The snowball effect of British universities' misguided approach to extremism was brought to light recently by the revelations about the Detroit bomber's links to University College London. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was the president of the UCL Islamic Society between 2007 and 2008, during which time he organised a "War on Terror week", and a series of panel discussions, which included apologists for and supporters of Islamist terror. Abdulmutallab is the fourth president of a London student Islamic society to face terrorist charges in the last three years and the latest in a long line of UK students who have been involved in Islamist terror. Waheed Zaman, the former president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was a member of the terror cell that planned to detonate explosives on at least seven transatlantic airliners. Omar Sheikh, now in prison in Pakistan for beheading Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl, was radicalised at the London School of Economics. 

Yet the president of UCL, Professor Malcolm Grant, insists that universities have not become "hotbeds of extremism" and has defended the right for radical speakers to be allowed on campuses in the name of free speech. Is this because he simply cannot see the link between the radicalisation of ideas and the recent attempted attacks on planes or is he deliberately looking the other way? Since the same university recently opted to ban all military personnel from campus for "waging an aggressive war overseas", it is safe to assume the latter is true. What is happening here is not freedom of speech but double-standards.

In the spirit of openness and intellectual rigour, universities have a duty to their students to provide a non-partisan forum for debates and other political events where people feel secure enough to challenge the views of others. Stretching the parameters of debate is one thing. But providing a platform for unrepresentative and offensive views to go unchallenged turns the logic of free expression on its head. 

We have reached the point where universities risk their own reputations in fighting for the rights of those who belittle the fabric of a liberal society, while denying their students the same freedoms. Steps must be taken before irreversible damage is done to the spirit of openness in tertiary education. 

The vast majority of people in higher education-students and staff instinctively support freedom of speech, and for good reason. But in reality there is a deliberate manipulation of these decent instincts by those who spread an extremist message.