The University of Warwick’s Student Staff Solidarity Network (SSSN) have produced a report entitled “An Investment in Injustice: The University of Warwick’s Complicity in Genocide, the Arms Trade, and Apartheid in Occupied Palestine.”
To view the report PDF, please click here.
Executive Summary
The global movement to end the ongoing genocide in Gaza sheds light on the complicity of universities in Israel’s war crimes particularly through their research partnerships and investments. This complicity, however, predates the current atrocities in Gaza. In Autumn 2023/Spring 2024, the University of Warwick’s Student Union, University and College Union (UCU), UNISON and Assembly passed motions urging the University to sever ties with arms manufacturers due to concerns about their role in war crimes and human rights violations in Palestine and elsewhere (See Appendix 2).
The University states that ‘it is committed to ensuring that it makes investment decisions responsibly and with integrity, having due regard to ethical, social, environmental and governance issues’. To this end, the University has a Socially Responsible Investment policy (SRI), ‘mindful of the need to reduce’ and ‘eliminate corporate behaviour’ which leads to environmental degradation, armament sales to military regimes, and human rights violations (see Appendix 1). Yet, the University’s research partnerships and investments contravene this ethical vision.
Based on extensive research, this report details the University of Warwick’s involvement in global militarism, war crimes and human rights violations, including in Palestine, placing it within the broader context of Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territory and policies of apartheid and genocide against the Palestinian people, international law obligations and staff-student activism on this issue.
Research partnerships may be considered a form of investment. The University’s research partnerships of over a £100 million with companies such as BAE systems, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Rolls Royce, Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), Thales, Qinetiq, and Airbus illustrate investments in knowledge transfer that contribute to the development of technologies that make war more deadly, as we have seen in the context of Gaza. Moreover, these companies profit from war. Therefore, the University indirectly benefits from war by accepting funding from these companies. Meanwhile, the University has long term investments in Hewlett Packard, Siemens, Intel and Alphabet (Google) – companies that enable Israel’s genocide of Palestinians and support Israeli military occupation and illegal settlements on Palestinian land. The University’s research partnerships and investments raise questions regarding its ethical vision as well as its potential complicity in and benefitting from genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP) has found that at least 82 UK universities could potentially be criminally liable, a list that may extend to include the University of Warwick.
Given the findings of the report, the Student-Staff Solidarity Network calls on the University to:
- Commit to ending university research partnerships with companies involved in the manufacture of weapons, weapons systems and/or weapons components and demonstrate this commitment by signing on to the Demilitarise Education Treaty;
- Review the University’s SRI policy to ensure transparency and accountability and to require divestment from firms involved in the defence industry, or who profit from and reinforce land theft, occupation, practices of apartheid and genocide in Palestine and more generally;
- Create a policy to ensure that international research activities and collaborations are in line with the University’s SRI policy, with input from campus unions and Warwick Stands with Palestine;
- Support the rebuilding of Universities in Gaza in line with the priorities of the Emergency Committee of Universities in Gaza.