James Beal, Social Affairs Editor Monday January 22 2024, 12.01am GMT, The Times
King’s College London is believed to be examining changes it could make to a counterterrorism training course after facing allegations that it was biased.
Academics have denied that the three-day training was politically biased, after complaints from Anna Stanley, a former Foreign Office official, who attended the course last year and claimed it had amounted to indoctrination.
A source told The Times that senior figures at the college were looking at the complaints to establish their credibility. They said: “The very high reputation King’s College has earned for counterterrorism-related studies needs to be protected.
“Steps are being taken to ensure, first of all, whether these complaints were correctly made or not. If so, that appropriate changes are made to any course materials and possibly to the way in which the courses are provided, including by whom.”
Stanley claimed that a professor had called the British writer Douglas Murray and the American podcaster Joe Rogan examples of the “far right” who should be suppressed by society. Sir William Shawcross, who led a review of the government’s Prevent programme, was allegedly described as the “type of person who would say all current counterterrorism professionals are woke”.
The complaints prompted Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, to order a review of the Home Office’s use of external courses for civil servants.
Peter Neumann, who is a professor of security studies at the university but is not director of the course, was among several academics accused of delivering the “woke” sessions for civil servants.
In a letter to The Times last week he said “nothing could be further from the truth”. Any suggestion that lectures were “woke” or belittled the threat were untrue, he said, adding: “None of the people involved in teaching the course recognise this description.”
He said that he had never asked for Murray, or anyone else, to be censored, adding: “I am a centre- right liberal and, as such, am highly critical of ‘cancel culture’, whether from the right or left.”
Neumann, who founded the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and has advised governments, said that he had criticised the Shawcross review for prioritising jihadism when security agencies said that right-wing extremism was more dangerous but had praised other aspects of Shawcross’s work.
A source close to King’s College denied there was a review of the course. A spokesman said that it had been run for civil servants on behalf of the Foreign Office, adding: “Attendees were taught by eminent experts using impartial and evidence-based resources in an environment where different theories, concepts and questions are shared to prompt discussion.”
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