(no subject)

[altariel]

fjm alerted me to this, and then katlinel sent me a link with further information, and I am just too cross not to post about this story.

"Lecturers and university staff across Britain are to be asked to spy on "Asian-looking" and Muslim students they suspect of involvement in Islamic extremism and supporting terrorist violence, the Guardian has learned. They will be told to inform on students to special branch because the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists.

The Department for Education has drawn up a series of proposals which are to be sent to universities and other centres of higher education before the end of the year. The 18-page document acknowledges that universities will be anxious about passing information to special branch, for fear it amounts to "collaborating with the 'secret police'". It says there will be "concerns about police targeting certain sections of the student population (eg Muslims)".

The proposals are likely to cause anxiety among academics, and provoke anger from British Muslim groups at a time when ministers are at the focus of rows over issues such as the wearing of the veil and forcing Islamic schools to accept pupils from other faiths."

Anxiety? That doesn't cover the half of it. You know, in a DS9 story I wrote a hundred years ago, I had Garak spend a term in a university, spying on the students. He had a merry old time of it. It seemed to be ludicrous, almost a parody of totalitarianism. Did someone at the DfES actually think this was a smart idea?

Comments

[fjm.livejournal.com]

They've been doing it in the US for a while now. The Universities have gone along with it. Only librarians seem to be holding out (still refusing to report on borrowing).

For me, it's a resignation issue. If they push, I'll go.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

And private universities must make the situation that whole bit more complicated.

As for reporting on borrowing: it's such a dim view of cause and effect. *irony on* Because, of course, I only read books I agree with.

[cdybedahl.livejournal.com]

the government believes campuses have become "fertile recruiting grounds" for extremists.

"And if it isn't now, we'll make damn sure to cause it to be!"

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Exactly.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

"You provide pictures, we'll provide war"

Remember, the US & UK governments expect their citizens to surrender civil liberties because they've become excess baggage in the fight against Eastasia terrorists, including those who contumaciously failed to be grateful when their country was blown up and hundreds of thousands of their people killed. This state of affairs will continue, and the governments expect their actions to go unquestioned, as long as there are any terrorists anywhere.

Rather like WC Fields bringing his own snake in his golf bag.

[muninnhuginn]

I did hope that I was dreaming this when I heard it n the radio this morning, but the alarm clock had already gone off so I was awake.

Paint me appalled (it won't show tho': it seems to be my default shade these days).

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It is the kind of thing you read and then check the date in case it's April.

[wiseheart.livejournal.com]

And the West used to make snidely remarks about our totalitarism... The worlds is really getting crazy.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I think what happens here is that people think through the logic of a situation, but don't have the extra baggage that makes them go, "But, actually, we can't do that because it's bad and wrong." So someone somewhere in the bureaucracy has clearly thought, "What we need to do is to use the infrastructure of the university system to let us monitor radicalism in young people.." but then hasn't thought, "Only that's what authoritarian regimes do, so we won't do it."

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

There's also the factor that senior members of the Labour government (including Radovan Karadzic's old pal, John Reid) are ex-Stalinists who moved to respectable politics by ditching the ideology of Stalinism, but not the methodology.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Radovan Karadzic's old pal, John Reid

Can you point me to some reading on that?

[iainjcoleman.livejournal.com]

Grauniad:

In the international arena, Reid, during his drinking days, fell into bad company in the Balkans with the Bosnian Serb mass-murderer Radovan Karadzic, who tops The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal list of wanted men. Reid has admitted spending three days in 1993 at a luxury Geneva lakeside hotel as a guest of Karadzic. "He used to talk to Karadzic, he admired Karadzic. He mistook the Bosnian Serb project as the inheritor of the united Communist ideal," says Brendan Simms, a Cambridge academic and author of Unfinest Hour: Britain And The Destruction of Bosnia.

British Helsinki Human Rights Group:

Although Tony Blair was never a member of the British Communist Party (CPGB) or any of its Trotskyite rivals, it is striking how all of his most belligerent ministers were one-time Party-members (and that lack of enthusiasm for war is expressed - if only by silence - by non-ex-Communists). Blair’s appointee as chairman of the Labour Party, Dr. John Reid was a Communist and is now the public face of New Labour’s New European-style aggressiveness. (In the early 1990s, Dr. Reid was one of the most vocal advocates of the Bosnian Serb cause and a drinking partner of the indicted war criminal, Dr. Radovan Karadzic, before a volte-face - typical of his career - when he became one of the most vocal New Labour advocates of bombing Yugoslavia in 1999.)

There's plenty more along the same lines - it's one of the standard things that gets mentioned in pretty much any John Reid bio. Except the ones published by the Labour party, I imagine.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Iain - interesting reading.

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

When they are tempted to do something like this, they should be forced to write out 100 times: "The end never justifies the means (especially when the means will in fact be counterproductive)."

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wish I had them in my classes.

