The college has a history of openness and its policy of constructive engagement is morally justified ? despite the risks
Two reports about the future of British universities have made small headlines. The implications were, in fact, bigger than the small headlines suggested. One report emanated from a working group of vice-chancellors, chaired by Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London. The group was set up to reflect on the case of the alleged "underpants bomber". Was Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab brainwashed by extremists while an engineering student at Grant's institution, or was he infected afterwards during his prolonged stay in the Yemen?
UCL's earlier assessment was that his education in terrorism happened after he left them. Critics of UCL's initial findings discern whitewash. Abdulmutallab could throw light on the matter but his American lawyers have advised him to keep mum until his trial in October. It will be a tense month in Gower Street.
The pre-released conclusions of Grant's committee were summed up in the Guardian's headline, "Report urges universities to debate with extremists". The vice-chancellors themselves put it more delicately: universities should "engage with rather than proscribe".
The other report, delivered the same day, came out under the chairmanship of Professor Edward Acton, vice-chancellors of the University of East Anglia. Acton summarised the "dire consequences" his committee foresaw if new visa regulations on overseas (ie non-EU) students were implemented. Following the abuse of student visas by some of the 9/11 terrorists, America has led the way in the kind of salutary obstruction the government intends. It has had a manifestly deleterious effect on the American university system. Whether or not it has made the homeland safer it is a matter of fierce debate.
Those of a suspicious disposition might think a prophylactic purge is taking place. Those of an outright paranoid disposition will join it all up with the withdrawal of teaching support for arts, humanities and ? oddly ? social science. Anything, that is, with ideology in it. As Stefan Collini has been arguing in a series of articles in the London Review of Books, there seems to be an undeclared policy to stop universities thinking.
UCL has found itself on the frontline of the debate on student extremism. There are good historical reasons why that should be so. The institution was originally set up in opposition to Oxbridge exclusion (via religious tests) of Jews, Catholics and nonconformists. Those, that is, with ideas uncomfortable to the establishment. UCL was "the godless place in Gower Street" not because it promulgated atheism but because it believed in openness. God tended to get in the way.
UCL has now embarked on an experiment to take its openness a step further into the constructive engagement Grant's committee advocates. The college authorities, permitted and encouraged an Islamic Awareness Week, 7?11 February, under the auspices of the Islamic Society of which Abdulmutallab was once president. Rather unwisely, perhaps, UCL's Islamlic Society advertised the programme on their website as: "An EXPLOSIVE series of events dedicated to understanding the essence of the Islamic faith."
There were, in fact, no bangs, merely a benign occupation of the campus, videos, lectures and much tweeting. It was all done in an invitational, unconfrontational way. As one walked through the cloisters of the main building, students ? some bearded, some veiled to the eyes ? offered, deferentially, to explain what Islam was. Sweetmeats were offered and accepted. It was mildly feather-ruffling, for those who revere the godlessness of their institution, but not infuriating.
Constructive engagement goes further than giving inoffensive students the run of the place for a day or two. Last October UCL announced that it would become "the first British university to open a campus in Doha, Qatar". Qatar is a hugely oil-rich, geographically tiny emirate, whose predominantly Sunni population lives under the severities of sharia law. Cynics will ask whether UCL's new campus there would sponsor a Jewish awareness week. The college's supporters will reply that such a thing is more likely to happen after "engagement". My own, partisan, view is that UCL's openness is morally justified and, in pragmatic terms, is more likely to produce desired results than interlocking bans, proscriptions, censorship and exclusion. But there are clear risks.
For those old enough to remember, or curious enough to look the period up, there are differences between what is happening now and the last great crisis for universities, in the 1960s. That disruption was physically violent ? with occupations, riots, assaults on politicians and wild threats of revolution. But the violence was, in the first instance, directed against the universities themselves. They were regarded, as Althusser put it, as "ISAs" ? ideological state apparatuses. This time around universities themselves are not at risk, other than from a few ALF extremists. No one is storming the gates of UCL, as they did to those of the London School of Economics 50 years ago.
But who can come through those gates and who will be kept out? That is the question.
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