Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Drawing upon 157 responses to Freedom of Information Requests sent to Higher Education Institutions across England, Scotland and Wales, this article explores how the Prevent Duty has been enacted within UK higher education. The article shows how the duty has seen considerable repositioning and restructuring across the sector, conflated counterterrorism with safeguarding and introduced further bureaucracy. The article also explores the low number of Channel referrals, the justifications provided for these and the several instances in which institutions refused to disclose this information. We argue that these disproportionate developments have brought harmful depoliticising effects while also enhancing the mechanisms of surveillance and governance. Furthermore, we argue that our findings demonstrate the value in Freedom of Information Requests as a means of approach and suggest a continued need for critical researchers to explore the specific functioning of the duty to complement the broader critiques that are levelled at the policy as a whole.

Keywords

counter-extremism counterterrorism extremism freedom of information higher education Prevent Duty Prevent safeguarding surveillance terrorism

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Acik

Deakin

Hindle

(2018) Safeguarding, surveillance and control school policy and practice responses to the Prevent Duty and the ‘War on Terror’ in the UK. In: Deakin

Taylor

Kupchik

(eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of School Discipline, Surveillance, and Social Control. Cham: Springer, pp.467–490.

Allen

(2016) Islamophobia. Abingdon: Routledge.

Aradau

van Munster

(2007) Governing terrorism through risk: Taking precautions, (un)knowing the future. European Journal of International Relations 13(1): 89–115.

Awan

(2012) ‘I am a Muslim not an extremist’: How the Prevent strategy has constructed a ‘suspect’ community. Politics & Policy 40(6): 1158–1185.

Barrett

(2018) Tackling radicalisation: The limitations of the anti-radicalisation Prevent Duty. European Human Rights Law Review. Available at: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/handle/10871/33960 (accessed 10 January 2020).

Bowcott

(2019) Lord Carlile removed from Prevent review after legal challenge. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/dec/19/lord-carlile-prevent-review-legal-challenge (accessed 7 April 2020).

Brown

(2009) COUNTERBLAST: Freedom of information as a research tool: Realising its potential. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice 48(1): 88–91.

Counter-Terrorism Review Project (2018) Home Office refuses FOI request on the Prevent oversight board. Available at: https://counterterrorismreview.com/2018/07/16/home-office-refuses-foi-request-on-the-prevent-oversight-board/ (accessed 27 July 2020).

Counter-Terrorism Security Act (CTSA) (2015) Counter-Terrorism Security Act 2015 c.6. London: The Stationery Office.

10.

Cram

Fenwick

(2018) Protecting Free Speech and Academic Freedom in universities. Modern Law Review 81(5): 825–873.

11.

Dresser

(2018) Counter-radicalisation through safeguarding: A political analysis of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act (2015). Journal for Deradicalization 16(2018): 125–164.

12.

Elshimi

(2017) De-Radicalisation in the UK Prevent Strategy: Security, Identity and Religion. Abingdon: Routledge.

13.

Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (2000) Freedom of Information Act 2000 c. 36. London: The Stationary Office.

14.

Greer

Bell

(2018) Counter-terrorist law in British universities: A review of the ‘Prevent’ debate. Public Law 2018(1): 84–104.

15.

Heath-Kelly

(2012) Reinventing prevention or exposing the gap? False positives in UK terrorism governance and the quest for pre-emption. Critical Studies on Terrorism 5(1): 69–87.

16.

Heath-Kelly

(2013) Counter-Terrorism and the Counterfactual: Producing the ‘Radicalisation’ discourse and the UK Prevent Strategy. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 15(3): 394–415.

17.

Heath-Kelly

(2017) The geography of pre-criminal space: Epidemiological imaginations of radicalisation risk in the UK Prevent strategy, 2007-2017. Critical Studies on Terrorism 10(2): 297–319.

18.

Heath-Kelly

Strausz

(2019) The banality of counterterrorism ‘after, after 9/11’? Perspectives on the Prevent Duty from the UK health care sector. Critical Studies on Terrorism 12(1): 89–109.

19.

HESA (2019) Higher education providers. Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/support/providers (accessed 2 November 2020)

20.

HESA (2020) Where do students study? Available at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/where-study (accessed 21 July 2020).

21.

HM Government (2015) Channel duty guidance: Protecting vulnerable people from being drawn into terrorism. Available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/425189/Channel_Duty_Guidance_April_2015.pdf (accessed 21 July 2020).

22.

HM Government (2019) Prevent guidance: For higher education institutions in England and Wales. Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-duty-guidance/prevent-duty-guidance-for-higher-education-institutions-in-england-and-wales (accessed 10 January 2020).

23.

Home Office (2019a) Factsheet: Prevent and Channel. Available at: https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/11/05/factsheet-prevent-and-channel/#:~:text=Channel%20is%20a%20voluntary%2C%20confidential,%2C%20health%20providers%2C%20and%20others (accessed 30 July 2020).

24.

Home Office (2019b) Government announces independent review of Prevent. Home Office Media. Available at: https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2019/01/22/government-announces-independent-review-of-prevent/ (accessed 8 April 2020).

25.

Jackson

(2018) Islamophobia in Britain. Cham: Springer.

26.

Jerome

Elwick

Kazim

(2019) The impact of the Prevent Duty on schools: A review of the evidence. British Educational Research Journal 45(4): 821–837.

27.

Kundnani

(2012) Radicalisation: The journey of a concept. Race & Class 54(2): 3–25.

28.

Lewis

(2018) Prevent as an intractable policy controversy: Implications and solutions. Journal for Deradicalization 15(Summer): 111–150.

