Academic Freedom and the Commission for Countering Extremism
It is in the public interest that the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) operates transparently, given that it is self-described as “an independent, non-statutory expert committee of the Home Office”.
It is welcome that the CCE has indicated in the press recently (“Anti-extremism watchdog would ‘welcome’ being covered by transparency law”, Morning Star, 15 October 2019) that in the interests of transparency it would like to be formally subject to the Freedom of Information Act but in the interim committed itself to answering any requests for information as if that were already the case. On 21 October, I put the following questions to the CCE’s lead commissioner Sara Khan in this spirit of transparency and public interest about its commissioning and review process in 2019 for the academic papers concerning extremism.
(1) What was the process and criteria by which the CCE carried out its review of (i) submitted research proposals and (ii) submitted research papers as a result of its call for papers in February 2019? Please release any internal policy documents not currently in the public domain that explain the process and criteria in more detail.
(2) Given that the rejection of the research papers by Drs Tahir Abbas and Sadek Hamid (“Our Academic Papers on Extremism”, CCE Blog, 7 October 2019) has become a matter of public debate, the basis of that decision should be made as transparent as possible. Please release the reviews and correspondence in relation to their papers that were used by the CCE to assess and decline their research papers for publication (names of any reviewers can be redacted to protect anonymity if necessary).
(3) How did The Sunday Times (“Muslim advisers hit by anti‑semitism row”, 5 May 2019) acquire the ‘internal documents’ from the CCE about the Abbas and Hamid papers? Please release the internal and external communications that led to this information being given to the press.
(4) How did the CCE come to the decision to publicise the exclusion of Abbas and Hamid’s research papers from publication? Please release all internal or external communications regarding the deliberation and execution of this decision to publicise.
(5) Was the social media of other academics and experts commissioned by the CCE scrutinised? If not, how were Abbas and Hamid singled out for (re)tweets? Who presented this information to the CCE? Please release the social media assessments, if any, that were made of all the researchers involved in the CCE call for papers, and any internal or external correspondence relating to this.
(6) Why were the assurances that Abbas and Hamid gave of their innocence of the charges made against them of antisemitism not taken into serious consideration by the CCE (“Muslim academics criticise Extremism Commission after their studies are ‘censored’” [interview], 5Pillars, 11 October 2019)? Was the stipulation that they meet with an external organisation part of the CCE’s standard procedure or was it the outcome a request from that organisation? Please release any relevant policy documentation and internal and external correspondence about these decisions.
(7) Does the CCE include legal checks on its published research as part of its quality assurance process? The temporary withdrawal of ‘The changing nature of activism among Sikhs in the UK today’ Dr Jagbir Jhutti-Johal and Sunny Hundal under the advice of the CCE’s internal lawyers (“UK counter-extremism body forced to remove controversial paper on Sikh activism”, Times of India, 9 October 2019) suggests that such checks are either not in place or are ineffective. On what legal grounds did the Commission decide to remove temporarily this research paper from its website? Please release any policy documentation on the Commission’s internal legal checking process and any internal communications relating to the Commission’s decision to withdraw the paper.
(8) Finally, given your commitment to abide by the spirit of FOI, do you also commit to any requests that might be rejected being referred to the Information Commissioner for review?
Any UK citizen can apply for a FOI request. According to government policy, they should expect a response within twenty working days or the organisation should tell you when to expect the information if they need more time.
Some days after the mandatory response time of twenty days, I received an insubstantial response from the Commission, which you can find below:
In the interests of academic freedom, I want to publish here the two papers that the CCE refused to publish. Let the public judge for itself the academic merit of these papers and whether the decision of the Commission was justified or whether there are legitimate grounds to consider the rejection as wholly or partly politically motivated, given that both papers are critical of the underlying premises and the consequences of the Commission and the government’s counter-extremism strategy with regard to Muslim communities in Britain.
Here is Dr Sadek Hamid’s “A Mapping of Islamist trends in the UK”, as a PDF available for download here. This is the final version that was submitted to the CCE and it appears here exclusively.
Here is Prof. Tahir Abbas’s paper in a trimmed-down version (compared to what was submitted to the CCE) that focuses on the policy-relevant material but with substantially the same argument. This version is Tahir Abbas, “Far Right and Islamist Radicalisation in an Age of Austerity: A Review of Sociological Trends and Implications for Policy” (The Hague: International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, 2020), https://icct.nl/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/AbbasTahirAusterityFarRightIslamist.pdf, accessed 13 January 2020.
Finally here is Sadek Hamid’s account of his experience with the CCE, “The Perils of Engaging CVE Policy Making: A British Case Study”, published by Al-Maydan.
