A guest post on the state of International Relations from Felix Berenskoetter. Felix is Lecturer in International Relations at SOAS, University of London. He holds a PhD from the LSE and works on theories and concepts in IR; politics of space and time; critical approaches to European Security, and dynamics of friendship and estrangement in transatlantic relations. Felix has published articles in various journals, is a former editor of Millennium and co-editor of Power in World Politics (Routledge, 2007). He is also co-founder and current chair of the ISA Theory Section.

In case you missed it, recent ISA and BISA conferences saw panels contemplating whether ‘IR Theory’ has come to an end. This question, posed by the editors of EJIR, was discussed by a range of distinguished scholars whose answers ranged from ‘yes’ to ‘no’, in the process reflecting on the meaning of ‘theory’ and ‘end’. While state of the art exercises can be tiring, the contributions will be worth reading when they appear in an EJIR special issue later this year.

Yet I could not help wondering what the answers would have been had the panels featured not established professors, but junior scholars at the start of their career. Indeed, would it not be more adequate to have the latter group engage this question? After all, they tend to be the ones teaching introductory IR courses, which are expected to give an overview of theoretical arguments and debates. And they enter the profession with a significant research project under their belt (the PhD), which informs their first wave of publications and likely influences future projects that will shape the field. So what does that generation think of ‘IR Theory’? What theories and what kind of theorizing is prevalent in their teaching and writing?

These questions are important, not least because they can illuminate where the field of IR – to the extent that it is constituted by (shared) theoretical knowledge – is heading. Related, they might tell us whether junior scholars form a new generation of IR theorists, i.e. if they are advancing new theories, ways of theorizing and theoretical debates that mark them as a distinct generation.

While I count myself amongst this group, I do not have the answer(s). But let me share some observations and reflections. On the face of it, there is no escape from IR Theory represented by the ‘isms’ and associated debates, traditionally dealing with conflict and cooperation in interstate relations. They are locked into introductory courses and textbooks and are rehearsed in classrooms year by year. Yet how do we teach these theories (or paradigms)? Are we affirming them, or are we telling our students they are outdated? Are we treating them as part of a tradition that gives us timeless truths, or as historical artefacts that are no longer relevant? If the latter, do we provide our students with alternatives?

The answers probably hinge on what theories we use in our own work, and how we use them. Surely, as students we learned about the dominance and critical dismantling of neorealism, the ascent of constructivism, feminism, post-structuralism, the enduring prominence of rationalism and institutionalism. Some of us are also familiar with theories of European integration, the English School, or Marxism. Sure, attention to and treatment of those theories varies from place to place. But let’s assume we – the ‘junior scholars’ – know the core arguments and understand their impact, their analytical value as well as their limitations.  The question is, do we find them useful?

One way to get to the answer would be to survey the theoretical content of PhD dissertations, conference papers and publications by junior scholars over the past five years or so. I did not do that, but from what I read and from chatter at conferences, it seems that the majority of my peers find the ‘isms’ and associated debates inadequate, if not irrelevant. They don’t inspire to ask new questions and they don’t have good answers to the questions we are interested in (a sentiment echoed in YouTube polemics and in a recent survey noting a declining popularity of the core paradigms).

This is not really surprising as all theories are products of and for particular socio-historical contexts. The established theories we find in textbooks were developed by previous generations and, for the most part, by white men based in the US. While those of us now entering the profession cannot escape the socialization effect entirely, my sense is that few have invested in, or feel particularly attached to, these theoretical debates. Instead, we engage the study of world politics on the back of experiences and with outlooks and commitments that don’t resonate with the ‘isms’. In that sense, IR Theory is at an end.

Yet, of course, that holds true only if we employ a particular understanding of IR Theory. There is no lack of theorizing amongst junior scholars whose background and outlook is arguably less American than that of previous generations, and whose conceptual work draws on political theory, philosophy, sociology, history, psychology, religion, geography, media studies, literary studies, etc – the list goes on. These creative endeavors offer fresh angles on world politics, its very conception and how to study it.  The question is, do the authors still identify with ‘IR’ as an intellectual home?

Here I am not sure. I often hear some of my most creative colleagues – who also regular attend ISA conferences – saying ‘I don’t do IR’.  When pressed, this stance is explained with the aforementioned dislike of or, more precisely, disinterest in the ‘isms’ and associated debates. In a way, this rejection of the IR label is a logical move for those seeking to distance themselves from established thinking.  And yet it also has the unfortunate effect of perpetuating a narrow reading of (theorizing within) IR. This does not have to be the case.

