Maisie: Page 94, the Private Eye Podcast
Andy: Hello and welcome to part five of this year's Paul Foot Award miniseries.
Let's find out who today's shortlist he is.
Aaron Walawalkar: So I'm Aaron Walla Walker.
I'm a reporter at Liberty Investigates.
I worked on this investigation with my editor Harriet Clarkston,
and in partnership with the Metro Guardian and Sky News.
our investigation revealed what a teaching union described as a worsening
crackdown on Gaza activism at UK universities, which included close
collaboration with the police use of private intelligence companies,
and a large number of disciplinary investigations against students and staff.
Andy: So how did this story first come to your attention?
Aaron Walawalkar: So Liberty investigates our missions to plug
gaps in UK media coverage in an area that we were looking to pivot into was
threats to the rights of protesters.
in April, may last year, Harriet and I were discussing the kind of shocking
images that were coming out the US of, protestors being tear gassed, academics
being handcuffed and tackled to the ground at the same time that the encampment
movement was spreading to the uk.
Harriet thought that we should be keeping an eye on this, and I suggested that
perhaps we could submit information requests to universities for their
correspondence with the police, and also dig into kind of disciplinaries that might
be happening against students or referrals to the Prevent extremism program.
Andy: Okay.
That's a, very clever way of doing it through freedom of information requests
for that specific correspondence.
and what did those requests reveal?
Aaron Walawalkar: we submitted them to all UK universities and
we hadn't really submitted these requests to universities before.
A lot of our reporting to date was focusing primarily on police
forces and the home office.
and we found that they could generally be quite obstructive with the kind of
information that we were requested.
Andy: sorry.
Yeah, go on.
Aaron Walawalkar: Yeah, we hope that universities might be a
bit more kind of forthcoming.
but it really varied from university to university.
and with the first investigation, which we published last summer with
the Metro, The kind of things that we found were quite close, cozy.
some would say, conversations between campus security teams and the police.
the close monitoring of students', social media, pages, and emails, which kind
of conveyed the tone of seeing students as threats rather than, people that
they have a duty to look after, who are ultimately paying a large number of fees.
Andy: Yeah.
Aaron Walawalkar: Yeah.
Andy: and when, you say the close, scrutiny and monitoring of these
students, is that being conducted by the police or by the campus authorities?
who's doing that?
Aaron Walawalkar: It's a combination.
for instance, at the University of East Anglia, an email that we uncovered, showed
the police flagging, the flying of a Palestinian flag in the student union.
which the police said that while not an offense, didn't look well on the
establishment, So that was instance of the police flagging it to university.
there are other instances where the university had identified something
on social media and then, flag it to the police for advice such as
at Warwick University, where they were concerned about, a talk by, a
Palestinian sort of, youth group.
so it's a combination.
Andy: So I think one thing we should be clear about as well, 'cause it sounds
like you've done a lot of reporting on the restriction of liberty to protest.
what, are these protests that, that you've been describing,
what are they consisting of?
Are they, for example, violent protests where suddenly people's opinions
of them might change a great deal?
Aaron Walawalkar: the protests that we focused on, particularly at sort
of Newcastle University, they were described by witnesses as, especially
at the beginning being nonviolent.
they are disruptive in many instances.
it could be an encampment or an occupation of a building.
Yeah.
Andy: Yeah.
Aaron Walawalkar: and yeah, the demands of the protestors.
generally they're calling for their universities to be transparent, about what
their kind of investments are with regards to, involvement in the conflict in Israel
and Gaza, to disclose those investments and ultimately stop those investments.
Andy: think that's an important point to make.
'cause I think people's views of protests really differ
depending on what they consist of.
But I think the, the establishment of a, right to nonviolent protest or
to find out what your university's invested its money in, will strike
many people as quite reasonable.
And the reaction of, security authorities at these universities seems.
quite brisk, I would say.
And you covered a really interesting organization called the Association of
University Chief Security Officers, which I'd never heard of, and I'm sure a lot
of listeners won't have heard of either.
Can you tell us about them and, their involvement in this story?
Aaron Walawalkar: the kind of first phase of our investigation, which
we published with the Metro, an email that one university released
made us aware of this little known organization, which you described.
We've been coming, it s so I'm not sure how best to pronounce the acronym.
Yeah, but it's a kind of professional body, for campus security staff.
most of the kind of, campus security teams from across the UK have signed
up to it, and emails that we uncovered.
Showed this kind of forum where, campus security teams were trading updates
on encampments that had popped up on their, university kind of campuses.
doing a little bit of digging.
I noticed that the chairman, of the organization had posted on LinkedIn that
he last summer, went to the US to visit his kind of counterparts, the police
chiefs there, as part of a conference, which I thought was quite curious.
particularly, 'cause the response in the US was so
Andy: draconian heavy
Aaron Walawalkar: Exactly.
Yeah.
So we thought, how could we find out a little bit more about what
these discussions involved and, that informed the next phase of our
investigation where we submit another round of FOI requests to universities,
specifically for correspondence shared with and via this organization,
which, isn't actually subject to FOI itself 'cause it's not public body.
but we try to get around that by going to the universities.
