic protests in a manner which the London High Court has ruled was illegal?”

Yes them. And of course you are misstating this case as well. An individual policeman was found to have behaved improperly. Not all policemen. It is the job of the police to decide if there is a case worthy of going to Court. How else could the law operate?

“And have you ever given some thought to the implications of the (important) truism that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter?”

I was kind enough to forgive you for saying that because it is not merely untrue, it normalises terrorism.

“They didn’t. And you know which pages in Thornton’s paper to go to in order to establish that they didn’t.”

Yes they did.

“No – it was in contravention of university and government guidelines. You know where to go in Dr. Thornton’s rich and detailed paper in order to ascertain this.”

No I don’t. Because Thornton’s views have not been established as worth anything as yet. It is his opinion. Would they have called the police if it was a copy of the Racing Form? Obviously not. Thus a risk assessment took place.

43. Alf Nilsen – “If this is your honest opinion of Dr. Thornton’s carefully crafted and densely referenced article, then surely you will support the establishment of an independent inquiry to look into his claims about the conduct of the UoN in this matter?”

No. We have law courts for that. Let them sort it out at no cost to the rest of us.

“The UoN has made the claim that Dr. Thornton’s article is defamatory. Surely, anyone who makes a claim such as this should submit evidence to substantiate their claim. Dr. Thornton has done so, so why not the University?”

We don’t know what Thornton has done and no, it is not for the University. It would be utterly outrageous if someone alleged someone else was a kiddie fiddler and anyone suggested the onus was on them to prove they are innocent. I also notice your double standard here – Sabir and Yezza have no obligation to prove their innocence, but at the same time you think the UoN and its Staff do.

“Contrary to the misleading claims of the UoN, there was no risk assessment, and hence university and government guidelines were violated.”

And yet they called the police. Self-evidently a risk assessment took place.

“It is their job and it is within their competence – see comments above.”

No it is not.

“The problem is precisely that they went to the police without proper risk assessment, and evidently without taking any notice of the impeccable track records of the person who had saved the document on the desktop of his computer.”

Sorry but what impeccable track record? You mean someone who was over staying their visa illegally at the time? That impeccable record? And I notice you are now switching to the correct phrase “proper risk assessment”. Progress.

“The alternative response would have been a thorough risk assessment as stipulated in government guidelines, which in all likelihood would have defused the entire situation, and prevented the attack on academic freedom and civil liberties that took place at the UoN in May 2008.”

A thorough risk assessment? Which may have tipped off any potential bombers who would have been able to destroy evidence and taken time for them to act on their plans. What would the papers say if UoN was still investigating when one of its students blew themselves up? What would you say? Well we know as people have been saying it about the FBI since 9-11.

“This is a thinly veiled attempt at character assassination. Please recall that the legal fight that ensued after the Home Office tried to deport Yezza – in what an MP at the time correctly described as an attempt to deflect attention from an embarrassing mistakes – resulted in victory for Yezza, as the Home Office confirmed his right to live and work in the UK.”

It is nothing of the sort. It is a statement of fact. If someone was wrongfully arrested he would be entitled to compensation. A massive political campaign was started to save Yezza. So he was not deported. That does not mean he was not over-staying his visa.

“No – by my standards, people are innocent until proven guilty.”

Unless they are Staff members at the UoN.

“And suspicions are carefully investigated before acted on.”

By the police. Not by the University.

“Sabir was. There are no two ways about it. It was the topic of his MA, and a PhD proposal he was working on. You seem to insist in sowing doubts about Sabir’s claims, and in the process you disregard that he was release without charge for the simple reason that he was and is innocent of any wrongdoing. The implications of your statements amount to slander, and that is not very impressive.”

What was the topic of his MA again? And a proposal he says he was working on but did not actually end up doing. I insist on the truth and the facts. I do not disregard it. He was released for a lack of evidence of wrong doing. Note the small but subtle difference. There is no such implication in what I said.