For one, the ‘isms’ are not closed, static paradigms with clear arguments set in stone. Everyone who has ever tried to comprehensively survey an ‘ism’ knows they are diverse and dynamic bodies of thought. And they are not owned by anyone, least of all by those generally cast as representatives. Furthermore, many ‘classic’ works in the field, even if written some time ago and from a particular point of view, contain sophisticated insights about politics and the human condition. Their authors often practiced multi-disciplinarity, that is, they were well read in a range of fields of knowledge, and many would not be able to locate their work amongst the ‘isms’. Textbooks and standard literature reviews tend to ignore this in their attempt to simplify theories and core authors for easy digestion, downplaying context and ironing out creative tensions and contradictions so students don’t get confused. Similarly, the scientific-methodological ambitions underpinning much (mainstream) IR scholarship tend to cast theories in a rather sterile light. We should not forget their richness, however, and their potential for conceptual inspiration.

More importantly, I don’t think it is necessary to engage with literature considered part of the ‘canon’ to be part of the field of IR. It would be a tragedy if creative scholars concerned with issues of word politics shun the association with ‘IR’ because they feel that the field is defined and dominated by theories they don’t find useful. After all, the label ‘IR’ does not belong to a particular set of theories, but to a scholarly community. Theoretical inspiration can come from anywhere, and professional organizations such as ISA now showcase a variety of interests and outlooks at their conferences, suggesting that one can belong to an IR community without being disciplined by a particular conception of the ‘international’.

Indeed, if anything, a hallmark of IR as a field of knowledge is that its boundaries are unclear. And while there will always be some who, in their attempt to clarify these boundaries, try to keep the theoretical scope narrow, there will be others who open new doors and offer new ways of seeing, widening the field in the process. To ensure the latter, however, it is crucial for junior scholars to consciously, and visibly, claim theoretical space within ‘IR’. If this happens, talk about ‘the end’ makes no sense. At best, it’s the end of IR Theory as we know it.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the Northedge Essay Competition is now open. So if you’re a post-graduate student (PhD or advanced Masters) in IR or cognate fields, and you have some exceptional work lying fallow, spruce it up and submit. The deadline is 30 January 2012, and the winning essay will appear in Millennium 41(1). Previous winners have been very good indeed.

Fifth, the journal’s social media tentacles are growing, so do the following thing on Twitter and the liking thing on Facebook, if you are of that bent. Finally, a reminder that Millennium‘s weekly Editorial Board meetings are open to all LSE postgraduates (MSc and PhD) who are engaged and interested. If you fit that description and for some reason aren’t already involved, do email the Editors for details.

Elsewhere, BISA’s Historical Sociology and IR Working Group also has a new look, and a particularly awesome and growing resources page. And there’s now an Occupy IR Theory blog and associated hashtag (#occupyirtheory, natch), which is worth both a virtual engagement and a flesh-world contribution. Similarly, if for any reason you are unaware of David Campbell’s blog on visual culture and international politics, rectify yourselves!

This week, I attended the International Political Economy Group (IPEG, pronounced as I-PEG) annual meeting at Warwick University which was extremely special given that this year marked 40 years since the discipline of International Political Economy was founded by Susan Strange (see What is IPE? for an introduction to IPE and a short background to Strange). It only attended Day 2 of the workshop (the whole schedule is here) mostly because of the theme. Yes, Susan Strange is the mother of IPE but I wasn’t really trained with Strange’s stuff on markets, states, casino capitalism that sort of thing.

Anyway, Day 2 was a good pick as the First speaker was none other than Geoffrey Underhill. A renown IPE academic, he’s most well known for his book, Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (with many new editions) and now a Professor at the university of Amsterdam. He brought up a very engaging history of IPE and his journey and challenges in IPE. Some highlights include: IPE should not be a subset of IR (which I fully agree with), IPE looking back at Classical Political Economy (that was how I was I enter IPE, a la Matthew Watson), IPE encompasses many disciplines but should be an independent field, IPE scholars should have a broader coverage than IR scholars and also, the classic trans-Atlantic IPE divide: the classic debate started by Benjamin Cohen, counter by Richard Higgot and Matthew Watson and John Ravenhill and re-joined again by Cohen–all of this cna be found in the Review of International Political Economy. Professor Underhill also mentioned some four majro points but I failed to take down all the details.

