Read on Twitter
It was announced yesterday afternoon, that the counter-extremism think-tank, the Quilliam Foundation, has closed down for good. The difficulty of maintaining funding for its work during a lockdown was its founder's preferred explanation for its demise after 13 years.
Apart from a virtual gala in February (focused on its laudable campaign for the Uighurs), it seemed to have largely ceased to function for some months https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1376999516805722119?s=19
Senior staff & associates quit the counter-extremism group due to its founders fascination with conspiracy theories about the US election. Mr Nawaz recommended Dominion conspiracy claims of Sidney Powell as credible & promoted more outlandish QAnon-inspired material than that
I gave 3 reasons for regarding that as more serious than ANOther spreading of conspiracies, since Nawaz had been a senior figure in counter-extremism policy - not just a radio host- as well as the most famous UK case of deradicalisation. Summary thread
https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1349123825032638464?s=19
https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1349123825032638464?s=19
Quilliam has immediately removed its website, deleted its Twitter feed and Facebook account. Mr Nawaz has deleted all of his past tweets too from his personal account. I do not know if the board made plans to make any resources, reports or past work accessible in any other forum.
Some links on different phases of Quilliam
- Established with Home Office funding, 2008, but not after 2011 (prob many overlapping reasons)
- influential high profile in UK extremism debate up to 2015/16
- less visible in UK, more international, post-2016 https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1349143289023393795?s=19
- Established with Home Office funding, 2008, but not after 2011 (prob many overlapping reasons)
- influential high profile in UK extremism debate up to 2015/16
- less visible in UK, more international, post-2016 https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1349143289023393795?s=19
This employment tribunal verdict, in which QF had to compensate a contracted employee for unpaid earnings & unfair dismissal, after telling her that it had run out of funds in March 2019 suggests a volatile period of organisation & funding instability that predated the pandemic
Short version, The Observer https://twitter.com/sundersays/status/1355817991968088065?s=19
It is in the interests of academic/policy research that the QF archives is publicly accessible, given its importance in the contested arguments about government counter-extremism policy over the decade after 2008. I assume QF think it is of value to comparative policy-makers too.