“And yes – if someone is going to research child pornography, it is relevant to have access to child porn. How you access it, and the terms of access are open to debate and have to be established according to rigorous ethical standards, but they should have access.”

Or alternatively they should not research child porn. Which of these conditions did Sabir meet? How he accessed this was not agreed nor does he seem to have followed any rigorous ethical standards. He then shared this material with another party who had no official reason whatsoever to be viewing it. They were both acting off their own bat and outside whatever guidelines UoN has.

“This is a CV above the average, and it was very well known to the UoN and its management. I wonder if you have any reasonable grounds to sow doubt about them? And I wonder why the UoN decided to pay no attention to these credentials in May 2008.”

President of the Islamic Society? Like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was then? I do not see this as an outstanding CV. Self-important student politicians are the curse of British campuses.

“Have you ever been arrested and detained for six days despite the fact that you have done nothing wrong?”

No. But I am sure it would be an enlightening experience I would be sharing with the grandchildren for decades to come. Prison may be traumatic for some, but I doubt many people are traumatised by British prisons.

“As an academic, I can say, with hand on heart, that any university community should cherish a person like Yezza and the many ways in which such engaged and committed young people enrich campus life.”

Well that’s an opinion I suppose.

48. Bob B – “The broader question of principle is whether universities should be completely disinterested about whether the principle of academic freedom extends to the toleration of staff – or students – espousing ideologies which advocate terrorism or subversion and which would certainly severly constrain academic freedom were they to gain ascendancy.”

Universities sold that pass many many years ago. Take one of the most respected sociologists in Britain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zygmunt_Bauman

Zygmunt Bauman was born to non-practising Polish-Jewish parents in Pozna?, Poland, in 1925. When Poland was invaded by the Nazis in 1939 his family escaped eastwards into the Soviet Union. Bauman went on to serve in the Soviet-controlled Polish First Army, working as a political education instructor and taking part in the battles of Kolberg (now Ko?obrzeg) and Berlin. In May 1945 he was awarded the Military Cross of Valour.

According to semi-official statements of a historian with the Polish Institute of National Remembrance made in the conservative magazine Ozon in May 2006, from 1945 to 1953 Bauman held a similar function in the Internal Security Corps (KBW), a military unit formed to combat Ukrainian nationalist insurgents and part of the remnants of the Polish Home Army.

Bauman, the magazine states, distinguished himself as the leader of a unit that captured a large number of underground combatants. Further, the author cites evidence that Bauman worked as an informer for the Military Intelligence from 1945 to 1948. However, the nature and extent of his collaboration remain unknown, as well as the exact circumstances under which it was terminated.[1]

….

So Bauman was a Political Officer in the Stalinist Army and then worked for the Soviets to suppress those Poles fighting for freedom. He has an odd response in that he admits pretty much everything but then calls it lies:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2007/apr/28/academicexperts.highereducation/print

“Look, I won’t dignify Musial with an answer,” says Bauman, his face contracting and his voice deepening, and answering anyway. “I don’t want to give weight or importance to something which is [composed of] half-truths and 100% lies. What is true in his article is not new, because everybody knew I was a communist” – from 1946 to 1967 – “and that I served also for several years in the ‘internal army’, so called.” The only new fact, he says, is that he did join the secret service, but only for three years, when he was 19, and for this “I bear full responsibility.”
…
“The fact that I for three years cooperated with intelligence – well, that’s the only thing I never said.” What did that involve, exactly? “Well, it’s counter-espionage. Every good citizen should participate in counter-espionage. That was one thing that I kept secret, because I signed an obligation that it would be kept secret … So that’s the only thing. All the other ‘news’, so called, is completely in error.”

Did counter-espionage mean informing on people who were fighting against the communist project? “That’s what would be expected from me, but I don’t remember doing [anything like that]. I had nothing to do – I was sitting in my office and writing – it was hardly a field in which you could collect interesting information.” Did you do anything at all that might have had adverse consequences? “I can’t answer that question,” he says, upset now. “I don’t believe there was any. At the same time, I was a part of a wider scene, and of course everything you do has consequences.” What else did Musial’s article get wrong? “Everything else. For example – just to give you an example – no. I really don’t want to speak about it, because you’ve pushed me into doing exactly what I didn’t want to do, assigning significance to something which is irrelevant.”

