UK: Are universities hotbeds of Islamic radicalism?

Cambridge researcher June Edmunds has argued that most young British Muslims are not disaffected radicals. But politics Professor Anthony Glees, director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at Buckingham University, pointed out in a blog in The Guardian that her study is based on just 26 interviews. His article provoked a lively set of reader responses.

In its press release about Dr June Edmunds's research, Cambridge University wants us to believe that it proves that British universities are not "hotbeds of Islamic radicalism", wrote Glees. We learn that "detailed interviews" with Muslim students in Cambridge, the London School of Economics and Bradford led her to the happy conclusion there is little evidence of "any threat".

That Cambridge should issue a press release as grandiose as this, trumpeting research so flimsy and uncompelling as Edmunds's, is curious. This research was based on only 26 interviews (of which eight were not even conducted in person). Hardly "detailed".
Full article on The Guardian site