Students at various UK universities are in protest, setting up encampments, in solidarity with similar demonstrations in the United States, Canada, and France challenging Israel’s actions in Gaza. The universities involved in the UK span a range of prestigious institutions, including Sheffield, Warwick, Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast, and the venerable Oxford and Cambridge.
These students have unified in a call for a boycott and divestment from Israel, with many UK universities currently holding investments in the arms firm BAE Systems, which supplies arms to Israel. This aligns with their goal to pull investments from arms companies fuelling conflicts worldwide and companies supporting Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
The specific situation at Newcastle University involves around 50 students, with reports suggesting that local police presence has been reserved so far but that students have called for the University to sever ties with Israel.
The Oxford students have even enumerated a list of demands from the University:
- Disclosure of university-wide assets, including investments, land holdings, donations, and grants.
- Immediate divestment from companies involved in arms manufacture and a pledge to divest from companies complicit in Israeli actions regarded as genocide or apartheid within five years.
- An overhaul of investment policy to expand ethical investment restrictions.
- A boycott of institutional relationships with Israeli Universities and end collaboration with complicit companies and institutions.
- Sever ties with Barclays due to its investments in entities supplying military technology to Israel.
- Provide financial and material resources to rebuild Palestinian universities affected by conflict and establish a task force to support the Palestinian higher education sector.
The full details of the protest action across the UK universities and their impact can be accessed at JURIST – News.