So we have someone prominent in British academia who openly admits to being part of the repressive apparatus of the Stalinist state. Not merely approving of the suppression of freedom, but someone who actually took part in such a suppression in one of Britain’s allies. Good to know he thinks what he did was neither significant or relevant. It seems British academics agree with him. Although it is interesting that he regards himself bound by the oath he signed with the Communist police.

@54: So Much

British unis have long traditions of tolerance towards declared and covert communists, Marxists, Stalinists and the like when the regular government practice in Communist – or Marxist socialist – states was to tightly constrain academic freedom to ensure compliance with the officially prescribed state ideology. After the Prague spring of 1968, there were many reports of academics in Czecho-Slovakia being reassigned to jobs as lavatory attendants and street cleaners. So much for academic freedom under the Marxist-Leninist brand of Socialism.

Fortunately, I can’t recall cases of infamous professed Nazis or holocaust deniers among academics at British unis. But we do have the challenging case of the late Prof Eysenck, a professor of psychology at London University, who came to Britain as a youth in the 1930s from Germany to escape Nazi persecution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Eysenck

His cardinal professional error c. the 1970s was to engage in the (continuing and unresolved) nature v nurture debate by noting empirical studies that showed the results of many IQ tests indicated that the ethnicity of tested subjects was a relevant factor.

This observation prompted increasingly wide and hostile demonstrations on the part of students protesting that any such observations were racist despite him pointing out that empirical studies showed that the average IQs reported for caucasians tended to be lower than the average IQs reported for the test results from Chinese subjects. The implication of the demonstrations was that Eysenck had no right to publicise such findings because of the social repercussions.

This is arguably one of the downstream consequences of that previous research:

“Though white children in general do better than most minorities at school, poor ones come bottom of the league (see chart). Even black Caribbean boys, the subject of any number of initiatives, do better at GCSEs”
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14700670

I’m chipping in here as somebody who has actually worked on internal investigations at a UK university. I worked on the computer forensics side but attended meetings with the police, university security (they are there at the first meeting after an incident has been identified; without their presence no decisions may be made) and senior management where other aspects were discussed.

All UK universities have a set of security policies based on templates created by organisations such as JISC. The policies cover data security, physical security of staff and students, building access, handling of cash, assessment of student admissions — the whole spectrum. Implementation at one university may differ from another, but that will be a result of differing internal structures (eg how centralised they are).

Many universities have monitoring systems that record internet access (IP address, date, time, destination) from the campus network. Systems are used passively unless active monitoring is requested following a security incident. At that point, every system that monitors internet and computer use gets examined. Plus CCTV, building access records, watch reports from security staff.

University system administrators collect lots of information but it is never, in my experience, used for fishing expeditions. That practice is forbidden by policy at most universities. It is just the data that sys admins collect in order to identify technical problems, to keep things running smoothly. Random attacks over the internet are considered as technical problems.

—

The UoN incident appears to begin with the discovery of unusual documents on a computer. The discovery was an accident, occurring when somebody from IT Services investigated a separate problem.

One of the documents was the Al Qaeda Handbook, a document that I downloaded from a US government site after the UoN incident. The document still resides on the hard disk of my work computer at a university not far from Nottingham. The other documents were academic papers.

A cursory examination of the Al Qaeda document informs the reader that it isn’t very good. Len Deighton’s fiction will tell you more about how to avoid physical surveillance. Elmore Leonard’s work will tell you how to blow up a car or use an alarm clock to time a bomb. Once you understand how to use an alarm clock, it takes little imagination to work out how to use a mobile phone.

Let me give you a list of things that I’d consider suspicious: data sheets for logic chips, floor plans of public buildings, photos of public buildings during construction, personal observations of security activity at a location, recipes for explosives that might actually work (ie not Al Qaeda Handbook).

