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PROFESSOR ANTHONY GLEES' INAUGURAL LECTURE

Wednesday 29 October 2008

Professor Glees, the Vice-Chancellor and 3 members of the audience facing the camera

Professor Anthony Glees (with blue tie) with the Vice-Chancellor and members of the audience

Despite the first snow of the year and bitterly cold weather, there was a full house for yesterday's inaugural lecture by Professor Anthony Glees, the University of Buckingham's newly appointed Professor of Security and Intelligence Studies: Safeguarding our democracy: current themes in the study of Britain's secret agencies.

Professor Glees compared the work of the security and intelligence community with fire-fighting. MI5 and MI6 do very good work and most terrorist plots are discovered before they are carried out. But even more important than fire-fighting is fire prevention. Professor Glees explained the British Government's counter-radicalisation policy "Prevent". He said that the Government wants all Muslim students to take up Islamic Studies. It argues that British Muslims don't know enough about Islam and wants them to be better informed about it, even if this means that they will be taught by scholars with extremist views. Professor Glees said that Islamic governments have donated £157 million to British universities to create and run Islamic Studies centres, and will have the means to decide how the subject will be taught and which scholars will be doing the teaching.

Professor Glees argued that the role of Islamic governments in the setting up of Islamic Studies centres is very controversial and worrying. He criticised the “Prevent” policy as counterproductive because it is actually encouraging British Muslims to think of themselves as Muslims first and only secondly, if at all, as British, and so it will increase the number of Muslims with radical views.

It was clear that Professor Glees' strong views were not accepted by some in the audience, but his attack on how public universities could be sacrificing academic impartiality for large donations showed why he has moved to Buckingham, the only independent university in the UK.

Report by the Web Team with contributions by Phillip Mueller and James Baker