[the-wild-iris.livejournal.com]

I wonder what would qualify as reportable under the guidelines. Presumably any citizen would - and should - be expected to report someone they seriously suspected of being involved in terrorist activity, but it sounds as though the university staff would also be expected to report on 'pre-terrorist' ideologies. In place, perhaps, of challenging those ideologies through open debate?

It could come down to a serious issue of trust and esteem between students and teachers - to the teachers, you're worth reporting, but to someone else, you're worth recruiting.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

In place, perhaps, of challenging those ideologies through open debate?

Yes, exactly! How much easier just to shop people to some arbitrary authority than to get them explain, expand, re-form their ideas? In fact, why don't we just not bother with the whole university enterprise?

And what you say about trust is so important, because it seems to me that feeling safe to try out ideas is one of the most important aspects of a student-teacher dynamic.

[kerravonsen]

!!!!

You should all go on strike, march in the streets, protest.
Hasn't anybody learned anything?

Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it.

That is... words fail me. (I shall borrow Data's thesaurus) Apalling, disgusting, horrendous, ghastly, terrible, nefarious, ignominious, disgraceful, shameful, contemptible, heinous and foul.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It's mad.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

You know, this instruction would be so much easier if potential terrorists would only have the decency to go about shouting "Death to the infidel" and carrying large smoking articles clearly labelled BOMB. As opposed to playing cricket.

Does it not strike TPTB that the one thing dangerous extremists don't do is wave banners saying "I Support Terrorist Violence"? Or that persons who do the likes of that are alomst certainly no threat to anyone and may indeed simply be letting off steam in a relatively harmless way?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I know we did our best in the 70s and 80s, what with having red hair and 'Mc' in our surname.

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

Oh FFS, so piss of the very tiny amount of actual dodgy people, while making the university environment stressful and oppressive for ordinary students. That's just great. So much for uni being a place for self-exploration and expression. Now thinking of the students in my own year who produced documentaries related to Islam or racial/religious identity, and wondering whether they'd now be looking over their shoulder as they worked.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I sort of have this picture in my mind of some bureau-gnome at the DfES thinking, "Well, radicals tend to be young people... and lots of young people go to universities... and universities have an in-built structure for monitoring and appraising the young peoople that go there... so... Ooh! Bingo! And we can do it on the cheap!"

[gair.livejournal.com]

I was going to go 'Pfft, for heaven's sake no academic in Britain will ever do this, it is just ridiculous'.

And then I remembered that I used to be at Leeds, home of Frank Ellis, who is probably doing it already.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Might differ between departments. (I notice there's a "Mr Gair" in that article, btw.)

[eldritchhobbit.livejournal.com]

Ugh. *headdesk*

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Ugh indeed.

[martal0712.livejournal.com]

Ugh indeed. :-S This is beyond ridiculous.

I am all against terrorism, of course. And I have no problem taking reasonalb esteps to catch people actually planning violent acts. But when will people realize that "radical" thought is not the same thing? Sometimes (heck, *most* times) I wonder why we're fighting so damned hard if it just means we'll end up with policies and politics that make you feel like you're living in Iran.

And here I thought America was bad. I'm sure this kind of thing is going on over here. I am not doing anything I am ashamed of and if the government wants to interpret it as "dangerous" that's their affair -- but I thought the rest of the world was saner.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

It's bats. I hope people getting this 18-page document use it for kindling.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Scrap paper is always in short supply. Origami birds also while away the hours nicely.

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

Aaagh!! I wonder whether ours will arrive in time for Guy Fakes night ...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Never thought I'd cheer on book-burning!

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

Oops that Fawkes!

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I do like that you have fire and water icons. And sky too - the Wash one! Do you have an earth one?

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

No I haven't. If you happen to see anything nice ...

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I'll keep an eye out.

STRONGER than the foundations of the earth!

[edge-of-ruin.livejournal.com]

I'm desparing already ...

[katlinel.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the people at the DfES who came up with this think universities are for? Apparently not for discussion of ideas. Gah.

There is veritably a Reek of Wrongness(OMT - DWJ) about this.

[altariel.livejournal.com]

I wonder what the people at the DfES who came up with this think universities are for?

Furthering Their Nefarious Purposes, it seems.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Well, that's a really good way of giving ordinary citizens with the wrong race or religion a real cause for anger and fear.

What's next: trains to nice little holiday camps with barbed wire and dogs?

[altariel.livejournal.com]

Someone somewhere will be working on why it might be a really good idea. Oh yes, Guantanamo.

[jomacmouse.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, and you don't even have to be a national of the country concerned to merit that little excursion, do you?

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Quite apart from the morality, I am puzzled by the logic - how do they think we would know? Do they seriously think lecturers and students socialise outside class? 18-year-olds are not noted for wanting to pass time with Old Farts, and I did not spend years working up to a decent salary in order to spend it in the manky hell-holes they hang out in! I wouldn't set foot in the Union for money; it reeks of stale beer and fag-ash. I daresay Muslim extremists, being teetotal, socialise somewhere else but I've no idea where; why would I? Provided the little sods turn up in class, it's all one to me what they do with the rest of the day.