Counter-terrorist law in British universities: a review of the "Prevent" debate

The UK’s Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 (CTSA) – which amongst other things, imposes a legal duty upon schools, universities, the NHS and other institutions to ‘have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism’ – has aroused great controversy in education at all levels. Reviewing the debate in the tertiary sector, this article argues that, apart from the inclusion of ‘non-violent extremism’ and barring some other fine tuning, the Act is appropriate and necessary in higher education in a state committed to democracy, human rights, the rule of law, and cosmopolitan community cohesion. It also seeks to demonstrate that the campaign against it in this context is based largely upon myth, misinformation, misrepresentation, and misconception.