CHECKIT HE aims to enhance higher education (HE) response to hate and extremism on higher education institution (HEI) campuses, by building capacity, knowledge and skills, bringing together innovative projects and practices in the field. CHECKIT HE, will help HE educators, wider HE staff, policy makers and students unions, as our key target groups, to enhance inclusion, challenge hate and extremism and make campuses safer and better places for all.
We held a great webinar event on Friday 10 November – Countering Hate and Extremism on Campus – Knowledge Innovation and Training in Higher Education. You can watch the event back through a downloadable recording.
Future events
- February 2024 - online webinar on Hate, Extremism and Free Speech in HE.
- September 2024 - international conference on Hate and Extremism in Education - to examine the issues across education and learning environments.
If you are interested in getting updates on our events, please link up by writing to olga.fotakopoulou@bcu.ac.uk.
Project details
- Project Reference number: 2020-1-UK01-KA203-079198
- Project dates: 01-09-2020 - 31-08-2023
- EU Project Grant: €361.743,00
The Project Consortium
The project’s consortium is made up of the following partners from across Europe:
| Organisation Name | Lead Contact | Team Members |
|---|---|---|
| Birmingham City University, UK | Professor Geraldine Lee-Treweek | Dr Olga Fotakopoulou Dr Frazer Heritage Dr Damian Breen Mr Kevin Hoffin Professor Imran Awan Dr James Williams |
| The Western Balkans Institute, Serbia | Sanja Kovačević | Ms Jelena Nastić-Stojanović Mr Marko Stojanovic Ms Sanja Kovacevic |
| Necmettin Erbakan Üniversitesi, Turkey | Dr Şeyma AKIN | Dr Hayriye ULAŞ TARAF Dr Hurşide KAŞGARLI |
| Minho University, Portugal | Professor Emília Araújo | Prof. Helena Machado Prof. Rafaela Granja Prof. Sheila Kan |
| The Centre for Advancement of Research and Development in Educational Technology, Cyprus | Professor Charalambos Vrasidas | Dr Christiana Karousiou |
| Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland | Hanna Kirjavainen | Mr Joonas Korhonen Ms Päivi Myllymäki Mr Olli Toivonen |
The consortium partners of CHECKIT HE represent a strong geographical reach and engagement in networks across Europe and are from countries that experience diverse HE student demographics and campus-based hate and extremism.
The consortium are a dedicated team who want CHECKIT HE to positively support change in relation to identify, preventing and acting against hate and extremism in all its forms.
Project Results
To help address issues of hate, extremism, and inequality on campuses, the project team have produced a report, a variety of toolkits and developed an application. Access to the outputs developed is available through the links below.
- Report: Comparative European HE report on understanding and identifying diverse campus-based hate, abuse and extremism.
- Toolkit 1: Identifying and Challenging Gender Based Hatred and Extremism on Tertiary Education Campuses.
- Toolkit 2: Tackling Sexual identity-based hate, abuse and extremism in HE.
- Toolkit 3: Dealing with campus-based Race, Ethnic Group and Heritage related hate and extremist action.
- Toolkit 4: Religion, faith and belief-based hate and abuse on HEI campuses.
- Toolkit 5: Disability, chronic illness and mental health status hate on campus.
- Toolkit 6: Working against formally organised extremism, radicalisation and terrorism on HE campuses.
- App: The CHECKIT HE Anti-hate and extremism on campus good practice action app.
Multi-language Summaries of Intellectual Outputs:
Why the project was needed
Studenthood should be a time of academic, personal/skills growth, development, and positive change, but, sadly, student union reports across Europe show that students face increasing hate-based abuse, hate speech, risks from radicalisation and extremism on campuses.
Some students are more likely to be targets of hate and extremism than others, such as those from Black, Asian and Ethnic minority groups (including refugees and migrants), women, LGBT communities, people of various religions and disabled people. Examples of hate on campus can include hate speech, cyber abuse, physical abuse and violence, gendered abuse, bullying and active exclusion.