Next came a panel titled, “Reflections on the knowledge structure”. This was entirely new subject area to me but it was educational covering areas that I didn’t expect to be part of IPE such as energy security. Following that was another presenter looking the history of IPE and her journey through the discipline–Professor Nicola Philips. She mentioned several arguments that were close to what Professor Underhill made but she also argued that IPE scholars should also deconstruct the debates within the sub-topics of IPE. She also mentioned stuff such as critical IPE and “Rising Powers” (middle-income countries.

After lunch was a panel titled, “Reflections on the production structure”. This was still something new to me but the speakers less so. I knew Phoebe Moore, who presented her books on labour institutions, through the British International Studies Association (BISA) Manchester conference. Simon Glaze, who argued about digging back into Adam Smith and William James to find the roots of IPE was a former PhD Researcher at Birmingham and one of the seminar tutors during my first year, although he didn’t teach me. Matthew Watson was in fact Glaze’s supervisor and it was he who brought me up with Classical Political Economists such as Smith but not William James, who is new to me.

The final panel (correction: Matthew Watson didn’t present, it was someone else) was on the same theme, entering into IPE fields that were more familiar to me such as migration. Matthew Bishop from the University of the West Indies gave a unique argument about Caribbean IPE, indicating that there are wider perspectives than the “mainstream” IPE–British and American or Western IPE. That also means that no one has bothered to forge Asian/Pacific IPE. Incidentally, during the IPE module taught by Colin Thain last year, he also brought up the proposal of drafting a non-Western IPE. Hmmm…

The last part was a roundtable discussion by four (not three as in the web link) major IPE academics who are also editors of IPE publications. Nicola Philips edits the New Political Economy journal, Ronen Palan is one of the editors of the Review of International Political Economy (RIPE), Rorden Wilkinson who published many books on trade and edits the Global Institutions series by Routledge and Leonard Seabrooke who also is a co-editor of the RIPE journal. By this time I was quite lethargic to note down what was mentioned by this fantastic quartet but their input was amazing.

Heading home, I had several thoughts. One, IPE is indeed a young discipline but one of a very unique and relevant stature and definitely covering a wider depth than typical political economy and definitely International Relations. Two, while I’m part of IPEG and IPEG in the UK has been well established, IPE itself is still not a widely taught field–definitely not taught at undergraduate level in some of the world’s top universities/colleges. For this, I’m thankful I studied at Brum and was brought up with academics like Matthew Watson and Andre Broome. Third, IPE can cover many disciplines–as I found out through this IPEG conference. And that is what I’m trying to do in my thesis…

Particularly of interest is the disclosure in the paper that much of the documentation drawn on to build Thornton’s case is already in the public domain, having been the subject of a series of Freedom of Information (FoI) requests in the years since the arrests. Much of the most damning material comes from a comparison of emails, reports and other documentation that has been released under FoI, or which is linked to written documents that Thornton says he possesses, and so which could be easily checked in a court of law. There is reference to meetings, but even here quotes are linked to transcripts. All of which rather puts into question Nottingham’s contention that defamation was a serious threat. Moreover, Thornton makes a good defence of naming names on other grounds – which is precisely that he is not seeking to bring the University into disrepute, but to single out those most responsible for a calumnious series of events.

It turns out, for example, that Thornton has been subjected to a series of investigations since 2008, apparently of increasing triviality. At one point he was charged with providing faulty reading lists on the grounds that he did not add his office hours to the front page and included too many essays on a module guide. The fallout for Hicham Yezza and Rizwaan Sabir has been somewhat more serious – in addition to continual stops-and-searches after the incident, both have been listed on Home Office documents enumerating ‘major Islamist plots’ against the UK.

But what of the trigger for the arrests in the first place? We might assume an innocent misunderstanding occurred, with regrettable consequences. But:

what were these three documents that had ‘no valid reason whatsoever…to exist’ [as the University Registrar described them to the police]; documents which were ‘utterly indefensible’ for Yezza (and, later, for Sabir) to have, and documents which count not be sent via the university’s computer system? Well, two were articles from the journals Foreign Affairs and the Middle East Policy Council Journal, while the other was a publicly available document downloaded from the United States Department of Justice (US DoJ) website.