And then that, uncovered another sort of, email that, the chairman had sent
to everyone, the kind of lessons learned from that conference that he attended.
and that essentially was the, US police chiefs were bemoaning, the reprimanding
that they faced, in response to their kind of, draconian heavy handed
approach to protests, across the pond.
so that was last August.
And in anticipation of a kind of, another wave of, protest activity in the uk, with
the academic term starting, they were talking of hosting joint workshops with
US counterparts, to prepare for that.
and also promoting the use of, A couple of private intelligence companies.
One of them is called Dataminr, which has been used, to monitor
George Floyd protestors in the us, and another company known as Horace.
Andy: that feels like quite a big step for British universities to be taking in terms
of active monitoring of their students.
Aaron Walawalkar: it's a really Concerning development, which I
think many would think would have a chilling effect on individuals
and expressing themselves freely.
Andy: there, there have been lots of real world consequences.
There have been lots of disciplinary procedures and so on for students as
a result of all this, haven't there?
Aaron Walawalkar: Yes.
the data that we uncovered showed that, between October, 2023 and August,
2024, 28 universities had launched disciplinary investigations, against
as many as 113 staff and students.
the data that we've got back, is somewhat incomplete in terms of the
very, the granular detail of that.
lot of universities wouldn't necessarily provide, very specific
reasons because they said that could identify individuals involved.
but we spoke to individual students and, there's definitely concerns as to whether
these disciplinary investigations, which can go on for months are proportionate.
in one instance, a student was subject to months of investigation
for attending unauthorized protests that was at Leeds at Newcastle.
another protestor was disciplined over a chance, which a senior
member of staff took offense to.
They were ultimately exonerated, but they were subject to the kind of, yeah,
several months long investigation.
Andy: Where do you think the story goes next?
Does it depend what the protest movement in particular does next?
or is it more about how AO and, et al are gonna respond
Aaron Walawalkar: in terms of where the story goes next?
So we're very much still looking into this, issue so
I'm not sure how much to say,
Andy: No.
Fair enough.
No spoilers.
Aaron Walawalkar: but you'll send off a huge number of FOI requests
and receive loads of documents back, and you might uncover without
expecting to a particular element, which forms a new kind of like lead.
and yeah.
some material that we got back from the kind of latest round of fois has
prompted us to dig into another kind of lead a bit more systematically.
And
Andy: How Interesting.
Aaron Walawalkar: more stories out soon, I'm sure.
Andy: Were there, legal challenges along the way?
what did any of the universities you were writing to, did they
prove seriously obstructive?
Did they say this is, none of your business basically?
Aaron Walawalkar: yeah, certain universities being quite obstructive with
releasing information under the FOI act.
and that kind of prompted us to.
do a bit of reflection as well.
I think the universities that we focused on, particularly in our first story, who
we, I guess we shamed in a way because they'd been transparent about the ways
in which they'd restricted protest.
Other universities such as Oxford, for example, which has been regularly
citing the law enforcement exemption to prevent disclosure of any of the kind
of, material that we had requested.
Andy: So we should say there are various exemptions to
freedom of information requests.
One is, there one about commercially sensitive information and there's one
about implications for law enforcement.
If this has effect on police activity, then actually they
don't have to tell you anything
Aaron Walawalkar: Precisely.
Yeah.
So that's the most common lease sighted sort of exemption.
As well as the health and safety exemption.
a number of universities have seen fit to disclose a lot of the material that
we asked for, but just redact those like particularly sensitive details, which they
can demonstrate will have some sort of causal negative impact on law enforcement.
but other universities, where there's been like notable, concerning sort of treatment
of protestors, they've just issued blanket refusals and not released anything.
And, in a way they didn't receive very much kind of focus in
our initial piece because they didn't release much information.
we addressed that, with our partner Sky News in the sort
of story that we published last February by producing a table.
They produced a table, where students or anyone readers can go in and look up
every university that we ffo wide and see how they responded, in a way holding to
account those who are less transparent.
Andy: because otherwise they just don't appear in the story and then no one knows.
Yeah.
is this part of a broader chill across, protest in the uk?
'cause there have been lots of legal changes to the ways in which protesters
can be, arrested or even imprisoned.
things like the just stop oil protest, that kind of thing.
Aaron Walawalkar: Yeah, I think, although we haven't seen, In the
examples that we're looking at on university campuses, use of the,
laws that have been passed under the former government, and which, yeah.
there are the current government is still plowing ahead with,
I'm sure that it's setting the mood music to, influencing universities in
their approach towards protesting at least amongst a number of universities
that featured in our report, rather than seeing it something that they have a duty
to facilitate, which is part and parcel of young people going to university
and exploring their political views and, taking part in protest activity.
perhaps more seeing it as a nuisance, which, they're are more inclined to
have a kind of knee jerk reaction to and try and put a stop to.
Andy: it's a terrific story and I'm sure there'll be plenty more
from Liberty investigators on it, so congratulations again, Erin.
Aaron Walawalkar: Thank you so much.
Andy: Thanks again to Aaron.
A really interesting story there.
We will be back again tomorrow with our final shortlist D. See you then.