Teaching About Terrorism: York St John University

Teaching About Terrorism is a 2009/10 research project funded by C-SAP, one of the Higher Education Academy's subject networks. The project aims to research the extent and nature of teaching about terrorism in UK Universities, primarily in the disciplines of Sociology, Politics and Criminology.

FOI Concerns

I am sending you York St John University's responses to your Freedom of Information requests made between 26 and 28 April 2010. These are attached to this email message. I would like to take the opportunity to raise my own concerns with you about these requests and your potential direction of travel. I do not want to get into argument about the detailed interpretation of aspects of the Freedom of Information Act or to try to stand on technicalities, but I am not certain that public organisations were intended to respond to the 'agency' type of anonymous request represented by your website. I think it could be argued that institutions are formally entitled to enquire for the identity of the persons on whose behalf you are making the requests. Alternatively, if you were to claim that you are making all these requests personally, it might lead to other concerns about whether such a concentration of requests might be seen to amount to being vexatious.

I would rather not be driven into considering such technicalities and overall, I prefer that York St John responds generously and constructively to Freedom of Information request as befits an institution which tries to be very open in its operations. However, I wonder if I might ask you to consider your approach to YSJU and the sector? Clearly, public interest sits at the heart of the FOIA, but there must also be a public interest avoiding the unnecessary diversion of scarce staff resource from core operations to answering multiple requests, especially at a time when the HE sector is likely to find resource is cut still further. For small organisations such as ours, there are no specialist information managers to deal with such requests. Equally, it is sobering to consider that larger organisations are having to create posts to deal with such matters. I should be grateful if you would read this as my own opinion. It is not formally part of the University's response. I hope, however, that you will think that the points made are worth reflection.

Thank you for considering these remarks.

Freedom of Information Request 1

According to the response of this University to the initial four part teaching terrorism FOI request, the answer to all four questions was 'no' . The four questions being:

• Does your institution provide any information or advice to students or staff on any potential liability under Terrorism legislation which might result from accessing materials for teaching or research ?

• Does your institution have any kind of procedure to review or assess reading lists, module descriptors or other teaching materials which explicitly or in practice considers questions of safety and risk under terrorism legislation as part of its remit ?

• Does your institution have any system, policy or procedure in place for dealing with any potential actions taken by the authorities against the institution, its students or staff under Terrorism legislation ?

• Does your institution have any system, policy or procedure in place for ‘preventing violent extremism’ as recommended for example in the government guidance document ‘Promoting Good Campus Relations’

Resources

• Freedom of Information Results, Teaching About Terrorism: FOI Results
• York St John, Acceptable use policy for University IT systems, Scribd
• York St John, Disclosure of Information Policy, Scribd
• York St John, Code of Conduct and Disciplinary Rules, Scribd
• York St John, Collated FOI Responses to Ian Benson, Scribd