—

UoN made a mess of this incident. They did not analyse the evidence at the start and work out the risk. There was no bomb plan (by plan, I mean bomb schematics and target information), just two copies of the Al Qaeda Handbook. It should all have been handled internally, on the basis of evidence provided so far.

UoN responded in the mistaken belief that a bomb existed. As a UoN graduate, I feel embarrassed that management were so stupid.

@Torquil – good point!

@57 Sarah AB

Dr Rod Thornton is absent from all UCU news. It is a complex story, so I’ll be patient for a bit. But like all UCU members I expect it to be covered shortly. The story (how to handle situations where students are accused of terrorist involvement) is a concern for all who work in FE and HE.

I have read the whistle blowing conditions at my own university. They mean no whistles at all. Thornton could not have raised his concerns at UoN internally because they would have been shutdown internally; there would have been no internal debate.

Thornton, rightly or wrongly, felt that it was necessary to whistle blow outside. We should separate the motivation for his whistle blow (belief in misjustice) from his right to blow a whistle. We should support his right to blow a whistle.

@So Much For Subtlety

“Sorry but an al-Qaeda document on how to make bombs is not bomb-making related material?”

It wasn’t an Al Qeada document and it wasn’t about making bombs.

“No it isn’t. Anyone can say they are *going*to* work on something. That is very different from *actually* working on something.”

A formal PhD proposal is a bit more than just ‘saying’ they are going to do something. A PhD which he actually started btw.

“I doubt he has been hounded out.”

Read Dr Thornton’s account. He includes a disturbing account of the way some of Sabir’s marks were downgraded. He was hounded out.

“And counter-terrorism is related but does not have any direct need for al-Qaeda produced documents.”

1) Hair splitting again

2) It’s not an Al Qaeda document. It was re-named ‘The Al Qaeda Training Manual’ by the US Justice Department.

@Charlieman

“UoN made a mess of this incident. They did not analyse the evidence at the start and work out the risk.”

That seems to be what Dr Thornton was arguing. If they just quietly accepted that and apologised to those affected there would be much less of a story. What’s sinister is the efforts UoN has since made to avoid admitting their mistake, regardless of the effects on others.

59. Andy – “It wasn’t an Al Qeada document and it wasn’t about making bombs.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Qaeda_Handbook

The Al Qaeda Handbook is an extensive manual for how to wage war, allegedly written by Osama bin Laden’s extremist group, Al Qaeda.[2] This handbook provides religious justifications and quotations from the Qur’an throughout. It was first seized by British authorities in a raid on an Al Qaeda cell in Manchester, England.[3] The handbook was published on the US Department of Justice’s[4] website.

It looks like an al-Qaeda document to me and it is hard to tell people how and why they should be blowing people up without, you know, telling them how and why they should do it.

“A formal PhD proposal is a bit more than just ‘saying’ they are going to do something. A PhD which he actually started btw.”

Sure, but did he submit it? He started *another* PhD. On a different, if related, topic. For which he would have had no need for these documents *at*all*. So we are back to the fact that we only have his word that this was for his PhD proposal. Which he never seems to have submitted.

“Read Dr Thornton’s account. He includes a disturbing account of the way some of Sabir’s marks were downgraded. He was hounded out.”

Then we can see where the libel comes in – changing student’s marks for non-academic reasons is a serious offense. And no, we have no evidence of this taking place at all. We just have Dr Thornton’s views on the subject. Which have yet to be supported with evidence in a Court of Law.

“1) Hair splitting again”

No it isn’t. It is an important distinction.

“2) It’s not an Al Qaeda document. It was re-named ‘The Al Qaeda Training Manual’ by the US Justice Department.”

It looks a lot like an al-Qaeda document to me. If not, who wrote it?

The argument here has substantively changed.

It was about the principle of academic freedom and whether or not there are boundaries of prudence, loyalty and discretion to its exercise.