It’s hard to say anything positive about anyone who thinks work published in Foreign Policy is illegal. Criminal in some slighlty different sense, perhaps, but not illegal. As Thornton dryly comments, you can buy it in airports. Sadly, it gets worse:

All three of these publications that had ‘no valid reason to exist whatsoever’ were also available from the University of Nottingham’s own library – although at that time the book, the Al Qaeda Training Manual, would have had to have been ordered through the inter-library loan system… However, in this particular book form the reader would be rewarded with a more complete version than that available on any US government website, such as that of the US DoJ… This is important to note for future reference: the document that led to the arrests, the Al Qaeda Training Manual, appears in its fullest and most complete form as a book available from the University of Nottingham’s own library. In fact, as of 2011, a new (2010) UK-published version of the Al Qaeda Training Manual – which is now the most complete ever published – is on the shelves of the University of Nottingham’s main library.

Following the arrests, the police searched Sabir’s home and found standard academic texts. The only document that could be seen as in any way suspicious was the Al Qaeda Training Manual:

Sabir and Yezza were held and questioned for six days because of these three publications; publications which were publicly available and which any student studying Islam, Islamism or terrorism would consider to be perfectly normal. Students are, indeed, encouraged to engage, specifically, with the Al Qaeda Training Manual by basic undergraduate texts such as Gus Martin’s Understanding Terrorism. This helpfully provides a link to this self-same US DoJ website so that students can have a look at it for themselves… In book form, five different presses have produced versions of the Al Qaeda Training Manual. The most recent edition (2010) is from a British publishing firm whose retail arm actually supplies the University of Nottingham with all its books! And Rohan Gunaratna, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on the study of terrorism, wrote to Sabir to say he thought that the Al Qaeda Training Manual was, quote, ‘required reading’ for anyone studying Al Qaeda.

Add to this that, um, it’s apparently not even a real Al Qaeda training manual, with its more commonly-heard title an introduction by the DoJ (the actual title is ‘Military Studies in the Jihad Against the Tyrants’). According to Thornton, the only person at the University of Nottingham who had deemed the document ‘illegal’ was a Professor of Romance Languages and Literary Theory in the School of Modern Languages, whose:

aberrant judgement was later to be taken, expanded upon and reinforced by the phenomenon of ‘groupthink’. But this was a form of groupthink that was malign. A whole series of actors across a whole series of institutions, agencies and government departments went with [the Professor's] initial judgement. No-one questioned it. But if just one person in just one position of authority somewhere in the chain had stopped to say – ‘Hang on, is this really true?’ – then common sense may just have prevailed and we would not have reached the ‘major Islamist plot’ endgame. But nobody in authority ever did stop to consider the situation; and so common sense was never given a chance. And maybe, just maybe, this whole host of actors went with the flow because they wanted to see these men guilty of something. Their minds seemed, in classic groupthink style, to be completely closed to alternatives.

The character of the University of Nottingham’s response to the non-illegality of the Al Qaeda Training Manual seems to have been to engage in some rather open profiling, since their defence amounted to saying that the document was legal (it was, after all, available through the library), but that it was illegitimate to use it for research purposes if you were Rizwaan Sabir. At one stage, the University of Nottingham’s Vice-Chancellor is said to have explained to Bill Rammell, a Home Office Minister at the time, that since Sabir was ‘not an academic…there are no issues of academic freedom’ at stake. In other words, inquiry is free, so long as you don’t actually try to cash in your abstract rights in concrete terms.

On Thornton’s account, the University of Nottingham compounded error with error. They gave the Home Office the impression that the document was a training manual distributed by Al Qaeda itself (it was not), repeatedly suggested that the materials were illegitimate for research (they were not, and those making the statements were not qualified to say either way), and sent out University-wide messages misrepresenting the issues, as when:

[a] portal statement notes that ‘It is clear that there is no “right” to access and research terrorist materials… This is the law and applies to all universities’. This is itself not true. Everyone in the UK has the right to ‘access and research terrorist materials’. This was confirmed by the Court of Appeal judges led by the Lord Chief Justice in a judgement of 13 February 2008 (the ‘Bradford’ case). He said that any member of the public had a ‘right’, not only to ‘access’ terrorist materials, but also to ‘possess’ them. His judgement made clear that ‘the intention of the legislation [the Terrorism Act 2000] had been to criminalise possession of items that might be used in making a bomb’, not mere ‘literature’… The crime would only come if someone then went on to use such literature to plan or to execute a terrorist act. Until that happens all literature remains benign and free for anyone to use. The Al Qaeda Training Manual is mere literature (and, moreover, does not tell ‘terrorists’ how to make a bomb). Hence, even if we were not talking about a library book here, Sabir had a perfect right, if he wanted, to send actual ‘terrorist materials’ to Yezza, and Yezza had a perfect right to store those ‘terrorist materials’ on his ‘computer drive’.

