boingboing.net, the American tech blog with 1.2 million readers, publish an article on the arrests of Hicham and Rizwaan.
“God, what an embarrassment for the poor bastards who spent years getting a degree at University of Nottingham, forevermore known as ‘The University of Too Stupid to be Believed’ “, the co-editor remarks, while another user comments: “The people behind this decision are an embarrassment to British academia, they certainly do not deserve to hide beneath the administrative mantle they may have assumed when making this policy.”
Uni of Nottingham: Grad students researching terrorism aren’t allowed to look at terrorist documents on US anti-terror gov’t sites
Posted by Cory Doctorow, July 29, 2008 3:22 AM | permalink
Mike sez, “The University of Nottingham has decided that its students and staff have ‘no “right”‘ to possess terrorism-related materials for the purposes of research, such as al-Qaeda training manuals freely available for download from US Government websites. You may know that one Nottingham postgrad student and a clerk were held under the Terrorism Act for doing just this earlier this year, before being released without charge (though the clerk now faces deportation)- the uni has now made it clear that it fully supports these actions, and says that the student has no reason to possess such material. He’s researching Islamic terrorism.”
“The student, Rizwaan Sabir, who is studying Islamic terrorism, said he had downloaded a copy of an al-Qaeda training manual for use in his MA dissertation and PhD application and had forwarded it to the administrator, Hicham Yezza, for printing. After six days in detention, neither was charged.
“Sir Colin referred to a letter of advice issued to Mr Sabir by the police after his release.
“The letter warned Mr Sabir that he risked re-arrest if found with the manual again and added: “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.”
God, what an embarrassment for the poor bastards who spent years getting a degree at University of Nottingham, forevermore known as “The University of Too Stupid to be Believed.” (Thanks, Mike!)
One person comments:
Echidna,
I think you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of research. If someone else can tell me for definite whether or not a certain source is relevant to my enquiries, then they would have to know everything it were possible to discover about that field already.
As an academic (and I am one) ones single duty is to generate original contributions to the body of human knowledge. The entire point of having academic freedom is that neither a university nor the state should dictate what information is drawn upon to reach findings.
Even if I were to draw connections between the patterns of hair on my belly and the weather on Mars, if I were able to construct a decent argument with evidence to back up my thesis, that could still be legitimate research.
How much less outlandish to use terrorism manuals in a project on that very subject. The people behind this decision are an embarrassment to British academia, they certainly do not deserve to hide beneath the administrative mantle they may have assumed when making this policy.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/29/uni-of-nottingham-gr.html
