Tolerating exclusive societies is nail in coffin of university ideals

It is entirely self-serving for Malcolm Grant to say that universities should not police their students.

Universities have always policed students in the sense that they have kept an eye on them and encouraged them to feel that they were being taught and challenged as individuals.

If Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was not radicalised on campus he is the exception rather than the rule. He is the fourth president of a university Islamic society to be involved in serious terrorist charges.

Many student Islamic societies act as parallel student unions, looking after their members' welfare. This leads directly to social exclusion and the creation of Muslim enclaves. In allowing this situation to continue, universities are failing to make Muslim students feel that they are part of one campus community.

That makes it possible for a very small number of people to believe that it is only by blowing this country up that they can see the political changes that they want.

Universities are there to give higher education to the people who are going to play a formative role in our society in the future - that means giving them a rational and balanced view of the world.

When universities tolerate on their campuses organisations which seek to radicalise, they hammer another nail in the coffin of the idea of higher education.

Professor Anthony Glees is Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, University of Buckingham.