Šádí Shanaáh has given a presentation followed by a Q&A to the government’s Commission for Countering Extremism. He presented the results of his doctoral research entitled “Under Pressure: Muslims’ Engagement in Counter-Extremism” and engaged in a discussion about the lack of robust empirical evidence regarding the perception of counter-extremism and counter-terrorism policies by UK Muslim communities and the lack of research into the attitudes, motivations and work of Muslims who are active in addressing Islamist extremism.

The Commission’s tweet about the event is available here:

https://twitter.com/CommissionCE/status/1293600058475253760?s=20&fbclid=IwAR2yuUHGEJ5XspK_K0XjfGCSg7TV6qOmtsqvnNwS7il34hBLdCP6u_lk-_4

The first annual report for the Warwick Interdisciplinary Research Centre for International Development (WICID) has been published.

The main take away points from the report are:

• Research grants - internally and externally funded grants, leading to publications
• WICID Methods Lab - our flagship Toolkit series to be published by Warwick University Press
• Webinars - Global Insights and South Asia and Covid-19 series
• Think Development Blog - relaunch and increasing readership
• Everyday in Lockdown international project of photographic accounts of Covid-19

The full report can be read here.

The Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) is delighted to announce that we have reclaimed our place as number 1 for overall student satisfaction in the Russell Group in the 2020 National Student Survey (NSS). *

Other highlights amongst our Russell Group peers include:

• 1^st for Assessment and Feedback
• 1^st for Organisation and Management
• 1^st for Learning Resources
• 1^st for Student Voice
• 2^nd for academic support

The 2020 results show that we are in 1st or 2^nd place in the Russell Group for 6 of the 9 NSS categories, 1^st on 12 questions and in the top 3 on 18 of the 27 questions.

With 5 years in either 1^st or 2^nd place on overall student satisfaction amongst the Russell Group, these results demonstrate our partnership with the student body and our sustained commitment to the student experience.

In the 2020 NSS our BA Politics degree received 95% overall satisfaction. Across all programmes with which we are involved - both single and joint honours - we achieved 88%. The Russell Group average for Politics was 79.65%.

These impressive outcomes are due to an outstanding team effort among our fantastic students, academic and professional services colleagues and demonstrate a partnership which we are extremely proud of. Thank you to everyone for all your hard work and support for our teaching and student experience in which has been a very challenging year for all concerned.

We look forward to continuing to work in partnership with our amazing students and dedicated staff to sustain and build on these strong results, which reflect our deep commitment to research-led teaching excellence. At the start of the new academic year we will feedback in greater detail to all students and we will discuss and take forward ideas for further enhancement of the PAIS student experience via our Student Staff Liaison Committees (SSLCs).

In particular, we will intensify our work on liberating and decolonising the curriculum and building a sense of community and belonging. We will support and promote student wellbeing and work with partner Departments to ensure continued excellence across all programmes, in particular joint degrees.

*See the Office for Students website for more details and the full data. The results are based on the official Common Aggregation Hierarchy (CAH) subject breakdowns and the 20 Russell Group institutions which met the publications threshold for Politics.

Last Sunday, Channel 4 showed the latest documentary in a series on ‘Royals and Spies’, researched by Richard Aldrich and Rory Cormac (Nottingham).

Filmed in Warwick’s Modern Records Centre, the programme showed how The Queen was dragged, unwittingly, into a notorious CIA-MI6 coup that overthrew the government of Iran in 1953. The wider programme of research has involved two PAIS students working at the National Archives in Kew. The latest programme attracted extensive press coverage including stories by NBC and the Times.

The documentary, The Queen and the Coup, can be watched in the UK on All4.

We are distressed by the continued violence and racism experienced by Black people in the United States, United Kingdom, and beyond. We want an inclusive environment for our community, and we are committed to exploring and understanding how anti-racism can be embedded across our Department. We fully support the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as all our students and staff who are standing in solidarity. We welcome the questions that students and staff are asking about actions that the University of Warwick and the Department of Politics and International Studies (PAIS) are taking to address racial inequality.

The Students’ Union have issued a statement on Black Lives Matter, which provides a powerful message for our whole community, alongside wellbeing guidance and resources for the Black community.

A Joint Statement from Race Equality Taskforce and the University Executive Board was released on 9 June and can be accessed here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/equalops/blacklivesmatter. This statement recognises that we are part of a sector and a country where racism has proliferated and is embedded within society. We see this across the sector and at Warwick in the small number of Black and BAME professors, in the Black attainment gap, and, as our students have shared in the Warwick Speak Out report (by Warwick anti-Racism Society and the SU), in the experience of Black students every day, both on our campus and in the classroom. The Joint Statement details some of the actions that the University is taking, whilst also acknowledging that these actions alone do not reflect the enormity of the challenge. The statement clearly lays out the University’s ongoing commitment to developing and working towards our goal of an anti-racist and inclusive University.

At University level, Warwick’s Social Inclusion strategy highlights the need for anti-racism work as an institutional priority. Senior University management have invited departmental leads to attend anti- racist training, so that we can embed anti-racism across the institution. Targets have been set to reduce the student attainment gap, but also to increase the numbers of BAME academics and professional services staff. The University is supporting the work of the Race Equality Taskforce, which brings together academics, professional staff, and SU representatives to identify key issues and effective responses. Academics across the University are engaged in developing resources through forums such as the Anti-Racist Pedagogy Learning Circle. They have recently funded their staff development anti-racist programme, which will be made available across the University.

At Department level, we have been working in partnership with students through our Liberated Curriculum Working Group, with a particular focus on decolonising the curriculum. This partnership has already resulted in significant revisions to our modules to better align them with anti-racist principles, but we will continue this work as part of an ongoing process. We also have active Widening Participation and Equality & Diversity Committees, with student representation, focusing on crucial issues such as diversity in our recruitment and the Attainment Gap in student performance, which we will discuss with our BAME students. We work closely with Schools and through our widening participation and outreach sessions we have been delivering sessions on what to do about colonial- era statues for a number of years. We realise that addressing the Attainment Gap requires long-term measures and that there are rarely quick fixes, but as a Politics and International Studies department we want to be at the forefront of changes that serve to tackle this issue. One of our key long-term initiatives is the Colonial Hangover project, which works with students to pose a series of questions about everyday life that currently remain underrepresented in both public political discourse and the school curriculum. But we also realise that there is much more that we can and need to do.

In PAIS we take all equality, diversity, and inclusion issues extremely seriously and we are committed to exploring and understanding how anti-racist practices can be embedded throughout our curriculum and in extra-curricular activities. We wish to express our solidarity with BAME members of our community who may be experiencing acute distress at this time. We are very aware that we still have much to learn, both individually and collectively, and that there is so much more that we urgently need to do to support you, and all members of the Department to embed and operationalise increasingly robust anti-racist principles. Please work with us in order to achieve this change by contacting us if you have any specific concerns or suggestions for how we might do more.

PAIS Senior Management Team