It then seems that the University stuck to its claim that the document was illegitimate for research, despite several interventions demonstrating that this was not so. Moreover, the Registrar called a meeting with Sabir to warn him about his future conduct and to impress on him the great costs he had brought on the school, despite him having been released on the basis that, you know, he hadn’t done anything illegal.

I had become deeply concerned by the Registrar’s warning letter to Sabir. This was my student. It bears repeating that the Registrar had already publicly stated that: ‘there is no “prohibition” on accessing terrorist materials for the purpose of research’. He had already told me that Sabir was ‘arrested not for the research he was undertaking but because of his connection with the originator of the concern, a member of staff in Modern Languages [i.e. Yezza]‘. He had also said, ‘this material [the Al Qaeda Training Manual] is of a nature which [is] defensible in terms of academic inquiry’. So why now, weeks after the arrests and in this letter to Sabir, was the Registrar telling him that the Al Qaeda Training Manual was ‘illegal’? Once more we have the question as to why he was saying one thing in public, while behind the scenes he was expressing a quite contrary view. And crucially – in his use of the second person – the Registrar was making it clear that this document must only be ‘illegal’ for Sabir to possess. He wrote: ‘I had been informed by the police that it was illegal for you to possess this type of material in the UK’. But what was it about this young Muslim student that led to this particular verdict?

Sabir applied for a PhD at Nottingham and, despite confusion on the part of some, achieved the MA grade required to start there. Thornton, convinced that the University was out to get his student, advised him to find another offer as quickly as possible for further years. When Sabir did this (he is now an ESRC-funded PhD student at Strathclyde) emails from management  and senior academics testify to their untrammelled glee at his departure (the quotes from their emails in Thornton’s paper are littered with joyous exclamation marks).

Thornton’s paper does give clues as to the animus against him and the reasons colleagues may have wanted to see the BISA paper taken down (and who knows what legal threats have been made against BISA itself?). Although emails released by FoI exonerate Sabir even of bad temper, others in the School of Politics appear rather more petty and vindictive in their correspondence. Academics who supported the case for arresting Yezza and Sabir, and testified to the illegitimacy of the latter’s research, are named and shamed. Academics and UCU members are identified as defending management and their conduct in doing so is criticised (although these are already matters of some public record). Thornton speculates, with some good reason, that changes to a Wikipedia page about Sabir casting doubt on his rights to academic freedom, although  purportedly edited by students, were actually written by Nottingham academics with access to inside ‘information’. There is also the issue of how Sabir’s overall mark was brought down (two internal examiners, one of whom was Thornton, had awarded 74-75% for the work, while, under circumstances that Thornton finds suspicious, an external examiner sought to have the mark brought down to a level which might threaten Sabir’s chances of progressing to doctoral study).

Having been caught up in this case for several years now, Thornton might be forgiven some over-zealousness in covering every aspect of the controversy, and for addressing each plot point in this petty and vindictive story. He may have erred, and his claims may be misleading or partial. Certainly, he is conscious throughout of the ethical criticisms that may be levelled at him for naming colleagues, but he seems to have taken reasonable steps to anonymise where possible and to refer to correspondence already made public. Many of the more senior academics he criticises have already themselves taken public stands on the issues. In general, there does not seem much here that would be out of place in a very detailed journalistic study of the event (journalistic in the sense of conveying the narrative of events and apportioning some blame).

