The Telegraph: Universities monitored your emails long before Prevent – don’t believe the NUS’s fake news

King’s College London (KCL) has been criticised this week  for supposedly ‘spying on student’s emails’ in what has been described an outrageous invasion of their privacy. ​It is claimed that the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy, Prevent, which aims to stop people being drawn into terrorism, is the problem.The President of the National Union of Students (NUS), Malia […]

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Challenging Prevent at UCL

On Wednesday 30th September, Student Rights attended an event at University College London (UCL) entitled ‘Challenging Prevent: Defending our universities, communities and civil liberties’. The event formed part of the NUS’ launch of a Prevent helpline, whose purpose according to leaflets distributed at the event is to “support students and student union officers” and fight […]

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Student Voice: Prevent and the NUS’ credibility gap on tackling extremism

Queen Mary student, Jacob Kishere, attended last month’s ‘Students not Suspects’ event at his university which saw NUS vice president, Shelly Asquith, criticised for encouraging students to ensure universities were unable to fulfill their legal duties around Prevent. Here, he gives his take on the positions taken by the speakers. All views are his own, […]

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The Sunday Times: Corbyn aide: Ignore anti-terror laws (£)

A senior member of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership campaign team has called on people to break anti-terrorism laws. In a recording obtained by The Sunday Times, Shelly Asquith dismissed the threat of “so-called Islamic extremism” and laid out a programme of “grassroots activism” to make Prevent, the government’s anti-terror strategy, “truly unworkable”. She stated: “Are we […]

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Students Not Suspects Conference: Myths and Scaremongering

As well as hosting extreme groups at its conference last week, the NUS-led ‘Students Not Suspects‘ campaign also continued to spread inflammatory misinformation about Prevent. These myths include the notion that Prevent is racist and Islamophobic, that is being used to spy on service users, and that it is aimed at shutting down anti-government activism. […]

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Students Not Suspects Conference: Campaigning with Extremists

Founded last summer, the ‘Students Not Suspects‘ campaign has now spent an academic year working to undermine Prevent, the government’s counter-radicalisation strategy, on university campuses. While students should of course be free to oppose and challenge policy, Student Rights has repeatedly criticised the campaign, which is led by high profile National Union of Students (NUS) […]

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Kingston VC’s comments on Prevent ignore the evidence

Professor Julius Weinberg, vice chancellor of Kingston University, has said university heads are “under a lot of pressure” not to criticise the government’s counter-radicalisation measures, collectively known as the Prevent strategy. Speaking at the University and College Union (UCU) congress in Liverpool last week, Mr Weinberg expressed his concerns Prevent might inhibit free speech and […]

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