Academic freedom is in danger. Thomas Docherty explains how cuts are damaging universities across the UK

One morning in June 1946, Hannah Arendt received a package at her home in New York. As a Jew, Arendt had not been permitted to teach in German universities; and, like many German-Jewish intellectuals, she found refuge in America. The package she received that morning contained a book, The Idea of the University, written by her former academic supervisor, Karl Jaspers. It was a new edition of a book Jaspers had initially published in 1923; in its 1946 revision, it became a contribution to the de-Nazification of the German university system and German society. Arendt read it avidly, immediately exploring the possibility of having it translated for a wide audience. The book was amongst the first to formulate a post-war credo of academic freedom. Jaspers saw its importance for the renewed health of a university system and of a society that had been corrupted by authoritarian restrictions on freedom of thought, speech and action under Nazism. Academic freedom permits the scholar to follow fearlessly whatever lines of inquiry are demanded by the disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge in any field; and the actual and material realisation of this freedom lies in the dissemination of such knowledge through teaching. To teach is to enact those very freedoms of thought that academic research strives to imagine. Substantial funding cuts in the UK are severely undermining Jasper’s tenets. Since Lord Browne’s higher education review two years ago recommended slashing the university teaching budget by 80 per cent, the pace has accelerated. In a climate of public sector austerity there now even appears to be a logic to the cuts, but the impact on academic freedom is profound. Why does it matter? The licence to engage with ideas that are critical of social norms and existing values depends on that freedom. Its curtailment encourages the establishment of orthodoxy and promotes authoritarian forms of governance that stifle freely spoken critique.

Academic freedom — crucial to a thriving democracy

The 1946 context makes clear what is at stake: the university, built onacademic freedom, is an institution that seeks to realise the freedoms that will give an emergent democratic society its various identities, arguments and openness to future possibilities. Such openness of spirit had been precluded while the university sector was the instrument of an ideologically determined political programme. Nazism permitted only those academic activities that were consistent with its aims. All else was illegitimate. For Jaspers, as for Arendt, academic freedom is more than merely academic.

In the UK, we have two constitutional post-war definitions of academic freedom. For the 1963 Robbins report, it is the freedom to publish, to teach according to a teacher’s own concept of fact and truth, and “to pursue what personal studies and researches are congenial”. For Robbins, academic tenure guarantees such freedoms. When the 1988 Education Reform Act abolished tenure, it redefined academic freedom. Section 202 of the Act gave academics “freedom within the law to question and test received wisdom,  and to put forward new ideas and controversial or unpopular opinions, without placing themselves in jeopardy of losing their jobs or privileges that they may have at their institutions”.

No one seriously is suggesting the abandonment of such principles. However, thanks to the economic logic of cuts to public expenditure, we have drifted insidiously and gradually towards that dangerous state of affairs where the spectres of “official knowledge” and “official teaching” are increasingly visible and material. If Jaspers and Arendt are right, then our predicament may be all the worse for the fact that we fail to see our democratic liberty being threatened by a quiet ruination and decay of academic freedom. Arendt, writing back to Jaspers after reading his book, considered what should be the proper relation between state and university: “Because somebody has to pay for the whole show, the state clearly remains the best donor of money.” She continued: “It would be good … if the professors would not, despite this, see themselves as civil servants.” Some arrangement was needed — and eventually found in the German constitution — to protect academic freedom; but, in the UK in recent times, the arrangements are different.

Education and “value for money”

