Universities are being urged to think more carefully about the challenges of religion in a new ¡°stimulus paper¡± from the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education.

At a launch event last week at the London School of Economics, Tariq Modood, professor of sociology, politics and public policy at the University of Bristol, suggested that the secularist ideal of a separation of church and state was ¡°simplistic¡±.

Faith was strong even among the student-age cohort in many growing immigrant communities where ¡°religion is not regarded as a purely private or spiritual matter¡±.

¡°Religion has emerged as a full diversity issue¡± alongside race, gender, sexual orientation and disability, said Professor Modood.

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¡°But have universities really come to terms with it? Are there enough people within universities who understand religion and religious people?¡± he added.

His fellow author Craig Calhoun, director of the LSE, agreed that ¡°we get into a muddle if we think about religion as a purely private matter¡±.

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¡°Some faculty members just don¡¯t see the extent of religion on our campuses and assume things are the same as they were in the 1970s.¡±

The discipline of international relations had managed to ignore religion until the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers, said Professor Calhoun.

Religious voices and assumptions are inevitably part of the discussions around gender and sexuality, he pointed out, and should be welcomed into ¡°debates about common values or a possible higher purpose in politics¡±.

Such issues are analysed in greater depth in the academics¡¯ joint paper, Religion in Britain: Challenges for Higher Education.

Religion is widely acknowledged as a public good that can play ¡°a significant role in relation to ethical voice, social well-being, cultural heritage, national ceremonies and national identity,¡± writes Professor Modood. This is reflected in ¡°some state-religion connections rather than strict separation¡± right across Western Europe.

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Yet although ¡°the majority of university students say they are religious¡±, religiously committed groups and individuals remain ¡°?¡®foreign¡¯ or strangers to many in higher education¡¯s leadership ¨C at best a problem to be managed, not people to be sympathetically and empathetically understood and accommodated¡±.

Professor Calhoun takes up some of the policy implications for universities in his piece. When LSE created a new Faith Centre, he recalls, ¡°focus fell on the fact that the spaces for washing [required by Muslims] separated men and women ¨C as though that wasn¡¯t also true of washrooms across the campus¡±.

He also admits that ¡°gender and sexuality are challenging issues for universities that struggle to combine respect for religion with clarity that a lack of respect or denigration based on gender or sexuality cannot be countenanced¡±.

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Nonetheless, Professor Calhoun believes that universities should approach religion as ¡°something that belongs in our intellectual discussions rather than an external factor with which we have to cope¡±.

On some occasions, this may mean making religion ¡°the main focus of discussion¡­without exacerbating conflicts¡±. At other times, religion should be incorporated into debates on other topics ¡°without dominating or derailing the discussion¡±.

While acknowledging that ¡°members of minorities may need some level of in-group solidarity and recognition¡±, Professor Calhoun wants this to form ¡°a basis for extending themselves into wider relations¡±.

Universities needed to be careful not to ¡°reduce the learning they offer and the contribution they make to the larger society¡± by ¡°accept[ing] too much tacit segregation of students into subcultures¡±, he said.

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matthew.reisz@tesglobal.com