Academics have no “right” to research terrorist materials and they risk being prosecuted for doing so, the vice-chancellor of the University of Nottingham has told his staff..

The article is raises a glaring contradiction between the police account in a letter to Rizwaan Sabir and the reported views of Sabir’s lecturers. The police claim in a letter to Sabir that (my emphasis):

“The university authorities have now made clear that possession of this material is not required for the purpose of your course of study nor do they consider it legitimate for you to possess it for research purposes.”

Yet the article says (again my emphasis):

Mr Sabir’s personal tutor Bettina Renz, a lecturer in international security, and his MA supervisor, Rod Thornton, a terrorism specialist and former soldier, have both said they told police that Mr Sabir’s possession of the document was legitimate given his research interests.

So, which is it?

A commentator at the Times Higher Education website notes that the other man arrested (but also never charged) alongside Sabir, Hischam Yezza, has received no help from the university despite studying and working there for over a decade.

One question not addressed by the article is whether Rizwaan Sabir would have been arrested had he been called, say, ‘Roger Simpson’. I honestly hope this is not interpreted as an attempt to keep Muslims away from pursuing degrees in similar fields (terrorism, international security, war and peace studies, etc).