The first major cuts to UK university funding took place in the 1980s, as part of a project of privatisation that diminished the state’s commitments to the public sphere. The demand for accountability in the public sector, for “value for money”, was crucial to the ideological acceptance of this process. Universities adopted a business-like efficiency, encapsulated in the mantra of “doing more with less”. Success in making economies then provided the rationale for further cuts, for we were now “doing more” than was previously thought necessary, and so could accommodate additional cutting of resources; and if we failed, we deserved to be cut entirely, for we had failed in doing what was necessary. This argument led to a rationale for what happened finally in 2010, when the UK government formally withdrew all funding for the teaching of arts, humanities and social sciences, and cut the general budget by 80 per cent following the Browne Review. The effects of the cuts have been gradual and insidious, but substantive:we now no longer research as we wish, teach as we wish, or pursue those congenial studies that Robbins wanted to protect. Arendt’s fear — that academics would become servants of their governments — was well founded. In 1992, the UK University Grants Committee (UGC) was replaced by the Higher Education Funding Councils (HEFCE) and the change of title brought into law a change of practice. Where the UGC had acted as a buffer between academy and government, to stop us becoming civil servants, HEFCE’s management statement virtually required that we make our academic freedoms subservient to the state. Paragraph 3.4.2 of that statement requires that “The Chairman [of HEFCE] is responsible to the Secretary of State. The Chairman shall aim to ensure that the HEFCE’s policies and actions support the wider strategic policies of the Secretary of State.” HEFCE became an arm of government; and, without debate, the dominos fell. Vice-chancellors became agents of HEFCE, and academics — no longer “authorities” — became human resources in the advancement of government strategy. The university — without legislation — was now tacitly politicised, and our research and teaching legally constrained and restricted. It is important to state that things are not always as crude as this on the ground. Academics continue to maintain their integrity and independence in their research and teaching, but this is despite the prevailing norms, and their chances of official recognition are therefore much diminished. Yet the perception of academics as accountable to the requirements of the government of the day, rather than the demands of intellectual inquiry, has become entrenched: our main priority is to serve business and to do whatever government decides is necessary for the economy. Charles Clarke, as Secretary of State for Education, argued in 2003 that “We have to make better progress in harnessing knowledge to wealth creation.” Consequently, the 2003 Lambert Review identified “a need for the government to support university departments which are doing work that industry values”; and it went on to claim that “Public funding for basic research … is intended to benefit the economy.” Later, the 2011 Wilson Review stated that “Universities form the supply chain for business.” These views are now so commonplace that they provoke no debate.

Malleable public opinion — a threat to free expression

Jonathan Mitchell | Demotix

In this now quasi-official view of the university, research and teaching that do not serve business or wealth creation are seen as luxuries; and it is equally assumed that luxuries should not be funded from the public purse. The academic who works in medieval theology or French experimental fiction is in an invidious position: the classroom work must highlight not academic issues but rather skills that are transferable to business or wealth creation. The “luxury” of serious critical thinking on matters of theological politics or of relations between art and society — a luxury that might provoke new thought and new freedoms beyond the academy — is now less legitimate. Academic and other freedoms are being diminished, and education itself drastically impoverished. As a result, dissident thought is sacrificed to a tacit demand for conformity. We are expected essentially to validate whatever it is that public opinion decides is the genuine or proper existing states of affairs, and thus to confirm our cultural identity. Yet as Christopher Hitchens once put it, the greatest threat to freedom of expression today is not government but a malleable public opinion. If the public is genuinely to extend our freedoms and possibilities, then such opinion needs to be subjected to critique — sometimes by the exercise of academic freedom. The loss of our freedom to critique such constructions means that our identities — and thus our possibilities in life — are essentially in the hands of others. The point of research is not to rehearse what we know, but to explore and extend the boundaries of our ignorance and, by thus disturbing our idea of ourselves, to prise open those human possibilities that were previously undreamt of.  Such ideals sit uneasily alongside the now normative corporatist ideas of accountable efficiency.

A matter of conformity

Virtually all research funding in the UK is now competitive: we bid to research councils for it, or we win it through competing in the Research Excellence Framework (REF, formerly Research Assessment Exercise). This exercise aims to concentrate research in ever decreasing numbers of institutions (thus rationalising cuts everywhere else). A good REF performance “earns” us our future research funds; and, cast in positive terms like this, the process obscures the fact that competition is reducing the state’s commitment to the total research capacity of the nation and its academies. Governments will not inflict the cuts; instead, peer review ensures that we do the government’s work and cut ourselves in a form of self-harm. We are like Kafka’s Joseph K, watching his executioners with their knife and realising that he is expected to wrench it from them and “plunge it into his own breast”. Much research is published in scholarly journals. These now also have rankings, with some having higher “impact factors” than others. Academics are effectively required to seek publication in those highly ranked places, as the journals themselves become proxies for measuring the value of research. A piece in Physics Letters  is ranked excellent by the REF, axiomatically; recognition of excellence is harder to secure in the new upstart journals. However, all journals have their own scholarly priorities and preferences, sometimes even ideological preferences in the humanities and social sciences. To be regarded as excellent, my research must be recognised by my peers; but, if good research is by definition marked by dissidence, then such evaluations can pose awkward difficulties. The likelihood will be for research to be considered excellent precisely to the extent that it confirms the basic principles of my peers and conforms to their priorities. So, farewell freedom, as I skew my work to get it into Physics Letters ; and thus the REF restricts the thinking behind our increasingly sclerotic research base. Crucially, universities increasingly require that academics make sure that their research conforms to that narrowed base, in order to secure more funding — more funding that will, in turn, eviscerate the now anorexic research base further, and decrease the freedom to research as we would wish. If you want the funding that comes with prestige, make sure your work fits in. Academic freedom becomes subservient to academic orthodoxy.