It is now about whether possession of the so-called al-Qaeda Training Manual – by reports accessible online, in the UoN library or by purchase from Amazon – constitutes sufficient evidence of malicious intent to commit terrorist offences for the university authorities to call in the Police and for them to arrest and then discharge two people, a student and an administrator, on suspicion charges.

The plot subsequently widened to include a UoN academic who rushed into print to say, amongst other things, how fragile was the evidence of terrorist intent and that the university authorities had acted hastily and foolishly, as the result of which he has been suspended. I’m not making this up . .

For another and entirely detached source, try this on the BBC website, which includes quotes from the university authorities:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-nottinghamshire-13380860

With due regard for the contribution of Noam Chomsky to theories about linguistics, his oracular calls on unrelated issues have not attracted universal admiration so his involvement here is most likely to be regared as act of monumental irrelevance.

When one is research a topic, one is obliged to go through a large amount of material to obtain an accurate picture of what one is studying. Some of it can be quite controversial. When I was working on my PhD, I read through six years of Oswald Mosley’s Action. I can assure readers here that in no way did this make me wish to strut through East London shouting ‘Perish Judah’. On another occasion I was obliged to study Hitler’s Mein Kampf; I have not since then nurtured the slightest desire to don jackboots and invade Poland. And nobody in the colleges concerned had any fear that I might be likely to do either.

The same principle applies here. If somebody is investigating a subject, touchy or not as the case may be, then he or she has to read the necessary material. And as a US government body had put an al Qaeda document on-line, one can assume that this was done with the intention that students of international affairs would be able to peruse the document in order to acquaint themselves with what this organisation is saying, rather than to help recruit and train the next generation of al Qaeda cadres.

If the college authorities felt something was not quite right and had some suspicions about the motives of a student in respect of his viewing an offending document, then I would expect them to talk informally to the student and his supervisor to obtain all the facts about the former’s reading of it, and not to get into a right paddy and call in the police with all which resulted from that, and then attempt to cover their backs by attacking the student’s supervisor.

I worked for some years in a London college where there is much work done by both students and academic staff on the question of terrorism and related topics. This clearly involved perusing documents such as those in this case. As far as I know in the years I worked there, nobody was grassed up to Old Bill by the college authorities for peeking at a controversial paper. Nottingham University has dug itself into a big hole; it’s time for it to stop digging.

Sorry, bad editing; it should read: ‘When one is researching a topic…’

“Nottingham University has dug itself into a big hole; it’s time for it to stop digging.”

What I think may have motivated (? stampeded) UoN authorities is this press report from 2008:

ALMOST a third of British Muslim students believe killing in the name of Islam can be justified, according to a poll. The study also found that two in five Muslims at university support the incorporation of Islamic sharia codes into British law.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article4407115.ece

Early in the thread, I raised so far unresolved questions about what should universities take as indications of commitment to jihadism among some students and what action should they take if they encounter such indications?

Btw as I recall for at least a decade or so after WW2, publication of Mein Kampf was effectively banned in Britain, as were showings of Leni Riefenstahl movies such as: Triumph of the Will:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcFuHGHfYwE

Presumably, this was for fear the book or the movies might revive or promote the dissemination of Neo-Nazi sentiments. The (sad) fact is that there is still a regular market in Nazi memorabilia, there are small Neo-Nazi movements in mainland Europe and in America, and here are holocaust deniers, which is why we had a trial in 1998 such as: David Irving v Penguin Books and Deborah Lipstadt:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_v_Penguin_Books_and_Lipstadt

It’s difficult to unacceptable to argue that there should be no limits to academic freedom whatsoever. Reading Mein Kampf or the like is one thing but promoting Nazi ideology and/or antisemitism in a university is quite another.

My point still holds. If the college felt that somebody making access to an al Qaeda document (even if by way of the US government) was perhaps dodgy, it should have made an internal investigation, by immediately convening an interview with the student concerned and his supervisor. Then it would have been established that the student concerned was involved in legitimate research and not trying to build an al Qaeda society on campus. I am certain that if the college authorities had taken this course, all would have been sorted out, and none of what has happened would have occurred.

