Anthony Glees

"Anthony Glees MA MPhil DPhil (Oxford) is professor of Politics at the University of Buckingham and directs its Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies (BUCSIS). With a full programme of research and teaching (some thirty students are currently taking its MA, MPhil and PhD programmes) BUCSIS is one of the largest such centres in Europe...He is the author of six books (four of which are single authored), numerous chapters in books and scholarly articles. He is a member of the international advisory boards of the Centre for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism at Macquarie University, Australia, the Asia-Pacific Foundation in London, the Research Institute for European and American Studies in Athens, Greece and the Oxford Intelligence Group. He is a member of the Editorial Board of Intelligence and National Security and The Journal for Policing, Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism and the Advisory Board of The Journal of Intelligence Ethics...

"Anthony Glees was the advisor to the War Crimes Inquiry in the Home Office (1988-90) and his work on the Stasi was debated in Parliament on 21 December 1999. He has also worked for the head of Current Affairs at BBC TV (1987-88). In January 2010 he was invited to give evidence to the All-Party Parliamentary Homeland Security Group. He has been invited to speak to expert audiences within the UK, the United States and the European Union (since 2001 he has been a senior security policy advisor to the EPP Parties in the European Parliament via the European Ideas Network, the EIN and visited many European nations in this capacity). In January 2010 he was appointed a professor of trust (Vertrauensdozent) by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation."

Since 2002 he has been an expert consultant on security issues to the European Ideas Network, a think-tank attached to the EPP-ED Group in the European Parliament. [1]

"Professor Glees is the Director for the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security" [2]

A historian by training, his 1987 The Secrets of the Service: British Intelligence and Communist Subversion was one arguably the first academically rigorous treatment of early Cold War Soviet penetration of the UK intelligence and security services. His recent The Stasi Files represents the only detailed historical analysis of East German intelligence operations in the UK based on the archives of the East German secret service. Besides identifying a number of significant Stasi 'agents of influence' in the UK, The Stasi Files has been described by Michael Evans of The Times as one of 'the best books about the Cold War.'

With Dr. Davies he is co-author of Spinning the Spies: Intelligence, Open Government and the Hutton Inquiry (published by the Social Affairs Unit (SAU) in late autumn, 2004) and the BCISS working paper on the Butler Review Butler's Dilemma: Lord Butler’s Inquiry and the Reassessment of Intelligence on Iraq's WMD published by the Social Affairs Unit. [3]

Anthony Glees co-published a report entitled When Students Turn to Terror: Terrorist and Extremist Activity on British Campuses in 2005 [4]

"The study of campus extremist and terrorist activity that I have done with my colleague Chris Pope shows that UK universities and colleges have dropped their guard for so long that there is every reason to believe such groups constitute a real security threat." [5]

Criticism

The report was criticised by the National Union of Students, NUS National President Kat Fletcher and NUS Black Students' Officer Pav Akhtar said:

"The paper offers nothing to the serious debate about how to address terrorism in society".

"No evidence is presented to support the view that campus life contributes to students becoming involved in terrorism, other than that some individuals who have been, or are alleged to have been, involved in terrorist activity also attended a UK college at some point".

"NUS fears that the report's unsubstantiated claims have the potential to endanger Muslim students by inflaming a climate of racism, fear and hostility, and place a cloud over perfectly legitimate student Islamic societies." [6]

David Rhind, vice-chancellor of City University, has been one of the most vociferous critics of the research. City was included in a list of universities where extremism was said to have been detected. However, Professor Rhind said this allegation was based on nothing more than the fact that Sajid Badat, who pleaded guilty to attempted terrorism, had once been offered a place to study at City, which he had not taken up. [7]

He added that the research as a whole, which was described by Universities UK as being built largely on "anecdotal evidence", "appeared to be based on a collection of snippings from the internet with no quality control". [8]

Affiliations

• Former, Social Affairs Unit - With his former student Chris Pope, Glees is the author of When Students Turn to Terror: Terrorist and Extremist Activity on British Campuses Published by the right wing Social Affairs Unit in Autumn 2005.
• Former director of Alpha Intelligence Management