The defence offered by Thornton – that this narrative matters, and that there are scandals here that demand revealing – is persuasive, but even if it were not, there is no way of evaluating it if disclosure and discussion is to be limited in the name of the amorphous ‘reputation’ of Nottingham or of the ability of individuals involved to escape scrutiny. Ultimately, the whole saga turns on the initial (pre)judgement. Whatever else may be said, there seems no doubt that Yezza and Sabir were unfairly targeted, that the documentation they shared was not only ‘acceptable’, but indicative of good research practice and perhaps even necessary for serious work on terrorism, and that the University failed in its duty of care to them. Thornton’s account is so important because it adds another element to that analysis, one which concerns the active involvement of academics in a campaign against academic freedom and against the rights of their students and staff and for a culture in which the over-riding objective appears not to have been the defence and extension of free inquiry, but the protection of internal hierarchy and imagined institutional standing, regardless of what that might involve.

Following complaints from others at Nottingham, BISA yanked the paper from the online system, so comment on Dr Thornton’s claims is moot. The academic freedom issues at stake are, however, very much alive. Particularly of interest are the grounds on which Nottingham have sought to defend their decisions, both in the initial case and in dealing with Thornton’s internal dissension:

[Academic] freedom is the freedom to question, to criticise, to put forward unpopular ideas and views – it is not the freedom to defame your co-workers and attempt to destroy their reputations as honest, fair and reasonable individuals.

It is important to remember that the original incident, almost three years ago, was triggered by the discovery of an al-Qaida training manual on the computer of an individual who was neither an academic member of staff, nor a student, and in a school where one would not expect to find such material being used for research purposes.

This is disingenuous at several levels. First, the document was discovered on the computer of Hicham Yezza, who worked at Nottingham and had been both a student and Student Union exec member there. The spokesperson’s phrasing implies that his status was suspicious by relying on a sleight-of-hand between academic and non-academic staff (one which could hardly be substantiated as meaningful in a context where academics regularly email documents to ‘support’ staff).

Second, the location of the document is elided with the legitimacy of possessing it. Rizwaan Sabir sent the document (wholly legal and freely available from multiple sources by the way) to Yezza to print. They were friends. Sabir was most certainly a student and most certainly in a school where one would expect to find such material used for research. Apart from the fact that he is now a PhD student at Strathclyde working on counter-terrorism, at the time he was not only a Masters student, but was also being supervised by Thornton, who was not consulted by the University about the situation before the police were called in.

Third, the question of ‘defamation’ is surely an open one at this point. Perhaps Thornton said some particularly nasty things, but there is a prima facie case to suggest that Nottingham mishandled (at best) this entire episode, so it would be a surprise if there weren’t legitimate criticisms to be made of actual people (the leaked details of Thornton’s paper seem very mild indeed). The general approach to ‘vetting’ documentation certainly seems rather damning, especially considering that those doing the authorising of teaching materials appear to have less academic expertise in the area than those preparing the reading lists in the first place.

Obviously, no grand conclusions are possible from this one case, and it will be interesting to see how Nottingham reacts to the backlash. In terms of academic autonomy, it cannot be right for the reputational concerns of a university – increasingly expressed in terms of corporate brand identities that conceptualise staff as sales people – to trump the ability to openly discuss issues directly relevant to the academic study of counter-terrorism in fora specifically set aside for that purpose (by the way, for those who don’t know, BISA insists that you upload the full papers of material you intend to present, so Thornton was just following the rules in the first place).

Moreover, the academic soft kettle should be consciously resisted. It is not up to either managers or other academics to determine which research materials constitute legitimate objects of analysis, and which fall under the rubric of danger and subversion, still less for them to act as the forward intelligence units for state power without even bothering to consult their very own internal experts. The space for intelligent discussion and inquiry is quite restricted enough as it is without the marginal spaces of higher learning having to be brought within the rubric of thought crime.

UPDATE (10 May): There’s a letter today in The Guardian militating for Thornton’s reinstatement. In their finite wisdom the Guardian sub-editors have titled it ‘Calls to reinstate terror academic’, which seems a bit perverse. But hey, it’s their rag. The letter also adds some more detail about Thornton’s original claims:

Dr Thornton carefully details what appear to be examples of serious misconduct from senior university management over the arrest of two university members (The “Nottingham Two”) under the Terrorism Act 2000 in May 2008.The two men were never charged with a terrorism-related offence, and their arrests were perceived as being indicative of a growing tide of Islamophobia. Dr Thornton’s research paper provides apparent confirmation, notably through internal communications obtained via the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Acts, that university management and senior academics colluded to paint the two men in a negative light despite no evidence of wrongdoing.

An independent inquiry is called for. Watch that space.