“The Big Society” and “Connected Communities”

The process can be politicised too, as we saw in June 2010, when the coalition government’s Big Society agenda became explicitly a funding priority for the research councils. At the centre of this was a political hijacking of an interdisciplinary project called “Connected Communities”, led by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). When the AHRC held its first summit on the programme, Shearer West, the AHRC’s director of research, gave a presentation which set the scene for the research programme and its funding explicitly in terms of the Big Society framework. The only other presentation archived on the AHRC website from that summit was given by Bert Provan of the Department of Communities and Local Government. His title: “Connected Communities; or, ‘Building the Big Society””. If you want funding to carry out research, make sure you centre it on serving the political agenda. Similar strictures afflict teaching. We no longer teach as we wish, but according to the logic of cuts and its attendant economics. Teaching, like research, is inherently unpredictable; but such unpredictability cannot be permitted in a system grounded in efficient accountability. In teaching, especially with very high tuition fees, quality must be assured by our Quality Assurance Agency (QAA). Now that all degrees are modular, thought is compartmentalised; knowledge becomes reduced to information; and learning becomes simply the managing or manipulation of that information. The economics here understands knowledge as a commodity, and not a dynamic process that might involve the changing of minds and thus also of identities. Commodities are never critical of anything, but simply available for purchase; and that purchase is intended simply to assure the consumer of his identity, to “enrich” an already existing and settled identity. It’s just that the freedom of that identity is now reduced and narrowed to matters of consumer choice between modules. This is all the more pressing when the UK deals with the 80 to 100 per cent cut in state funding of teaching by effecting a massive tuition-fee hike whose effect is to monetise teaching and learning. Teachers are required by QAA to predict outcomes of their teaching, so that the student knows what it is that she is “buying”. Now, all students need to be the same as well; their futures safely predicted, managed, controlled. There is no academic freedom left in teaching — unless we ignore these strictures and carry out our work essentially in clandestine and unofficial fashion. Accountability, though seen most vividly as part of the logic of cuts, can have further unexpected repercussions. When a former University College London (UCL) student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was found to be involved in a plot to blow up a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, Universities UK (UUK, the vice-chancellors’ association) drew up a report on freedom of speech on campus. It was interesting that they felt implicated simply because Abdulmutallab had attended UCL. No doubt, he also frequented coffee shops, but there was no similarly anxious report from Starbucks. UCL, however, chose to identify freedom of speech in academia as a subject for policing, as if the university were a site of terror by association, and therefore responsible for terrorist acts. In the UUK report, the 1988 Reform Act statement is rehearsed: academic freedom is sacrosanct “within the law”. It is in that phrase, “within the law” that the report finds the absolute limit of academic freedom. On one hand, this sounds eminently reasonable: the university should not encourage criminality. However, in principle, it changes the accountability of the academic again. Where Jaspers thought that the academic’s accountability was to the intellectual process itself, and where REF and QAA see accountability as being political and consumerist, UUK’s report makes the academic into an official, policing “the law of the land”. But which land? In an age of globalisation especially, intellectual work knows no such borders. Further, what if the law itself is a bad law or a law that lacks legitimacy? Is it not actually incumbent on the academic to point this out and speak out about it? UUK appears to take the view that the results of our research and teaching must be in conformity with the law of the land; but the text of the 1988 Act might properly be read as saying that our academic freedoms are themselves protected within or by the law. That is to say: the law protects us, even if what we discover calls the law into question. In what has by now become a classic procedure, UUK has imported the logic of accountability into academia. The result is the Quisling attitude of our vice-chancellors. On one hand, some fear speaking out lest it endangers either their own self-advancement or the competitive advancement of their institution; and on the other, there are some who do not even see the dangers inherent in their quiescent compliance. Both have fully internalised the economic logic that endangers our freedoms. Academic freedom is at the core of the democratic intellect and a free culture. It must be fought for.
Thomas Docherty is professor of English and of Comparative Literature in the University of Warwick and the author of many books

