Last week, I visited one of the encampments for Palestine happening on university campuses to speak about Prevent and how it is being weaponised to suppress student activism. We sat in the sunshine under the trees, a collection of diverse student societies united in purpose, with integrity and principle. The beautiful simplicity of this was juxtaposed by the ugly presence of Prevent, and the way in which it has complicated, intertwined and imposed itself on this activism and student life. Universities as incubators of positive change The university has always been a space for challenging and changing outdated power structures and ideologies; they have never been about enforcing students to succumb or sustain to a particular system or ideology. In 859 CE, a Tunisian woman named Fatima al-Fihri founded the world’s first University, Al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco. It was established as a mosque-college and offered studies in politics as well […]