Instead the college authorities panicked, and without a further thought went to the police, and the student concerned had his collar felt. Then, faced with the stupidity of its actions, the college authorities proceeded to make things worse by disciplining the academic concerned when he took them to task. Nottingham University has made itself look very stupid, and needs to take stock of its actions before it digs itself in even deeper.

I expect hysterical responses to possibly dubious actions on the part of Muslim students from the likes of Melanie Phillips, the Daily Star and the English Defence League. I do not expect it from a supposedly high-quality education establishment.

“My point still holds”

I’m not disputing that.

What I’m saying is that leaves unresolved many critical issues – such as exactly what are university authorities to regard as troubling evidence of jihadism on the part of students and what to do about it if they find evidence of it?

Also, are there reasonable boundaries which most folk would want to place on academic freedom, such as freedom to promote Neo-Nazi ideology or teaching holocaust denial?

62. Dr Paul – “When one is research a topic, one is obliged to go through a large amount of material to obtain an accurate picture of what one is studying.”

Although, as has been shown here, Sabir was not researching anything. He was *preparing* to research something.

“And nobody in the colleges concerned had any fear that I might be likely to do either.”

Nor should they. Although if they found a lecturer in, say, the Physics Department doing the same they might be concerned.

“If the college authorities felt something was not quite right and had some suspicions about the motives of a student in respect of his viewing an offending document, then I would expect them to talk informally to the student and his supervisor to obtain all the facts about the former’s reading of it, and not to get into a right paddy and call in the police with all which resulted from that, and then attempt to cover their backs by attacking the student’s supervisor.”

This is naive in the extreme. If there was a terrorist plot here, how dumb would it be to tip off the suspects that they had been rumbled? This is precisely what the University cannot do. It might panic someone into an early attack. Or at least destruction of evidence. In many circumstances you may be right, but in this one, the risks are too high. They cannot do that. And Yezza was not Sabir’s supervisor. Remember the material was not found on Sabir’s computer but on Yezza’s. A man with no formal reason to have such material at all. Not his supervisor. Not a member of the same Department. A language instructor.

65. Dr Paul – “If the college felt that somebody making access to an al Qaeda document (even if by way of the US government) was perhaps dodgy, it should have made an internal investigation, by immediately convening an interview with the student concerned and his supervisor. Then it would have been established that the student concerned was involved in legitimate research and not trying to build an al Qaeda society on campus. I am certain that if the college authorities had taken this course, all would have been sorted out, and none of what has happened would have occurred.”

How would it have been established? Sabir had no good academic reason to be in possession of such material at the time. You mean they should have taken his word? What if he had been a terrorist – and he proceeded to immediately delete all incriminating evidence? You don’t think that would have been a little bit of an own goal for the University? You do realise that it is probably an offense in British law not to inform the police promptly and to allow the suspect time to cover his tracks – if any and of course in this case there was not?

“Instead the college authorities panicked, and without a further thought went to the police, and the student concerned had his collar felt. Then, faced with the stupidity of its actions, the college authorities proceeded to make things worse by disciplining the academic concerned when he took them to task. Nottingham University has made itself look very stupid, and needs to take stock of its actions before it digs itself in even deeper.”

The authorities, this once, did not panic. They looked at the material. They saw it was on the computer of a man with no legitimate reason to have it – none whatsoever. They may even have considered that this man was a past President of the Islamic Society although they would probably never admit it. They saw that it was possibly related to the commission of terrorism and they did the only thing open to them – they called the police. An academic has made a series of claims which someone else seems to think are defamatory. Again the University has had no choice but to take them down. Every single decision they have made has been – and I have to say this surprises me – proper. Not only proper but essentially the only choice they could have made at the time.

“They looked at the material. They saw it was on the computer of a man with no legitimate reason to have it – none whatsoever. ”

Perhaps he was just curious to discover more about al-Qaeda intentions.

As previously mentioned, some years back I developed a curiosity about the construction of atom bombs and the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan. It is a sad day if curiosity is to be regarded as necessarily sinister.