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The post The attack on knowledge appeared first on Index on Censorship.

Academics worldwide face economic and political attacks that restrict their freedom to challenge convention, says Jo Glanville

This piece was originally published on Times Higher Education

More than 30 years ago, the Index on Censorship published a special issue on academic freedom titled “Scholarship and its enemies”. It included a report on the persecution of scientists in the Soviet Union, an article about the harassment of scholars in Czechoslovakia, a feature detailing how Bantu education in South Africa politicised black students and an account of university education in Libya under the rule of Mu’ammer Gaddafi. Since those once monolithic regimes have now fallen, it is ironic that the article that has dated the least and is even prophetic in its vision of the future is a portrait of the threat to universities in the UK written back in 1981. Anthony Arblaster and Steven Lukes warned that academia, and the freedom of scholars, “is under constant and growing pressure from its paymasters, the local education authorities and, above all, central government. The general tendency of these pressures is towards a crude and debased utilitarianism which sees education as an industry, or a production line whose purpose is to ‘turn out’ persons equipped with the various kinds of skills which the economy and current employment opportunities require”.

A generation on, in the 40th anniversary year of the Index, we have returned to the subject of academic freedom in a special issue, “Censors on campus“. This includes an essay by Thomas Docherty that gives a stark outline of the consequences of the past 30 years on universities in the UK since the first significant cuts to higher education funding took place. It is a sobering sequel to Arblaster and Lukes’ analysis: “the perception of academics as accountable to the requirements of the government of the day rather than the demands of intellectual inquiry has become entrenched: our main priority is to serve business and to do whatever government decides is necessary for the economy”.

All three writers recognise the importance of universities for fostering ideas that dissent from the mainstream and the dangers for democracy as a whole when that space is threatened. For Arblaster and Lukes, that freedom depends on the principle that all decisions and judgements are made on academic or educational grounds; for Docherty, it is a licence that is essential for an open society.

As the international cases published in the special issue illustrate, around the world academics are often at the forefront of challenging authoritarianism and orthodoxy both in their research and in direct political activism. Their protection – and the threats that they face – should receive as much attention as attacks on the press.

Yet although there are many organisations and international bodies standing up for journalists, the defence of academic freedom trails behind. The classification of our various freedoms into special interest groups – whether press or academia – is perhaps part of the problem. It is time to recognise that the protection of academic freedom is as fundamental for democracy as the safeguarding of the press – it is, after all, freedom of expression for the whole of society that is at stake.

Turkey is a particularly strong example of the vital role played by academics and how vulnerable they remain to intimidation. As the distinguished author and translator Maureen Freely demonstrates in her report for Index, the pressure on universities, students and scholars is growing. Academics who dare to explore taboo topics that challenge the nationalist mythology, topics that may range from the Armenian genocide to Atatürk, may damage their careers or even face prosecution. One notorious current case is that of the academic Büşra Ersanlı, who is facing prosecution over links to an “illegal organisation”. She is believed to have been targeted because of her association with the BDP, the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, which has seats in the national assembly. As Freely reports, new networks and campaign groups are now emerging to defend students as well as their teachers.

In Thailand, academics are challenging one of the most notorious chills on free speech: the lese-majesty law that criminalises insult to the king. It carries a minimum jail sentence of three years. A group of young law academics at Thammasat University is courageously leading a campaign to reform the law: they have been banned from holding meetings at their own university, and their spokesman, the celebrated lawyer Worachet Pakeerut, was assaulted on campus earlier this year.

These are scholars whose work takes them into the heart of public life, daring to raise questions that challenge the national identity of their culture.

