Older lecturers are less likely to report students potentially at risk of radicalisation to Prevent, says a major new study revealing widespread “ambivalence” among scholars about the counter-terrorism scheme.
In the first major piece of qualitative research into academics’ attitudes towards Prevent, researchers from King’s College London and Aarhus University in Germany asked just over 1,000 university teachers how they would respond if one of their personal tutees – named “Adam” – expressed opposition towards an event being held on campus by the university’s LGBTQ+ society on the grounds that “the student union should not be promoting these abhorrent lifestyles”.
In the hypothetical situation, academics were told Adam had missed some classes and shown signs of “behavioural change”, according to the study, published by the British Educational Research Journal.
In various scenarios presented to scholars, Adam’s views became known because he told a friend (a “low-concern scenario”), handed out a leaflet criticising the event (deemed an “ambiguous scenario”) or took part in a protest that later became violent (“high concern”). “Anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment” was chosen for the basis of the study, it says, because it is “associated with a variety of extremist ideologies”.
