The University of Cambridge hired an academic who once supported a now-proscribed terrorist organisation, it has emerged.

Farah Ahmed, who was previously a member of the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, was appointed as an assistant research professor in the university’s faculty of education last year.

The revelation will put further pressure on Cambridge and on Prof Deborah Prentice, its vice-chancellor, over the university’s hiring policies following The Telegraph’s investigation into Jason Arday.

Mr Arday worked as professor of sociology of education in the same faculty as Ms Ahmed before he resigned last Wednesday following multiple allegations of plagiarism and questions about the truth of his life story.

He put his apparent plagiarism down to his autism, saying he absorbed information through mimicry, and insisted his resignation should not “be mistaken for an acceptance of the narratives that have surrounded me”.

The university has been accused of lowering its standards to hire Mr Arday as its youngest black professor ever to improve its diversity, equality and inclusion credentials.

Ms Ahmed was appointed as a senior research associate at Cambridge in 2024 before starting her current position – in which she is responsible for postgraduate research and teaching undergraduates – last September.

She has expressed extremist views on education both before and since her appointment at Cambridge.

She has previously admitted to being a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, an international political group with a long-term goal of establishing a Caliphate ruled under Islamic law.

The dates of her membership are unknown, but she confirmed in 2010 that she was no longer a member as she “does not agree with all Hizb ut-Tahrir’s views as a political organisation”.

Hizb ut-Tahrir, which was founded in 1953, was proscribed as a terrorist organisation under the previous Tory government in 2024 for allegedly promoting Hamas.

According to The Spectator, which first reported on Ms Ahmed’s appointment, she claimed in a Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet titled Education and Identity that “western education” was a “threat” to Muslims

In the pamphlet, originally written in 2002, republished in 2017, she allegedly wrote: “The Muslim community as a whole in Britain needs to recognise that western education is a threat to our beliefs and value.”

Ms Ahmed is also alleged to have attacked British schools for teaching that “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16” is “archaic and discriminatory to women”, and to have claimed that democracy was a “corrupt tradition”.

Science is ‘part of colonial project’

She was also critical that “religious tolerance is primarily pushed in religious education”, meaning that “Islam is taught as a religion like any other, putting its value on the same level as Christianity, Buddhism, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism and the like”.

Since her appointment at Cambridge, she has helped to organise a conference in 2023 on Islam, science and education to “recognise the role of science as part of a wider modernist and colonial project”, according to The Spectator.

She also allegedly organised a conference to “unlearn conventional teacher education and move toward Islamically grounded teacher development”.

Ms Ahmed also created a toolkit called “How Islamic is my school?”, which says the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications”.

Both Ms Ahmed and the university have been contacted for comment.

Cambridge has previously announced it will review its process for appointing senior academics in the wake of the Arday fiasco, but it remains unclear whether this will apply to junior academics such as Ms Ahmed.

Mr Arday has been embroiled in a plagiarism row in the past few weeks after The Telegraph reported accusations that he had copied parts of his PhD thesis from another student.

He resigned from his academic post shortly after the university announced it had launched an investigation into him.

Prof Prentice, the first American to hold the post of vice-chancellor, is facing questions about why it took the university so long to investigate Mr Arday in the face of mounting evidence of academic dishonesty.

She faced further scrutiny on Tuesday after an employment tribunal ruled she had “shut down” complaints by a whistleblower in a separate bullying row at the university.

The case, heard at a court in Bury St Edmunds over the past few months, was brought by Prof Wyn Evans, a professor of astrophysics within Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.

He claimed the university retaliated against him after he blew the whistle in 2021 on the alleged bullying of a colleague, Dr Gudrun Tausch-Pebody, who provided administrative support in the department.

In his claim – lodged against the university, Prof Prentice, and two others – he alleged Dr Tausch-Pebody had been the subject of bullying and hostile treatment by Prof Richard McMahon, then the director of the Institute.

The tribunal heard Prof Evans made several whistleblowing disclosures to senior management, setting out his concerns about her treatment, after which Prof McMahon lodged his own complaint against Prof Evans and two other professors, accusing them of bullying and making false allegations.

Cambridge chose to investigate Prof McMahon’s complaint, taking almost two years before dismissing it over a lack of evidence.

The tribunal heard that Prof Evans, who was left with symptoms of depression following the prolonged ordeal, submitted multiple complaints to Prof Prentice between 2023 and 2024 about the university’s handling of the investigation and other aspects of the case.

Prof Prentice, who was appointed in 2023 as vice-chancellor, dismissed or declined to act on all of his complaints, saying they fell outside her statutory powers and she considered the matter closed.

In its ruling, the tribunal panel concluded there had been a “mishandling” of Prof Evans’s complaints by Prof Prentice, finding she had repeatedly “shut down” and dismissed Prof Evans’s grievances without conducting meaningful inquiries herself. Giving evidence to the tribunal, Prof Prentice claimed she had “worked closely” with a colleague to draft a letter dismissing one of Prof Evans’s complaints in 2023. She also claimed she had taken steps to “understand the history of the case”.

However, the panel rejected her evidence in its judgment, saying she had merely been presented with the letter “fait accompli” and put her name to it. The panel added: “It did not appear to us that many steps were taken to understand the history of the matter.”

The panel found that another of the vice-chancellor’s letters to Prof Evans had also been drafted by someone else.

It also raised doubts about Prof Prentice’s claims in her evidence that she had carried out a “full review” of matters relating to one of Prof Evans’s complaints.

“We find that highly unlikely given the volume of material going back very many years and the time and effort that would have taken for anyone, let alone someone in Professor Prentice’s very senior position,” it said.

The panel said her conduct was part of a “clear pattern” at the university “of trying to shut down the claimant’s complaints, and to protect the university from any possible damage arising out of the claimant’s protected disclosures”.

In a unanimous decision, the panel ruled that Prof Evans had been subjected to “detriments” for having made protected disclosures. The matter will now proceed to a remedy hearing.

University chief’s position ‘untenable’

Following the ruling, published on Monday evening, the 21 Group, a campaign group against bullying in universities, which is led by Prof Evans, said Prof Prentice’s current position was “untenable”.

In a statement, the group said the panel’s judgment, “taken together” with the Arday affair, raised “a fundamental question: is Deborah Prentice actually in control of the university she is supposed to lead?”

“She appears to have neither a clear grasp of what has been happening nor an independent power base within the university,” it said. “Instead, she risks becoming dependent on the very senior leaders she is supposed to challenge, scrutinise and hold to account. That is an untenable position for a vice-chancellor.”

A Cambridge spokesman said: “We acknowledge the employment tribunal’s judgment of Aug 10 2026 and are carefully reviewing it. We will now take time to reflect on the findings in detail.”

A spokesman for the Faculty of Education said: “The Faculty is committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law. All members of our community are encouraged to exercise their rights to freedom of speech, including to challenge ideas or theories they disagree with through scholarship and robust debate.”