29.

Lippert

Walby

Wilkinson

(2015) Spins, stalls, and shutdowns: Pitfalls of qualitative policing and security research. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum: Qualitative Social Research 17(1). Available at: https://www.qualitative-research.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/2411/3921

30.

Luscombe

Walby

(2017) Theorizing freedom of information: The live archive, obfuscation, and actor-network theory. Government Information Quarterly 34(4): 379–387.

31.

McClean

(2010) ‘Who pays the piper’? The political economy of freedom of information. Government Information Quarterly 27(4): 392–400.

32.

McGovern

(2016) The university, Prevent and cultures of compliance. Prometheus 34(1): 49–62.

33.

Michener

Worthy

(2018) The information-gathering matrix: A framework for conceptualizing the use of freedom of information laws. Administration & Society 50(4): 476–500.

34.

Milliken

(1999) The study of discourse in international relations: A critique of research and methods. European Journal of International Relations 5(2): 225–254.

35.

Moffat

Gerard

(2020) Securitising education: An exploration of teachers’ attitudes and experiences regarding the implementation of the Prevent Duty in sixth form college. Critical Studies on Terrorism 13(3): 197–217.

36.

Morrill

Buller

, et al. (1999) Toward an organizational perspective on identifying and managing formal gatekeepers. Qualitative Sociology 22(1): 51–72.

37.

Mountz

Bonds

Mansfield

, et al. (2015) For slow scholarship: A feminist politics of resistance through collective action in the neoliberal university. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 14(4): 1235–1259.

38.

NUS Connect (2017) Students not suspects: Join us to up the fight against Prevent. Available at: https://www.nusconnect.org.uk/articles/students-not-suspects-join-us-to-up-the-fight-against-prevent (accessed 23 March 2020).

39.

Office for Students (2019) Prevent monitoring accountability and data returns 2017-2018: Evaluation report. Available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/media/860e26e2-63e7-47eb-84e0-49100788009c/ofs2019_22.pdf (accessed 29 July 2020).

40.

Office for Students (2020) Counter-terrorism – The Prevent duty. Available at: https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/advice-and-guidance/student-wellbeing-and-protection/counter-terrorism-the-prevent-duty/ (accessed 24 June 2020).

41.

Qurashi

(2017) Just get on with it: Implementing the Prevent duty in higher education and the role of academic expertise. Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 12(3): 197–212.

42.

Qureshi

(2015) PREVENT: Creating ‘radicals’ to strengthen anti-Muslim narratives. Critical Studies on Terrorism 8(1): 181–191.

43.

Ramsay

(2017) Is Prevent a safe space? Education, Citizenship and Social Justice 12(2): 143–158.

44.

Revell

(2019) Teacher practice and the pre-crime space: Prevent, safeguarding and teacher engagement with extremism and radicalisation. Practice 1(1): 21–36.

45.

Rodríguez

Rossel

(2018) A field experiment on bureaucratic discretionary bias under FOI laws. Government Information Quarterly 35(3): 418–427.

46.

Savage

Hyde

(2014) Using freedom of information requests to facilitate research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 17(3): 303–317.

47.

Shackle

(2019) ‘The way universities are run is making us ill’: Inside the student mental health crisis. The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/27/anxiety-mental-breakdowns-depression-uk-students (accessed 26 January 2020).

48.

Spiller

Awan

Whiting

(2018) ‘What does terrorism look like?’: University lecturers’ interpretations of their Prevent duties and tackling extremism in UK universities. Critical Studies on Terrorism 11(1): 130–150.

49.

Stanley

Guru

Coppock

(2017) A risky time for Muslim families: Professionalised counter-radicalisation networks. Psychotherapeutic Approaches in Health, Welfare and the Community 31(4): 477–490.

50.

Stevens

(2011) Reasons to be fearful, one, two, three: The ‘preventing violent extremism’ agenda. British Journal of Politics and International Relations 13(2): 165–188.

51.

Taylor

Soni

(2017) Preventing radicalisation: A systematic review of literature considering the lived experience of the UK’s Prevent strategy in educational settings. Pastoral Care in Education 35(4): 241–252.

52.

Thomas

(2010) Failed and friendless: The UK’s ‘Preventing violent extremism’ programme. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 12(3): 442–458.

53.

Torres

(2020) Institutional resistance to transparency: The quest for public sector information in Mexico. Journal of Resistance Studies 5(2). Available at: https://mediarxiv.org/2bxsy/

54.

UCU (2015) The Prevent duty: A guidance for branches and members. Available at: https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/7370/The-prevent-duty-guidance-for-branches-Dec-15/pdf/ucu_preventdutyguidance_dec15.pdf (accessed 23 March 2020).

55.

Universities UK (2014) External speakers in higher education institutions. Available at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Pages/external-speakers-in-higher-education-institutions.aspx (accessed 7 April 2020).

56.

Worthy

(2012) A powerful weapon in the right hands? How members of parliament have used freedom of information in the UK. Parliamentary Affairs 67(4): 783–803.

57.

Younis

Jadhav

(2019a) Islamophobia in the National Health Service: An ethnography of institutional racism in PREVENT’s counter-radicalisation policy. Sociology of Health and Illness 42(3): 610–626.

58.

Younis

Jadhav

(2019b) Keeping our mouths shut: The fear and racialized self–censorship of British healthcare professionals in PREVENT training. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 43(3): 404–424.

59.

Zedner

(2018) Counterterrorism on campus. University of Toronto Law Journal 68(4): 545–587.

The Prevent Duty in UK higher education: Insights from freedom of information requests

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References