Dozens of Cambridge academics urge university to divest from arms industry
Dozens of Cambridge academics have urged the university to withdraw investments from the arms industry ahead of a crucial meeting on Monday to review a report on investments in defence-related companies, Middle East Eye can reveal.
This comes after academics last week accused the university of "maximal obfuscation" over details about its £4.2bn ($5.74bn) endowment fund and its links to arms manufacturers.
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.
Some senior staff have said they cannot properly examine these investments because the university has not been open about which companies are involved.
MEE has seen statements by 29 Cambridge academics urging the university to be transparent about its investments and to divest from the arms industry.
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Jason Scott-Warren, an English professor and member of the University Council, said: "As they did when they were pressed to divest from fossil fuels some years ago, the university's investment managers are claiming that their 'fund of funds' model will not allow them to reveal which companies they invest in or to perform even the most commonplace forms of ethical screening."
He added: "The structures that have been set up around the endowment are clearly designed to create maximal obfuscation and to prevent any troublesome democratic interference with the technocratic decisions of the University administration."
Demands for transparency
Christopher Burlinson, a professor in the English faculty, said: "It is my strongly held and personal belief that the University of Cambridge should retain no investment in the arms industry.
"Such investments fund and facilitate repression, genocide, and ethnic cleansing."
Burlinson added: "I also believe that the university should have no involvement in the production of weaponry.
"I urge the University of Cambridge to be transparent with its investments, and members of the University Council to vote for complete divestment from arms companies."
An anonymous associate professor in the Department of Social Anthropology, meanwhile, said: "I believe that the University of Cambridge should have no investment in the arms industry, particularly when such investments facilitate genocide and ethnic cleansing."
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.
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.
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".
King's was the first Oxford or Cambridge college to take such measures.
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