Although the risks facing scholars at home may be less extreme, the same principle is at stake: the space and the licence to challenge convention. Any government that reduces that freedom, whether on economic or political grounds, shrinks the possibilities for a truly open society.

Jo Glanville is outgoing editor of Index on Censorship.

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A South London primary school is funding a libel action brought by current and former employees over three emails sent by the Chief Auditor of Lambeth Council. The school has ignored a freedom of information request for details of how much it is spending on the court action — but Index on Censorship believes that the costs may already have run into six figures.

The case of Durand Academy raises serious questions both about the chilling effect of UK libel law, and the creeping encroachment of the “reputation management” industry into public life. The school, which is funded largely from the public purse, has admitted paying over £199,000 to a PR firm run by its Vice Chair of Governors.

Sometimes the way in which a question is answered can be as revealing as the content of the response.

Earlier this year I got an intriguing tip-off about one of the government’s flagship Academy schools, Durand Primary School in Stockwell, South London. I emailed the school to get their side of the story. Less than half an hour later I had a somewhat stern reply:

I’d like to invite you to visit the school and hope you’d accept our offer before writing anything. We would be extremely unhappy if you didn’t take us up on this and as always, we protect the reputation of our school — which provides outstanding education to 930 children — vigorously.

The message had come from a durandeducation.org email address, but the person who’d sent it hadn’t mentioned their job title, so I googled her name. I was surprised to find her listed as an employee of a PR company called “Political Lobbying and Media Relations”(PLMR).

A few days later I emailed the school to ask if PLMR was providing its services pro bono or whether the school was paying. If so, how much money was involved and how did they justify the cost?I also asked about the fact that PLMR’s Managing Director, Kevin Craig, appeared to be Vice Chair of the school’s board of Governors. Was the school satisfied that there was no conflict of interest here?

A couple of hours later I had a message from Kevin Craig himself, copying his company lawyers:

I am very happy to answer your all questions on Monday morning.

If in the meantime you publish anything about me in any forum that damages me, my reputation, my company, or this wonderful school that i [sic] care deeply about, in any way then I of course won’t hesitate to take the strongest possible action.

That is not a threat by the way — I just want you to be assured of how seriously I take media enquiries…

Monday morning came and went but I heard nothing more from Kevin Craig. A promised response from the Board of Governors also failed to materialise. But further digging confirmed that “Durand Primary School” was listed as a “fee paying client” of PLMR by the Association of Professional Political Consultants.

Meanwhile, I’d been finding out more about Durand’s involvement with the controversial libel law firm Carter Ruck.

In a landmark case in the early 1990s, the House of Lords ruled that there was “no public interest favouring the right of organs of government, whether central or local, to sue for libel… to admit such actions would place an undesirable fetter on freedom of speech”

So notwithstanding the school’s determination to “protect our reputation… vigorously”, as a public body, Durand Academy cannot sue for libel.

Yet individual staff and governors can take action over allegations made about the school, so long as they can make the case that they were personally defamed within the discussion.

Last year Carter Ruck represented Greg Martin, Durand’s former headteacher (now the school’s director of educational development), in a successful libel action over allegations made about him by the father of a former trainee teacher to the General Teaching Council.

Carter Ruck have also been employed in a completely separate case, in which Greg Martin, along with Durand’s current head, Mark Mclaughlin, and former chair of governors, Jim Davies, are suing Lambeth Council and its Chief Internal Auditor Mohammed Khan over three emails in which Mr Khan raised concerns about the management of the school.

A recent interim court ruling details the allegations that Mr Khan is said to have made:

That there are a number of serious concerns regarding the running of Durand School, which previous investigations have failed to put right and for which the Claimants as Head Teachers and Chairman of the Governors respectively are culpably responsible, in particular:

(a) failing to implement proper training standards or provide proper support for newly qualified Teachers ["NQTs"] who start their careers at Durand,

(b) unreasonably dismissing able teachers before completion of their induction year simply because they do not fit into the way the school works,

(c) giving a false and/or misleading explanation to Lambeth Council, the body responsible for NQT Induction for the unacceptably high number of NQTs who leave before the completion of their induction,

(d) wilfully breaching the school’s obligations under employment law towards teaching staff, in that contracts of employment are not given to NQTs

(e) failing to comply with the Lambeth Borough Council issued following an audit in 2003 of the school’s finances carried out by the Chief Internal Auditor that the governors and head teacher adhere to proper financial controls in the running of the schools and in particular that the governing body ensure complete and transparent separation of duties and activities between the school and its commercial partners. This has resulted in justifiable concern on the part of the local authority that there remains a lack of transparency in the arrangements between the school and the third party management company, G M G, and that the Second Claimant is being allowed to benefit improperly and/or unfairly from these arrangements to the detriment of the school.

