Prevent is stopping free speech on campus and demonising Muslims

Many staff and students at universities across Britain will have welcomed Liberty’s condemnation of the chilling effect the government’s counter-terrorism strategy is having on free speech on campuses. Recently published figures from the Office for Students showed that more than 2,000 events across Britain’s 300 or so higher education institutions have been affected by Prevent.

While some events were allowed to take place with conditions attached, 53 events or speaker requests on campuses were rejected altogether by university authorities. The demonisation of Muslims through the Prevent strategy has led to progressive dissent more broadly being curtailed.

The Prevent duty, introduced by the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 places a legal obligation on universities and other public institutions to “have due regard for the need to prevent people being drawn into terrorism”. It is a McCarthyistic system, drawing university staff into the task of security surveillance. If discovered to be uncooperative, universities can be subject to direction by the secretary of state and, ultimately, face a mandatory court order backed by criminal sanctions for contempt of court. Quite apart from the fact that as tutors our role should be one of supporting rather than spying on students, the Prevent duty has resulted in the victimisation of Muslim students and the institutionalisation of anti-Muslim racism in British universities.

Since its inception, students and staff have warned about the potential for Prevent to have an impact on free speech on campus, in particular that of Muslim students and staff. The latest statistics regarding university events and speakers affected by the Prevent duty not only demonstrate that it must be scrapped, but that politicians and the media must listen to and amplify the voices of students rather than dismiss them as “snowflakes” when they speak.

There is no doubt that Prevent is primarily targeted at monitoring the speech and activities of Muslim students on campus. The explanatory notes to the 2015 act state that the principal terrorist threat is “from Al Qa’ida-associated groups and from other terrorist organisations in Syria and Iraq”. The strategy is based on the scientifically debunked and racist assumption that any Muslim has the potential to become radicalised and violent.

Research has shown that this strategy has resulted in the disproportionate and discriminatory victimisation of Muslim students. In a society in which anti-Muslim racism is pervasive and institutionalised, the Prevent duty adds purchase to the idea that Muslims are a threat, and gives power to those with authority over Muslim students to act on their prejudice. Remember the Muslim student accused of being a terrorist for reading a book about terrorism in Staffordshire University library? Or the Muslim schoolchild questioned because he said “eco-terrorist” in class? Prevent has meant that Muslims students have even been watched while they pray.

Prevent’s broader effect is to suppress a wide range of forms of valid political resistance. Universities have clamped down on campus activism. Events, ranging from a panel on Kurdish political struggles at Cambridge University to pro-Palestine events at the University of Exeter, University College London and the London School of Economics have been policed or cancelled. Curricula have suffered censorship – both self- and university-imposed as a culture of fear has taken hold.

Meanwhile, students working to ensure campuses are inclusive spaces free from racism, homophobia and transphobia have found themselves branded snowflakes, vocally attacked and threatened with the introduction of legislative measures. Far from so-called snowflake students being a threat to campus free speech, it is measures such as Prevent that are shutting down free thinking in Britain’s universities.

The dismissal of progressive students as snowflakes comes after the success of anti-racist and anti-colonial movements such as Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall and Why is My Curriculum White? The refusal of students to tolerate racism and the spread of far-right ideology on campus and their resistance to the systemic exclusion of non-white writers from their curricula has been met with a backlash from the right. Branding students as snowflakes is part of an ideological attack on progress, symptomatic of whiteness closing ranks, of a culture reluctant to cede ground to a more inclusive and progressive politics.

In the face of censorship, surveillance, suppression and a climate of fear backed by criminal sanction, it is more important than ever to think carefully about whether and how Muslim students can express themselves and develop modes of resistance. What is clear is that students are wise to what the real risks to free speech on campus are and what to do about them.