There’s nothing ‘safe’ about letting fanatics preach

Sometime later, one of the heads of this charming society attempts a nail-bombing spree in a direct copy of Copeland's crimes. The details of this young man's student activities come to light. It transpires that people had repeatedly warned the university that this would happen. The press starts to ask how such poisonous people could preach hate on campus.

The university's provost responds. First he announces that it is his critics who are the problem and that opponents of white-supremacist bombers are "prejudiced". He then gives a front-page interview to the Standard explaining that universities "must let" white-racist nail-bomb advocates speak on campus.

All you have to do is exchange white racists for Islamist fanatics, and "prejudice" for "Islamophobia" and you have exactly the degraded position of University College London provost Malcolm Grant. His university's student, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, was allegedly the suicide-bomber who tried to bring down a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day — the third head of a university Islamic society, UCL Union Islamic Society (ISoc), from London alone to have been charged with serious terrorism offences.

As a critic of the radicalisation which Mr Grant has allowed to thrive on campus, I have been keen to debate these matters with him. But he claimed just 11 days ago that until the inquiry he had set up to look into this matter had concluded, he must maintain a monkish silence. The front page of the London Evening Standard strikes me as a conspicuous place to fail in this pledge. What the Standard's interview shows is that Mr Grant still — incredibly — fails to grasp the reality that Islamic extremists are preaching and recruiting on campus.

There are well-documented reasons for this. A disturbing number of Islamist terrorists have found UK campuses the most conducive place to radicalise and develop radical contacts. Mr Grant told the Standard: "Campuses are and should be safe homes for controversy, argument and debate." Sure — but there's nothing "safe" for gay or other minority students at UCL when the ISoc invites guests who call for their murder, or indeed for any of us when Grant's ISoc invites, as they repeatedly have, people who teach when and where to carry out violent jihad. Grant admits that, even for him, free speech has limits and should not extend to "incitement that could lead to terrorism". Except that this is exactly what he has allowed to happen — before Abdulmutallab's time, during it, and right up to the present.

At UCL in the next two days, you will be able to hear, among others, a supporter of the proscribed terrorist group Hamas and a frontman for the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Why Mr Grant thinks this type of bigotry is acceptable is something he might address when he next breaks his silence. He might also tell us why he thinks he is still worthy to lead one of London's foremost universities.

Douglas Murray is director of the Centre for Social Cohesion