That these concerns are so serious and so pressing that they warrant the involvement of the Department of Children Schools and Families in helping the local authority to resolve them”.

The claimants, in turn, deny these allegations, contending that:

The Defendants (through the second Defendant) knew that there was no basis for making the allegations he was making. In particular, he knew that there was no basis for alleging that (a) the Claimants were failing in their duties to train or support NQTs, (b) that there were outstanding issues in relation to the financial arrangements to the school, its management company and the Second Claimant. As regards the latter allegations, the Second Defendant had personally instigated and audited the school as long ago as 2003 and all the issues raised in connection with it had been addressed to the satisfaction of the Nominated Financial Representative appointed by the defendants themselves in order to carry out the audit (as expressly stated in the latter’s final report on the subject).

The Second Defendant’s conduct in making the allegations complained of was not carried out bona fide or for any legitimate purpose connected with the DCSF’s request for advice, but was by way of continuation of a campaign which has been waged for years against Durand School by the First Defendant [Lambeth Council] and its employees, in particular the Second Defendant; Phyllis Dunipace, Executive Director of Education (later Director for Children and Young People); Kevin Ronan, Recruitment and Retention Manager; and Mark Hynes Director of Legal and Democratic Services.

The Defendants do not accept any of this and continue to fight the claim.

Readers will have their own views about how appropriate it is for the libel courts to get involved in this kind of dispute. The emails in question were copied to less than a dozen people. Costs in such cases can easily run into six figures — and Carter Ruck in particular are notoriously expensive to retain.

But whatever the merits of the case, according to the same ruling, Durand Academy — a state school supported largely by the taxpayer — is funding the libel action. Given that the main defendant is also a publicly-funded body, the taxpayer seems destined to lose out whoever wins the case.

In a recent interview about the art of “Crisis Management”, PLMR’s Kevin Craig (who, as noted above, also happens to be Durand’s Vice Chair of Governors) told Reuters that “Openness is the only way… Anything else… will only make the problem worse in the long-term”.

On 21 March I made a freedom of information request, asking Durand Academy to reveal how much it has been paying Carter Ruck and PLMR for their services. Given that public bodies are required by law to respond to an FOI request within 20 working days, and given the school’s track record, I had expected that they would want to resolve the matter quickly and robustly.

Despite repeated assurances that an answer was on the way, Durand never got back to me. But earlier this month, the school revealed on its website that it had paid £199,294.30 in fees to PLMR between April 2009 and December 2010.To date the school has failed to come clean about how much it is paying Carter Ruck.

The state of our public education system is the subject of fierce and passionate debate — from the strengths and weaknesses of the “Academy” model and the training of new teachers, to the conditions in which staff work and the financial management of individual schools. The issues at stake have a direct bearing on our children’s future prospects and on the long-term direction of our society. There is surely a clear public interest in our being able to have this debate openly and free from the fear of a crippling High Court defamation case.

The management team at Durand Academy are no doubt passionately committed to their work, and determined to stand up for themselves in the face of criticism. But it seems it to me that something has gone horribly wrong with the law when a dispute is being played out in the libel courts. It’s hard to find a clearer illustration of the need for libel reform than the case of Durand Academy.

Richard Wilson is a freelance writer and blogger. He is the author of Titanic Express and Don’t Get Fooled Again. You can find him on Twitter @dontgetfooled

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Rizwaan Sabir

Three years later, the Nottingham University “terrorism” row rumbles on —- first reading was made a crime, now internal criticism. Jane Fae reports

In an effort to protect its reputation, Nottingham University is engaged in a witch hunt against any academic who questions its commitment to free speech. The ultimate irony? Or, as claimed in a devastating attack on the University by one of its own, Dr Rod Thornton, evidence of “something really rather dark” at the heart of British academia.

