Publication of the week: Professor Anthony Glees

Anthony Glees, “Intelligence Studies, Universities and Security”, British Journal of Educational Studies 63:3 (2015), 281-310. DOI: 10.1080/00071005.2015.1076567

This article offers a critical assessment of academic intelligence studies in higher education. It argues that universities (and academics) should value this subject far more highly than they currently do. Doing so will enhance better public understanding of an increasingly important and unique device in modern governance. It will also improve the quality of intelligence activity by raising awareness of both good and bad practice, encourage lawfulness by means of public understanding and so defending a vital public service from ill-informed attacks in today’s conflicted world. This, rather than training potential officers, should be the primary purpose of intelligence studies.

The article (which forms the basis of a lecture Professor Glees will give at the British Academy on 12 November) exploits three major current concerns in intelligence studies to develop the thesis: the use of torture in the ‘war on terror’ and the assault on ethical standards that this caused, the impact of the revelations made by Edward Snowden and the extension of the British Government’s counter-radicalisation policies onto university and college campuses. Professor Glees argues that the Government, and indeed those who oppose the Government’s plans, have failed to point out that ‘academic freedom’ is a freedom for academics, not students nor those who speak to them; and that ‘freedom of speech’ is not an unqualified freedom but one that is contextualised in lawfulness, about which, ultimately, an English jury, rather than a government or a university or college, may well become the defining authority.

Anthony Glees is Professor of Politics at The University of Buckingham and directs its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS).