New rules to combat extremism in UK universities are inhibiting students from speaking up freely. Adrian Lee, an academic quality officer at the University of York, says his institution is “receiving reports of students… feeling apprehensive about what they can and cannot say” in class since new Prevent duties (under the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015, specified authorities are empowered to prevent people in the UK from being drawn to terrorism) took effect last September.

Speaking at a debate over the impact on campuses of new counter-terrorism measures at the Association of University Administrators’ annual conference in Leeds on March 22, Dr. Lee said universities should do more to clarify guidelines about when students would be reported to authorities over their views. “Universities need to think not only about complying with regulations, but also how students understand them,” he said.

Gavin Barber, head of student central at Oxford Brookes University, told the debate how some staff are apprehensive about approving potentially controversial titles of Masters dissertations. Many administrators didn’t feel sufficiently equipped to undertake the specialist task of identifying potential extremists, something normally undertaken by the security services, added Barber. “I feel no more comfortable asking (staff) to carry out this policy than I would asking them to pilot a helicopter or undertake brain surgery,” he said.

Speaking from the panel, Martin McQuillan, pro vice chancellor (research) at Kingston University, described Prevent as “badly framed legislation based on moral panic”. Its implementation relied on having a “proscribed list of speakers that no one is willing to admit exists,” he said.

However, Dusty Amroliwala, deputy vice chancellor at the University of East London (UEL), said the Prevent duties are reasonable and universities should be willing to take a position on speakers airing bigoted or extreme views on campuses.

Amroliwala also raised the case of a UEL academic who reported concerns regarding students who had changed the way they dressed and started talking about travelling to Syria. “That academic was really concerned about those students not only because of Prevent, but because she wanted something to be done,” said Amroliwala.

Delegates at the AUA conference voted by 2-1 in support of the debate’s motion that Prevent duties “endanger freedom of expression and contribute to a long-term decline in academic liberty”. 

World University Rankings

THE  Under-50 Rankings

Switzerland’s Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) has topped the Times Higher Education 150 Under 50 Rankings 2016 — a ranking of the best universities under age 50 — for the second year in a row, while the UK has the most world-class young institutions in the Top 150.

Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU), founded just 25 years ago, is second, making it Asia’s top young institution for the first time in the ranking’s five-year history. This follows Singapore’s success in last year’s THE World University Rankings, in which the National University of Singapore was crowned Asia’s best university.

The rest of the Top 5 in the young universities’ list is filled by Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Netherlands’ Maastricht University and South Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology in third, fourth and fifth place, respectively.

Bertil Andersson, NTU president, cites the institution’s continued ability to attract top established and young researchers; innovative approaches to teaching with a goal of designing half of degree courses for “flipped classroom learning” within the next five years, and a “good blend of East and West” as reasons for its rapid success. “Teaching in English makes it easy for NTU to attract international faculty and collaborate with many other world-class universities as English is a common platform for us,” he says.

The THE 150 Under 50 Rankings use the same 13 performance indicators as the flagship World University Rankings, but give less weight to reputation.