The counter-terrorist campus: Securitisation theory and university securitisation – Three Models

Abstract

With intensified threats to global security from international terrorism, universities have become a focus for security concerns and marked as locus of special interest for the monitoring of extremism and counter-terrorism efforts by intelligence agencies worldwide.Drawing on initiatives in the United Kingdom and United States, I re-frame three – covert, overt and covert–overt – intersections of education, security and intelligence studies as a theoretical milieu by which to understand such counter-terrorism efforts.Against the backdrop of new legislative guidance for universities in an era of global terrorism and counter-terrorism efforts by security and intelligence agencies and their Governments, and through a review of Open-Source security/intelligence concerning universities in the United Kingdom and the United States, I show how this interstitial (covert, overt and covert– overt) complexity can be further understood by the overarching relationship between securitisation theory and university securitisation.An emergent securitised concept of university life is important because de facto it will potentially effect radical change upon the nature and purposes of the university itself.A current-day situation replete with anxiety and uncertainty, the article frames not only a sharply contested and still unfolding political agenda for universities but a challenge to the very nature and purposes of the university in the face of a potentially existential threat. Terrorism and counterterrorism, as manifest today, may well thus be altering the aims and purposes of the university in ways we as yet do not fully know or understand. This article advances that knowledge and understanding through a theoretical conceptualisation: the counter-terrorist campus.

A reflective analysis of articles published in the journal of Transformation in Higher Education (2016–2020): Beyond transformation?

“…Interrogating epistemology, epistemological practices and curricula are crucial to transformation in higher education. Authors in this journal have robust engagements with epistemology, epistemological practices and curriculum (Eybers 2019;Gearon 2017Gearon , 2019Heleta 2016 Ramrathan (2016) explains how transformation in higher education since 1994 has mostly taken on a number-counting, instrumentalised modality. The saturation of neo-liberalism and capitalism remains embedded in South African curricula practices.…”

The Educational Sociology and Political Theology of Disenchantment: From the Secularization to the Securitization of the Sacred

“…The European Agenda on Security (EAS 2015) too has drawn universities in particular to similar territory, recognizing knowledge generation in higher education as a site of security impacts, positive as well as in terms of threat. I have long characterized such movements as the 'counter-terrorist classroom' (Gearon 2013) and the 'counter-terrorist campus' (Gearon 2017c;. In religion in education such exemplars represent what securitization theorists call a 'securitizing move' (for example, Taureck 2006).…”

Secularisation and the Securitisation of the Sacred a Response to Lewin’s Framing of the Gearon–Jackson Debate

“…Suffice to say, though, the frame of securitisation theory, OSCE involvement in religion in education can be seen as a 'securitising move' (for example Taureck, 2006;Gearon 2017a). It was Milbank once called a 'policing of the sublime' and what I term here a 'securitization of the sacred'.…”

“…I think in short there is more at stake than some religious educationalists seem to realise. Religion does indeed continue to be a critical force in contemporary geopolitics and a powerful fact in educational debate (see Gearon, 2017a;. Here a short additional response cannot do justice to a debate that must continue, but I am glad to have the opportunity to make some additional commentary (Gearon 2017;.…”