ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the legal and political context in which the Prevent duty has come to operate in universities. It focuses on free speech in particular. The chapter is concerned with problematization of free speech in universities. It reviews the origins of the Prevent policy and the invention of ‘radicalization’, which is a pseudo-science unsupported by academic literature. The chapter describes how Prevent affects freedom of speech in universities. It explores how universities, in effect, became a space of exception in the Prevent regime. Despite the problems experienced in the sector, free speech is, in theory, protected in universities in a way enjoyed by no other sector, such as schools or health services. The chapter looks at the legislative struggle in parliament over the creation of the Prevent duty, which centred almost exclusively on the threat it posed to freedom of expression and to academic freedom in universities, to the exclusion of concerns about other sectors.
