From the Times Higher Education Online:

the University of Nottingham has told his staff.

In a statement issued to the university last week, Sir Colin Campbell says: “There is no ‘right’ to access and research terrorist materials. Those who do so run the risk of being investigated and prosecuted on terrorism charges. Equally, there is no ‘prohibition’ on accessing terrorist materials for the purpose of research. Those who do so are likely to be able to offer a defence to charges (although they may be held in custody for some time while the matter is investigated). This is the law and applies to all universities.”

[...]

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.

In Isaac Brewer’s SRA 111 course, students plotted and researched possible terrorist attacks on Beaver Stadium and State College; in Jake Graham’s SRA 211 course students planned and role-played a fictional terrorist attack on the United States which was extremely immersive: the Red Team put out “intercepted” communications, FBI, CIA, and NSA reports, fake bank statements, fictional terrorist bios, and even a fake presidential itinerary. It’s entirely plausible that a student in SRA courses could be detained for similar materials.

It hardly seems possible to research and understand terrorists without actually being able to read their training manuals and other materials. It would be akin to denying historians Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf for fear of neo-Nazism. Such a fear-driven policy of keeping researchers in the dark does not make for good security.

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