Greater terror in extreme vision 3

I was disturbed by Anthony Glees's suppositional arguments and misleading conflations in his article on campus extremism. We are asked to believe that students absent from classes are plotting revolution, that students who drop out of degrees are "gullible" and that overseas students are, if not carefully "selected", likely to become terrorists.

At the same time, the London bombers had no major connection to UK universities and, of the "three radicals" listed in the sidebar, two were radicalised not on campuses but in war zones. (The third appears to have committed the outrageous sin of quoting the Koran as an epigram to his thesis.)

I have no wish to see violent, bigoted groups on university campuses. But neither do I want a secret police force blundering about.  Glees's suggestions do not protect our "free, liberal way of life" - they smack instead of paranoid McCarthyite repression.

John Arnold, senior lecturer in history, Birkbeck, University of London