[7][1] He became a student activist and led a campaign against alleged racism at the city's Dental Hospital, which helped introduce anonymous marking across all faculties at the university.

[8] He left engineering to study sociology and politics and was still a student when he was arrested by police officers for illegally flyposting on Ashton Lane in 1991.

[1] Anwar came to prominence campaigning on behalf of the family of Surjit Singh Chhokar, a waiter who was murdered in November 1998 in Overtown, North Lanarkshire, Scotland.

The case had some parallels to the murder of Stephen Lawrence in England, which led to a radical overhaul of the criminal justice system and several inquiries.

[12][13] In 2012, following the reform of the double jeopardy law, he approached the Lord Advocate on behalf of the Chhokar family to request that the case be reopened and reinvestigated.

Campbell had spent 20 years in jail for the arson and murder of a family, an incident that had been part of the Glasgow Ice Cream Wars.

[19] In July 2011, Anwar presented a dossier along with Tom Watson to Strathclyde Police into alleged criminality at the News of the World, allegations of phone hacking and data breaches, and police corruption as part of the wider News International phone hacking scandal.

[20] On 2 October 2012, Anwar gave evidence to the Scottish Parliament's Justice Committee arguing against allowing cameras in criminal trials.

[21] On 5 June 2014, it was announced that Anwar had lodged an appeal on behalf of the family of Abdelbaset Al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 in 1988 over Lockerbie.

[22] In September 2014, Anwar represented the family of Jihadi bride Aqsa Mahmood, a 20-year-old woman from Glasgow who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

[34] The Times Scottish edition reported in June 2018 that Anwar had failed to hold a single surgery for the first 11 months of his rectorship, which was supported by Glasgow University.

[37] On 9 January 2008, Sheriff Charlotte Coutts described Anwar's evidence as "not credible" during a trial in which he claimed to be the victim of racial abuse.

Iain Banks joined Labour politician Tony Benn, George Galloway, Bashir Maan, Gareth Peirce, and others to argue that such a prosecution was detrimental to free speech.

[49] In December 2007 the law magazine The Firm placed him ninth in a feature of top 100 most powerful and influential people in the Scottish justice system and legal profession.