GOVERNMENT plans to enlist the help of British universities in the war against terrorism have been delayed after academics complained that they were being asked to spy for the British intelligence services.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had invited 100 academics to bid for £1.3 million of funding for a research project entitled Combating Terrorism by Countering Radicalisation.

The project asked academics to “scope the growth in influence and membership of extremist Islamist groups in the past 20 years”, to “name the key figures and groups” and to “understand the use of theological legitimisation for violence”, according to documents seen by The Times Higher Education Supplement.

Yesterday the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), which was running the project with the Foreign Office and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, said that the project had been delayed.

“It has become clear that there were were serious concerns among academics with the original specifications. We are now going to go back and consult with learned societies,” a spokeswoman said.

Concerns had centred on the nature of the research and the secrecy surrounding it. Unlike other ESRC projects, the invitation to tender for funding was not published. Details were circulated only to selected academics.

John Gledhill, chairman of the Association of Social Anthropologists, welcomed the decision to delay the project. “It did appear to be encouraging researchers to identify subjects and groups involved with terrorism in a very person-specific way. That could be interpreted as encouraging researchers to become informers. Being seen as the spy of a foreign government is not a great position for a researcher to be working in in areas of the world that are torn by conflict,” he said.

Martha Mundy, a reader in anthropology at the London School of Economics, said that there was an “overtly security-research agenda” to the project. It started from a “premise of a link between Islamism, radicalisation [nowhere defined] and terrorism”, she said in a letter circulated to the association.

The ESRC denied that the project was intelligence-led.

The FCO, which was contributing £500,000 towards the project, denied that it was using academics as spies to help to counter terrorism. An official said: “Our No 1 priority is to make the world a safer place, and the threat from international terrorism is increasing. We need to look at the reasons why someone from Bradford turns into a suicide bomber and blows up innocent people.”

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