Don’t worry: your university is not trying to kill you
Yesterday, I wrote: “Following Mutallab’s alleged actions, there will probably be a purported crackdown on ‘extremism’ within universities.”
Today, as predicted, the Daily Telegraph contains an editorial jumping on this bandwagon, pointing the finger at universities for failing to fight Islamism. Its headline is the completely reasonable: “Academic liberalism is a danger to life”.
The editorial states that “institutes of higher education in London have consistently provided sanctuary for Islamist students who parrot the hate-filled rhetoric of al-Qaeda and its allies.” The editorial also blasts “liberal British academics” for their “habit of diverting any discussion of terrorism away from Islamism towards the evils of Anglo-American foreign policy”.
“Again and again, speakers have been invited and rooms provided so that, in the name of free speech, vulnerable students can be indoctrinated,” the editorial continues. The Telegraph, however, is being misleading – as many of its education news stories are. Universities are not designed to fight extremism. They are there to teach and facilitate learning. They are not there to censor.
Students at universities are no more susceptible to extremism than any other young person. UCL did not teach Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab to allegedly strap explosives to his legs and kill 250 people. “Perhaps they picked up their expertise in a British university laboratory”, asks the editorial. Or perhaps they typed ‘how to build a bomb’ into Google. None of the 7/7 bombers had a BA in Bomb-making.
The only way universities can fight against extremism is through giving their students the critical faculties not to be indoctrinated. Banning speakers won’t help. Nor will banning courses that might improve a student’s bomb-making skills (which is surely the next step up from the Telegraph’s innuendo above). Academic liberalism, despite the Telegraph’s claims to the contrary, is not a danger to life.
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