Open debate 'will help fight extremism'

Higher education minister Bill Rammell has called on universities to "promote our shared values" when tackling the spread of violent extremism.

Publishing new government guidance on how academics can help to prevent radicalisation, he said free speech was the "most effective way" of challenging extremism.

Rammell said that radical speakers should be able to talk to students about how acts of terrorism are understandable, stressing the importance of promoting "openness, free debate and tolerance" on campus.

Original guidance published in 2006 was criticised by lecturers and Muslim students, who claimed that Islam was being unfairly targeted.

Rammell said that universities faced "a serious but not widespread" threat of violent extremists, later telling reporters that al-Qaeda-style terrorism was the biggest challenge for the government.

"I don't accept the analysis that every university is awash with violent extremists," he said.

Promoting an open culture "will enable us to seek to convince via rational argument those who hold the sorts of extremist tendencies that are the enemies of rational argument", Rammell argued.

He added: "We prize academic freedom and freedom of speech as ends in themselves and as the most effective way of challenging the views which we may find abhorrent but that remain within the law.

"It is legitimate and permissible for people to research the origins of violent extremism, even in some circumstances to say that actually we can understand how that leads people to certain courses of action.

"But I think it is very clear when you look at what people put forward, the views that they articulate, there is a line at which you move from analysis and understanding towards outright advocacy of violent extremism.

"It is that that we are concerned about."

Rammell said it was "helpful" for vice-chancellors to raise concerns over particular speakers, but denied claims that this amounted to a "blacklist".