In 2011, University of Nottingham lecturer Rod Thornton was suspended after submitting a 112-page paper, “Radicalisation at universities or radicalisation by universities?”, criticizing the institution’s handling of the 2008 arrests of student Rizwaan Sabir and staff member Hicham Yezza. Sabir had been found with academic works from the university library and a digital copy of the Al-Qaeda Training Manual downloaded from a U.S. Department of Justice website. Thornton alleged that senior managers monitored Sabir, influenced his marks, and attempted to justify the police referral through character smears; the university rejected the allegations as containing “clearly defamatory” material.
The dispute expanded into claims that students involved in Palestine and Middle East activities were monitored or secretly filmed, and that security staff destroyed a Gaza memorial. These claims were publicly supported by documents released by Support the Whistleblower at Nottingham and Unileaks, an Observer report, and letters signed by 167 staff, students, and alumni and 67 academics, including Noam Chomsky. In March 2012, Thornton left under a mutual agreement and acknowledged inaccuracies in his article. A University of Nottingham inquiry held in June 2014 found that procedures had not been followed in marking Sabir’s MA dissertation; Sabir consequently received the Merit grade he had been denied in 2009.
