Just get on with it: Implementing the Prevent duty in higher education and the role of academic expertise

Abstract

The Prevent policy was introduced in 2003 as part of the UK counter-terrorism strategy (CONTEST) with the aim of preventing the radicalisation of people to terrorism. In 2015, it was given a statutory footing in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act and it became a legal duty for Higher Education Institutions among others. Since then, Higher Education Institutions have been working to ensure their compliance with the legal duty. This article reflects on the implementation of the Prevent duty in one university. It is informed by an engagement with the Prevent group in the university which was created to implement the Prevent duty. The article argues that academic expertise had little impact in shaping the implementation of the Prevent duty at the university because the epistemic stance of counter-terrorism side lines expertise and evidence so that it can maintain its coherence and integrity. Specifically, the impact of academic expertise was limited because critically oriented academic expertise complicates a straightforward implementation of the legal duty, a state-centric orientation in the Prevent group constrained the horizon of discussion, and a crisis of knowledge at the heart of counter-terrorism replaces expertise and evidence with ideology.

The Prevent strategy and the UK ‘war on terror’: embedding infrastructures of surveillance in Muslim communities

“…Since the vast majority of the iceberg is not easily visible it has to be made visible by strategies of surveillance and monitoring, to allow interventions in the process (HM Government, 2011a). This view of radicalisation and terrorism moves Prevent counter-terrorism into the precrime domain of pre-emption, which is built upon strategies of surveillance (Qurashi, 2017). In order to predict and pre-empt an action, there needs to be some level of intelligence to inform decision making.…”

“…In 2015, the Prevent strategy was placed on a legal footing in the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act, so that specified authorities such as Higher Education Institutions, need to have 'due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism' (HM Government, 2015, p 2). Since then, specified authorities have been creating and implementing policies and procedures that demonstrate compliance with this new Prevent Duty (see Qurashi, 2017). A partnership approach with Muslim communities has been at the heart of delivering these Prevent objectives.…”

Implementing ‘Prevent’ in countering violent extremism in the UK: A left-realist critique

“…Education is an essential vehicle for change, but education now also faces increasing securitisation. In the process, it stigmatises existing isolated individuals, especially in schools and in higher education settings (Abbas, 2018; Durodie, 2016; McGovern, 2017; Qurashi, 2017). Prisons are another area of critical research, as they are networking and learning opportunities, as well as spaces targeted by certain radicalisers.…”

Vigilant subjects

“…Knowledge now contributes to the state assemblage, as staff are made co-extensive with a grid of intelligibility that renders them, and the indeterminacy of the threat, governable. Prevent duty enshrines a state-centric orientation in which the horizon of discussion and local knowledge and expertise are constrained (Qurashi, 2017: 1). This regimenting of relations is less the diffusion of power to local actors than it is processes of redirecting relations in a manner consistent with official rationales.…”