Extremism can be seen in patterns of formal, organised extremist organisation activity on campuses, radicalisation and violence, especially around right-wing hate, Islamophobia and antisemitism. These are challenging issues for higher education and societies. CHECKIT HE responds and innovates by addressing the issues of hate practices/behaviour and extremism within HEI communities and providing tools for HEI staff to identify, challenge and counter these when exhibited on campus.
HEIs should be leading the way in addressing these important issues, which impact upon wider societies too. Indeed, some HEIs are, but practices and innovations are not being shared effectively. Collated and broadly disseminated innovative mechanisms by which HEIs can counter hate and exclusion, and provision of pan-European easy access training resources, which are not currently available, is urgent. CHECKIT HE begins to fill that gap and start the important conversations.
What the project has done
CHECKIT HE directly addresses this contemporary issue outlined above, developing the skills, capacity and knowledge of HEIs through open access educational resources. HE staff need to be able to understand, identify, check, challenge and take action against hate, extremism and exclusions and this is what the outputs, outcomes and impact of the CHECKIT HE project are designed to support.
The project’s outputs build to help HE and other stakeholders to challenge hate and extremism, and these include: a report, six up-to-the-minute training toolkits on addressing diverse forms of hate and extremism and an app that can be used to identify and then select strategies and activities to counter these.
The outputs are free and open access, enabling a wide variety of groups and individuals outside HEIs, students organisations and policy makers, to use them to enhance their own work countering hate and extremism (this might include a wide range of NGOs, criminal justice practitioners, public authorities, schools, colleges, other non-degree level educational institutions and the broad-ranging EU youth workforce).
CHECKIT HE aims to directly engage a significant number of people, as target groups and stakeholders, across the three years of the project, making a high impact contribution to helping to challenge hate and extremism in HE and beyond.
The tolerance of hate and extremism on campus by HEIs can have devastating impacts on students, their experience, learning and safety, potentially leading to social exclusion, distress and mental health issues, lower attainment in targeted groups, drop out of education and inequality in life chances post-graduation. Hate and extremism also impacts the whole HEI community and staff in all departments and sections. However, these negative impacts are also a problem for the health and sustainability of wider society, in preventing the spread of hate and extremism and ensuring public safety.
CHECKIT HE delivers longer term benefits for all, in relation to helping prevent hate, abuse, radicalisation and terrorism in HE contexts, and by HEIs leading in the positive promotion of societal inclusion and tolerance.
Slogans can be good, but...
…whilst slogans and memes may be useful devices to raise awareness, seriously addressing hate and extremism in HE demands concerted effort, policy and culture change fitting to the complexity of the issues. This requires inclusive discussions and debates across staff, student and other relevant stakeholders about what is needed to implement positive change. CHECKIT HE has created a forum for those urgent debates to be held.
Would you like to gain recognition for engaging with the CHECKIT HE project and materials? Why not get our CHECKIT HE badge?
We recognise that you may wish to show you have engaged with CHECKIT HE for CPD purposes and have created a badging system for this. If you wish to use the CHECKIT HE logo on your LinkedIn or at the bottom of your email signature, etc., all you need to do is submit a reflective piece of writing of between 700 and 1,000 words to us via email. This should cover what you have learned from the CHECKIT HE resources and the impact of this on your practice within HE, whether that be in relation to teaching and classroom activities, or other work
We have some support information to help you in undertaking your reflective piece of writing. Please contact Geraldine Lee-Treweek for further information.
Events
Although the Erasmus+ funding for our project is finished, the team will be sustaining this project with events and activities. Our next activity will be:
- Examining Hate and Extremism in HEIs, current trends and HEI responses (MS Teams webinar) - 10 November 2023. This is a free online event. Please contact Professor Geraldine Lee-Treweek if you would like to attend – all welcome!
If you are interested in finding out more about the work of this project please contact Geraldine.