Cambridge academics accuse university of hiding links to arms investments
Cambridge academics have accused the university of "maximal obfuscation" over details about its £4.2bn ($5.74bn) endowment fund and its links to arms manufacturers, according to reports.
The university's leadership will meet on Monday to review a report on investments in defence-related companies.
But some senior staff have told The Guardian that they cannot properly examine these investments because the university has not been open about which companies are involved.
The main focus of the meeting will be the university's endowment fund.
The fund is meant to protect the university's long-term finances and is run by the University of Cambridge Investment Management Limited (UCIM), a company owned by the university.
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UCIM operates as a "fund of funds", a complex financial structure that means its money is spread across several sectors and overseen by an investment manager.
The fund came under scrutiny after students launched a pro-Palestine encampment in 2024, calling on the university to sever financial ties with Israel.
The encampment lasted for several months, with the students agreeing to end their protest if the university committed to reviewing its links to the arms and defence industry.
UCIM told an internal working group established to examine the institution's financial interests that it has no direct investments with arms companies.
Though it later admitted that a small proportion - approximately 1.7 percent - of its investments is held in the aerospace and defence sector, without naming the companies involved.
Monday's meeting of the Cambridge University Council – which includes Vice-Chancellor Deborah Prentice, college heads, elected staff and students – will discuss a report commissioned after calls to pull investments from the arms industry.
Last year, the University of Cambridge said it would divest from companies involved in producing "controversial weapons" without naming them.
The announcement came after one of the university's largest colleges, King's College Cambridge, said it would divest from the arms industry and companies complicit in "the occupation of Ukraine and Palestinian territories".
The report, which followed a year-long review into the university's links to the arms industry, was approved unanimously by the university council on Monday.
It called for the university's £4.2bn endowment fund to divest from "any company which manufactures weapons illegal under UK law, even if those weapons are legal elsewhere", including chemical and biological weapons and cluster munitions.
Cambridge's university council has adopted this as policy.
King's College Cambridge, founded by Henry VI in 1441, announced in May that by the end of 2025 its investments will exclude companies that "are involved in activities generally recognised as illegal or contravening global norms, such as occupation".
Its investments will also exclude companies that "produce military and nuclear weapons, weapons restricted by international treaty, or companies that produce key or dedicated components of such weapons".
As of March 2023, the institution invested £2.2m ($2.94m) in arms companies, including Lockheed Martin, Korea Aerospace and BAE Systems.
King's was the first Oxford or Cambridge college to take such measures.
In 2023, Middle East Eye revealed that Trinity, the university's wealthiest college, had $78,089 invested in Elbit Systems, Israel's largest arms company, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.
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