Or…Professor, Lecturer, Reader, Spy

Everyone seems to like spy stories. They also make the headlines when there are exciting combinations of spying and higher education.

There is a long association between spying and higher education in the UK. Historically, Oxford and Cambridge have been fertile recruiting territory for British security services although selection practices have since moved on considerably. Cambridge in particular also proved to be a useful source of spy recruits for the Soviet Union in the mid 20th Century leading to a series of huge political scandals. Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross, the Cambridge Five as they were known, were all recruited whilst students at the University or not long after graduation. Either way, higher education and spying are regular accomplices.

France’s spy school

This story about the French approach to training spies recently caught the headlines

After the 2015 terrorist attacks the French Government sought to recruit many more agents and asked Sciences Po University to develop courses for new recruits and existing agents. The course has also proved to be of interest to large French  companies who have sent their staff to join and targeted graduates for recruitment. 

The piece quotes a Professor Crettiez, who teaches political radicalisation, and says there has been a huge expansion in the French secret services. It is not a full degree course he teaches but part of a shorter diploma:

The diploma is made up of 120 hours of classwork with modules spread over four months. For external students – the spies and those on placement from businesses – it costs around €5,000.

The core aim of the course is to identify threats wherever they are, and how to track and overcome them. The key topics include the economics of organised crime, Islamic jihadism, business intelligence gathering and political violence.

There are some entertaining features to all of this too:

In a recent class photo some students chose to stand with their backs to the camera

Yet Prof Crettiez says he has to be wary. “I regularly get applications from very attractive Israeli and Russian women with amazing CVs. Unsurprisingly they are binned immediately.”

In a recent group photo of the class you can immediately tell who the spies are – they had their backs to the camera.

While all the students and professional spies I met are trim and athletic, Prof Crettiez is also keen to dispel the myth of James Bond-like adventure.

“Few new recruits will end up in the field,” he says. “Most French intelligence agencies jobs are desk bound.”

This observation is one you regularly hear these days about the security services – it really isn’t at all James Bond-like. So much more of espionage and counter-espionage is IT-based these days.

The UK has form in this arena…

Meanwhile in the UK a course called the International Security and Intelligence (ISI) Programme has been run annually at Cambridge since 2016. The course is organized under the auspices of the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSI), an organisation founded and chaired by Sir Richard Dearlove – the former chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6.

The aim of this unique Programme is to provide an opportunity for participants to engage with leading academics and practitioners from the intelligence and security communities in the historic setting of one of the world’s foremost universities. Drawing on wide-ranging experience of and research in the field, the Programme focuses initially on transatlantic intelligence and security perspectives, before moving on to explore broader global perspectives.

It all sounds very exciting and the details do suggest it covers a lot of interesting ground:

CSi proposes that first-rate intelligence is critical both for statecraft and in military operations. Effective intelligence and security agencies – with appropriate democratic oversight – play a critical role in the defence of Western values. Western democracies face diverse and complex challenges from state and non-state actors which preoccupy the highest levels of government, private industry, and civil society. Participants in the ISI Programme will explore these key questions:

• How can Western intelligence communities operate in a world of seemingly ubiquitous surveillance, and how might they compete with – or harness – the revolution in open-source data?
• What are the threats posed by cyber warfare, radicalization, acts of terrorism, regional insecurity, and information operations?
• Are modern conceptions of transparency tempered by legitimate claims for state secrecy? What is the role of the intelligence and security agencies in a modern democratic society? What are the relevant ethical considerations?
• What are the analytical challenges facing intelligence practitioners? How does intelligence function at the intelligence-policy interface?
• What are the various mechanisms of intelligence collection, analysis and dissemination? How does the delicate practice of intelligence liaison work?
• What part do counter-intelligence and covert operations play?

The course does not come cheap though at around £5,400 (more for an ensuite room) but the bonus is that in addition to this month long programme participants get to attend CSI’s annual conference ‘Intelligence and National Security in a Changing World.’

The conference brings together speakers and delegates from government, security agencies, academia and business to explore a wide range of contemporary security-related issues. Past speakers have included retired heads of the British Cabinet Office, the French Security Service, GCHQ, MI6, the CIA, distinguished academics, ambassadors and business leaders. 

Declassified UK has some coverage of this programme and the associated conference which offers a contrasting view of the contributors.

Whatever your perspective it does look like spy courses are unaffected by the current portfolio changes taking place across the sector.

(This blog will self-destruct in due course….)