written March 2024

As signatories of this letter, we form a collective of UCL staff who individually commit to the terms of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. We join calls from Palestinian trade union, education, and civil society organizations – including the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) and the Palestine Academy for Science and Technology – for international solidarity to end the Israeli occupation of Palestine, apartheid regime, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, and now, as ruled by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in January 2024, to end the plausible case of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. As legal observers have pointed out, this means that all institutions around the world, including universities, must take steps to ensure that they avoid institutional complicity.

As the BDS movement has long pointed out, Israeli higher education institutions play a central role in supporting the Israeli occupation of Palestine, and the apartheid system against Palestinians. This includes systematically discriminating against Palestinian students and staff, as well as developing military systems, doctrines, and moral and legal rationales for the Israeli occupation, ethnic cleansing and now, unfolding genocide of Palestinians. From October 2023 up until the time of writing, at least 95 university professors, and hundreds of school teachers and educators have been killed by Israeli forces in Gaza, including UCL alumnus Dr Refaat Alareer;  all 12 universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, along with well over 300 hundred schools and colleges, as well as cultural centres, archives, libraries, and museums. A vocabulary of educide and scholasticide has emerged to describe these crimes committed by Israel in Palestine.

These issues are of direct importance at UCL. As has been documented and reported elsewhere, the university currently has almost £6 million of investments in companies complicit in Israeli violations of international law, as well as research partnerships with companies like BAE systems, Lockheed Martin, Rolls Royce, and Thales. Despite their involvement in the billion dollar industry producing military equipment used in the occupation of Palestine and genocide in Gaza, these companies are also routinely platformed at careers fairs on campus and lauded as desirable careers. UCL continues to use Barclays Bank, which has billions of pounds tied up in investments and financial services for companies supplying weapons and military technology to Israel and used in its attacks on Palestinians. This is despite the university having a “Socially Responsible Investment Policy”, which claims to “commit UCL to investing its funds on a responsible basis with due regard to ethical, social and environmental, governance (ESG) issues”.

The university’s Investment Policy states that “UCL will appoint fund managers that demonstrate rigorous implementation of the Principles for Responsible Investment supported by the United Nations”. As U.N. experts have stated that “arms exports to Israel must stop immediately” to avoid violating international humanitarian law, the university’s investments are in direct contravention of its own investment policy, numerous Sustainable Development Goals, and international law at large.

In addition, UCL has extensive institutional ties with several Israeli universities complicit in supporting Israeli occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide in Palestine. This includes a student Year Abroad placement at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which is built on illegally seized land in occupied East Jerusalem and has direct links to the Israeli military. UCL’s institutional ties also include multiple funding partnerships and grant collaborations such as a “UK-Israel innovation researcher mobility scheme” launched in December 2023, through which UCL has partnered with Tel Aviv University (TAU). According to the author of a new book on how Israeli universities deny Palestinian freedom, the TAU has been working since this genocide began to “produce materials to help Israel avoid accountability” including at the ICJ and to support the Israeli military.

We, workers at University College London (UCL), thus pledge to the terms of the BDS movement as part of our broader solidarity with Palestinians against the Israeli occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide and commit to the following actions:

(1)   Refusing to participate in any formal or informal engagement with Israeli higher education institutions involved in supporting Israeli occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide in Palestine. This does not apply to individual scholars acting in their individual capacity at Israeli universities, as is made clear in the PACBI guidelines.

(2)    Refusing to participate in any formal or informal engagement with any corporation involved in supporting Israeli occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide in Palestine. We note UCU national policy supports members’ right to refuse complicity in Israeli apartheid and occupation through support of boycott, divestment and sanctions campaigns.

(3)   Working to provide direct support for Palestinian higher education institutions, academics, educators and students.

(4)   Speaking out against all attempts to silence Palestine solidarity action and speech on our campus and beyond.

(5)   Calling on the Provost and Council to end UCL’s investments in, and procurement contracts with, companies funding and supplying weapons to the Israeli military. We note four universities in Norway have recently suspended all ties with Israeli universities, writing that Israel’s actions in Gaza “undermine the democratic foundation on which all universities must build”.

(6)   Supporting  a wider BDS campaign at UCL.

We call on research centre, programme, department, faculty and university leaders from across UCL to join us in committing to these principles, and ensure that UCL, as a world leading “global” university, takes a strong stand against occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and genocide, whenever and wherever these may occur.

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Pledge Update

written April 2025

Since we first wrote this pledge as UCL staff in March 2024, Israel has escalated its genocidal campaign in Gaza with impunity and with the material and political support of the United Kingdom and other allies. This continues despite the International Court of Justice ruling in January 2024 asking Israel to “take all measures within its power” to prevent genocide, and despite the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former defence minister Gallant in November 2024 for their role in war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Official numbers from the Ministry of Health in Gaza indicate that at least 51,025 Palestinians have been killed and 116,432  injured as of 16th April 2025, although the death toll is estimated to be underreported. At least 117 academics have been killed (as of October 2024) and all of Gaza’s universities have been destroyed. As of January 2025, the Ministry of Education has reported 13,054 students killed and 21,320 more injured; 657 teachers and administrators killed and 3904 injured. Nearly 400 schools and universities have been bombed and vandalized and 788,000 school students continue to be deprived of education. Point 3 of this pledge commits us to work against scholasticide by providing direct support for Palestinian higher education institutions, academics, educators and students.

A ceasefire was agreed between all parties on 19th January 2025. Israel officially broke this ceasefire on 18th March, with air strikes that killed 404 people in a single 24-hours. Since then, Israeli airstrikes have killed 1,652 Palestinians and injured 4,391 others between 18th March and 16th April, whilst the Israeli blockade has prevented all humanitarian aid from entering Gaza as of 2nd March 2025. Meanwhile, Israel has scaled up its annexation and ethnic cleansing of the occupied West Bank with Operation Iron Wall, ‘by far the longest and most destructive operation […] since the second intifada in the 2000s’.

Points 1 and 2 of this pledge commit us to cut any formal or informal engagement with any Israeli Higher Education institution and any corporation involved in supporting Israeli occupation, apartheid, ethnic cleansing or genocide in Palestine. Point 5 commits us to ‘Call on the Provost and Council to end UCL’s investments in, and procurement contracts with, companies funding and supplying weapons to the Israeli military’. In-depth understanding of UCL’s complicity is key to achieving these commitments. Through ongoing research, the UCL BDS campaign has compiled a number of complicity reports (12 as of March 2025) into specific companies with which UCL has links. Our research revealed that in 2023-4, UCL invested £15 million at minimum, approximately 7% of the total UCL investments, in companies that are complicit in Israel’s war crimes and human rights violations against Palestinians.

Our work revealing UCL’s complicities and organising for BDS has already resulted in one major success, with UCL disinvesting from weapons manufacturer Ametek. We know that the peaceful, non-violent aims of BDS are achievable, and that mass mobilisation across the institution holds the power to end UCL’s complicity in the violence of the Israeli state, contributing to the broader aim of ending genocide and apartheid, in pursuit of justice and ultimately a free Palestine.