Spooked

In Australia recently, a number of universities have advised phd students researching terrorism that, under current laws, the information they gather "might" be passed on to security agencies.  A student in the Terrorism Research Project at Monash University was questioned by Federal Police after borrowing books from the library on terrorism.  At least one prominent sociologist has, after receiving a grant, abandoned research into the motivations of suicide bombers.  A paper by the Australian Homeland Security Research Centre urges universities to do more to counter "extremism" on campuses and insists that researchers should "be willing to share the findings of their work with government before publishing". Responding to questions regarding the conduct of research under the so-called 'Anti-Terror' laws, the Attorney-General insisted that prospective researchers should first discuss their research with him, personally, but urged the research to continue.  In other words, the issue here is not censorship (or not quite), so much as ensuring that academics become either de facto or unwitting spooks.  Somewhat sharpens the meaning of 'informant' as used in Qualitative Research Methods 101, does it not?

Comments

[Jared]

Shooting ourselves in the foot, or more precisely, the government shooting academics in the foot.

[Adam Kotsko]

Does Australia have a big terrorism problem?

[s0metim3s]

Not particularly, if one assumes a conventional definition of terrorism, and not if you mean in Australia - and definitely not, in relative terms.

In Australia, there were the activities of the Ustashi in the 1960s, the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference bombing in 1978 (widely regarded as organised by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation), the more recent firebombings of 'Asian' restaurants by neo-nazis, and various attacks on mosques of late. And then there was the bombing of the tourist district in Bali, Indonesia in 2002.