Students at the University of Glasgow have nominated Edward Snowden to be their rector.
Glasgow students contacted Snowden through his lawyers, and he agreed to run for the elected position. The rector serves a three-year term and acts as a spokesperson and representative for student issues.
“Students and staff are, by nominating Edward Snowden, making it clear that they support his actions as a whistleblower and are fundamentally opposed to pervasive state surveillance,” Ph.D. student Christopher Cassells, one of the students who nominated Snowden, said in an email to The College Fix.
Cassells said he believes Snowden’s nomination will help “increase the pressure on the US and UK government to recognize his service to citizens everywhere as a whistleblower.”
Founded in 1451, the University of Glasgow is the fourth oldest university in the English-speaking world and is today known as a broad-based, research-intensive institution with students and staff from more than 120 countries, according to its website.
Cassells said the University of Glasgow nominated Snowden in part because the university “has a history of electing whistleblowers and political figures to the position.”
However, Cassells acknowledged the reality of the situation surrounding Snowden’s potential travel to Glasgow, given the fact that Great Britain and the United States have an extradition treaty which guarantees that Snowden would be extradited to the United States, where he faces criminal charges, if he steps foot in Great Britain.
Cassells said it is unlikely that Snowden will ever be able to come to Glasgow.
“This, however, is no barrier to his being an effective and exemplary ambassador for the views of Glasgow University students,” he said.
The rector of the University of Glasgow is elected by the registered students, Glasgow spokeswoman Cara MacDowall said in an email to The College Fix.
She said the rectorial election is set for Feb. 17 and 18.
“The rector is not active in university strategy or policy-making,” the university’s website states. “The role is principally as spokesperson and representative for student issues. The rector’s participation in events is entirely voluntary and depends on their own availability and choice.”
Cassells said he and many other Glasgow students believe that the surveillance programs run by the NSA and GCHQ (Britain’s intelligence-gathering agency) “should strike fear in the hearts of everyone who believes in democracy,” saying he and his fellow students hope that Glasgow can, in any way possible, influence the debate on government surveillance and voice their support for Snowden.
Snowden isn’t necessarily a shoe-in. He is running against cyclist Graeme Obree, writer Alan Bissett and Kelvin Holdsworth, the provost of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow.
In an op-ed published in The Guardian, Cassells insisted the rectorial election will give students an “invaluable platform” for public debate, one he believes has been “too absent in government and media circles, about our right as citizens to lead our lives away from the gaze of spies and spooks.”
College Fix contributor Andrew Desiderio is a student at The George Washington University.
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