Violent Extremism in Colleges?

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills are co-hosting a consultation on the 'Role of Further Education Providers (aka colleges to you and I) in promoting community cohesion, fostering shared values and preventing violent extremism'.

The shared values that the document states should be fostered are "values of openness, free debate and tolerance". In promoting cohesion around these values, the college should also "listen to and support mainstream voices". I wonder if there should be a consultation around what our "shared values" are, let alone whose constitutes a "mainstream voice"!

The consultation was welcomed by the National Union of Students (NUS), but it is "disappointed that the Government did not expand this consultation to address the problem of gun and knife crime".

Instead, the consultation highlights "al-Qa'ida influenced terrorism" as, according to the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Bill Rammell MP, other forms of violent extremism "do not present the same scale of threat" - actually more young people have been killed by gun and knife crime than by "al-Qa'ida influenced terrorism". The NUS is also concerned that students are involved in any proposals, "to avoid unnecessary victimisation of Muslims".

The University and Colleges Union (UCU) picks up on this contradiction between promoting community cohesion and the relentless focus on Islamic extremism: "we still have some worries, however, that Muslim students and staff generally will feel themselves to be the focus of attention".

Writing in the Guardian, UCU General Secretary, Sally Hunt writes that "the FE guidance's six "scenarios and responses", intended to help colleges deal with potential dilemmas, include two Arab or Muslim-related scenarios. It would have been easy to add a possible scenario based on, say, extremist Christian fundamentalists". She concludes that "we will encourage and support all efforts to promote community cohesion, but let's be realistic too about the many other challenges the sector faces."

The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), which represents 90,000 Muslim students, states that "there is no evidence to suggest that Muslim students at university are particularly vulnerable to radicalisation nor is there any evidence to suggest that university campuses are hotbeds of extremist activity". Yet, the consultation document advises, some colleges may need to develop "preventing violent extremism plans".

The consultation document can be downloaded from the DCSF website, and the deadline for responses is 6th May 2008.