Simon Perfect discusses extreme speakers and whether or not their speeches at British universities are being properly monitored. 28/01/2019

Interested in this? Share it on social media. Join our monthly e–newsletter to keep up to date with our latest research and events. And check out our Supporter Programme to find out how you can help our work.

Simon Perfect joins BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Programme to discuss extreme speakers, with the Henry Jackson Society, and whether or not their speeches at British universities are being properly monitored.

The episode is available here in full and listen from 16.28 for the discussion. 

Simon has also co–written a related blog, ‘Students are the future of democracy: don’t muzzle them’, with an excerpt featured below. 

In a recent report, the Henry Jackson Society lists 204 events at universities in the 2017–18 academic year it claims featured “speakers with a history of extreme or intolerant views, or representatives of extremist–linked organisations”.

This amounts, in its view, to an “industrial–scale failure by universities to apply their Prevent duties”, despite (as it acknowledges) the Office for Students reporting that 97% of universities are complying with their Prevent obligations.

What to make of this? Definitions are crucial in this debate. By the time you’ve read this piece I hope you will have a clearer idea of how the government understands extremism, although the official definition is still unclear. This only goes to show that the recently announced review of Prevent is timely and that the HJS’s so–called ‘extremism league table’ is nonsense.

Read the blog in full on Wonkhe website here.