Incredible as it may now seem, Suella Braverman was Home Secretary in 2023.

Among numerous other accomplishments that do not currently come to mind, she presented the findings of the Shawcross Review – an independent review of the Prevent duty – to parliament.

There’s one comment in particular that, glancing at headlines from around the world right now, seems to have aged like milk:

While obscuring the Islamist threat, Prevent has defined the extreme right wing too broadly, encompassing the respectable right and centre-right. The threat from the extreme right wing must not be minimised. It is serious and it is growing; it must be robustly addressed. But it is not the same, either in nature or in scale, as the threat from Islamism.

The data collected and submitted by universities that covers Prevent activity in the period immediately after that intervention – the 2023-24 academic year – has just been published by the Office for Students.

And the proportion of formal external Prevent referrals relating to “extreme right-wing radicalisation” has fallen – from 32 per cent in 2020-21 through to just 9 per cent in 2023-24. Who knew that the threat from right-wing extremism could be tackled so easily?

To be clear, the numbers involved are low – what this illustrates is not so much a falling off of safeguarding in cases of right-wing extremism as a sharp, single year, rise in referrals relating to Islamist radicalisation – from 23 per cent of all formal referrals in 2022-23 to 38 per cent in 2023-24.

Meanwhile, this morning’s data release also offers a window into the important business of external speaker improvement processes. Even the most casual follower of higher education news will be aware that huge legislative steps have been taken to ensure that students can hear from as many pyramid scheme promoters, semi-popular podcast polemicists, and “I’m just asking questions” types who have been chucked out of local facebook groups as is humanly possible – in 2023-24 just 0.5 per cent (220) speakers were rejected outright, out of 42,440 events approved via external speaker processes.

OfS’ Deputy Director of Enabling Regulation David Smy is faintly disapproving of an emerging trend:

However we note that there has been a rise in the number of events on which universities and colleges imposed mitigations or conditions

The chilling effect has indeed metastasised. Some 1,440 events went ahead subject to mitigations or conditions (yes, that’s just over three per cent of all events). These mitigations included increased security, requiring tickets for attendance, and ensuring discussions are led by a chair. To me, that sounds like the BBC’s Any Questions.

It is perhaps also notable that Director for Academic Freedom and Freedom of Speech Arif Ahmed has not been asked to comment. We can only hope that he is otherwise occupied writing guidance for the new duties that will fall on universities under the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act on 1 August 2025.

Prevent – and other initiatives addressing support and guidance for the small but concerning number of people that are radicalised while attending universities – is a serious matter. While university should be, and generally is, a “safe space” to consider non-mainstream perspectives and challenge societies dominant narratives in a spirit of academic exploration, there needs to be safeguards in place.

In recent years Prevent may have become just another culture wars punching bag, but the vital and difficult work done by Prevent leads, the staff who support them, and the people who are brave enough to report concerning activity before it becomes tragic deserves to be celebrated.