Members of Cambridge University governing body trigger vote on arms divestment
Regent House Grace calls for action
165 members of Cambridge University’s Regent House have called for a vote on divestment from the arms industry. The governing body’s 7207 members are expected to vote on the motion, or Grace, in the autumn, following authorisation by the University Council at its meeting on 21 October. If approved, the Grace will commit the University to disclose its investments in the arms industry and completely divest by the beginning of October 2025.
The official announcement of the Regent House Grace will add to mounting pressure on the University to disclose the extent of its exposure to arms-related investments in the £4 billion Cambridge University Endowment Fund (CUEF) which is managed by a subsidiary company, University of Cambridge Investment Management, from the student-led Cambridge Camp for Palestine. On 17 July, the University Administration issued a statement agreeing to create a working group which will review the CUEF’s ethical investment principles and ethical policy on academic and research partnerships, and consider ways of “defining and monitoring defence exposures within investment portfolios.”
Professor Clément Mouhot, initiator of the arms divestment Grace to Regent House said:
“Investment in arms or technologies used in warfare is incompatible with the values underpinning our University, therefore it is imperative we move swiftly from a position of “monitoring exposure” to divestment. The scale of civilian deaths in Gaza, where the Israeli military has killed around 2 percent of the entire population, has been directly enabled by the major arms companies supplying Israel. A proportional slaughter among the UK population would mean the killing of 1.36 million civilians. These massacres are acts of terrorism, which is defined as the deliberate killing of civilians and destruction of civilian infrastructures indispensable to a population. Such atrocities have not been seen on this scale since WWII and the Cambodian and Rwandan genocides. It is the legal and moral duty for the University of Cambridge to break all connection with the arms and surveillance industries.”
The call for divestment echoes the position of UN experts who have warned that the transfer of weapons and ammunition to Israel risks complicity in international crimes including genocide. In a statement published on 20 June, UN experts highlighted the role played by arms manufactured by BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Oshkosh, Rheinmetall AG, Rolls-Royce Power Systems, RTX, and ThyssenKrupp in Israel’s “indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on the civilian population and infrastructure”. Investors in these firms were at risk of contributing to human rights abuses and could be complicit in potential atrocity crimes, the UN experts said.
Moves by the University of Cambridge towards divestment follow action by other UK universities to reduce investments in the companies supplying the Israeli military in response to campaigning by students and staff. King’s College London will stop direct investments in arms companies involved in manufacturing cluster bombs, land mines and depleted uranium weapons, while York University announced in April that under a new ‘responsible’ investment policy it will no longer hold investments in “companies that primarily make or sell weapons and defence-related products or services.”
Notes to editors:
The Grace calls on the University to adopt the definition proposed by the Church of England Ethical Investment Advisory Group’s recommendations, which classifies companies as belonging to the arms industry if they are involved in the production or supply of indiscriminate weaponry such as nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, chemical or biological weapons or they derive more than 10 percent of their turnover from strategic military sales. In addition, the signatories have called for the inclusion of technological surveillance companies that derive more than 10% of their revenue from their technologies being used by states for military purposes; or they are companies associated with violations of international humanitarian conventions, laws and regulations. The full text and signatories can be read here.
The Regent House is the governing body of the University of Cambridge and comprises over 7200 members of the University and its constituent colleges.
On 17 July, the Vice Chancellor Professor Deborah Prentice and pro Vice-Chancellors Professors Kamal Munir and Bhaskar Vira issued a statement responding to the student encampment for Palestine, the text of which can be read here.