The story begins back in 2008, when two men — Rizwaan Sabir and Hicham Yezza, respectively an MA student and a member of staff at Nottingham University — were arrested and detained for six days under the Terrorism Act 2000. Their crime? As part of his research for his MA on militant Islam, Sabir had asked his friend, Hicham Yezza, to download and print three documents.

Unfortunately for both men, these documents, including the inflammatory-sounding “Al Qaeda Training Manual”, were later described by various players in the affair as “entirely inappropriate”, “unlawful” or “illegitimate”. Yet Thornton claims that the Al-Qaeda manual which led to the arrests is now stocked in the university’s library.

The incident itself is a textbook case of establishment paranoia. One of Yezza’s co-workers stumbled across the documents on his computer: they informed university security who in turn, either acting alone or in tandem with the university’s Registrar, brought in the police. The two men spent a unpleasant week being interviewed by police officers, who clearly suspected that they might have stumbled across a nascent terror cell.

Their suspicions, according to Dr Thornton, a lecturer in International Security and Terrorism with the university’s School of Politics and International Relations were bolstered by comments from members of the University, who considered possession of the documents in question to be questionable. In the end, the whole affair fizzled out. The suspects were released and moved on. There were student demonstrations and representations by local MP, Alan Simpson. There was predictable harassment, as Hicham’s visa ran out and he was declared an illegal immigrant.

Conservative US think-tank the Heritage Foundation picked up on the incident and added it to its tally of terror plots in the UK: the Home Office, allegedly, then quoted the Heritage Foundation report when asked about the extent of terrorist activities in the UK.

Not one of the establishment players — police, university, civil servants — emerge from this tale covered in glory: quite the reverse. Yet as stories go, it is neither unprecedented, nor especially unpredictable. As Dr Thornton comments: once a finger is pointed and the accusation of terrorism laid, a certain inevitable form of “groupthink” sets in.

The real problem lies in what came after, documented in exquisite detail in Dr Thornton’s paper and published, a week ago, on the website of the British International Studies Association. The paper is long and exceedingly detailed and, unusually, for an academic paper, written in the first person. Nonetheless, it is Dr Thornton’s case that such detail is necessary for the wider world to understand fully the culpability of the university in events both in 2008 and since.

There are two strands to his argument. First, that the university failed to support academic freedom, jumping to conclusions, not carrying out a risk assessment, and not testing allegations before handing them over to the police.

In a sense, though, that is history: far more serious is his claim that in the years since then, the university has increasingly clamped down on any and everyone who has failed to collude in its version of events. He himself, he claims, has been subject to formal reprimand by the university for questioning the university’s official view of events and for “harassment” of some of the principals involved: and latterly, for disciplinary matters such as failing to “add [his] office hours to the front page” of his reports.

His paper is unusual in another respect: it names names. Dr Thornton acknowledges that this may be viewed as unethical — but given the gravity of the allegations being made, he believes it is valid.

What is clear is that here we have a clash of cultures. Dr Thornton sees himself as a “whistleblower”, frustrated by the defensiveness of Nottingham University authorities and the fact that nowhere in the British body politic does any formal oversight function exist. The university — which refused to comment directly — is either guilty as charged, or seriously wronged by his allegations.

The story continues to unravel. Dr Thornton’s paper, originally published by the BISA has now been withdrawn. In a statement the organisation said it had “removed Dr Thornton’s paper from our website on legal advice following a number of complaints from academics at the University of Nottingham.” Dr Thornton himself was suspended last week on the grounds that his article was “highly defamatory of a number of his colleagues”.

We are nowhere near a resolution of this matter. At the end of the day, this episode goes to the heart of questions about the nature of academic freedom. Is the University really holding the ring and maintaining balance between opposing views? Or is it riding roughshod over all but its own preferred version of events, using any and every weapon in its armoury to reinforce its position? Only time will tell.

Jane Fae is a writer on issues of political and sexual liberty. Formerly known as John Ozimek, she has recently written Beyond the Circle, a book which takes a radical new view of discrimination on the grounds of sexuality

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