Our Pledge

UCL staff commit to the BDS movement for Palestine

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.

Sign the pledge

All UCL staff (including lecturers, PhDs, post-docs, professional staff, researchers, and professors) are invited to sign the pledge committing to the BDS movement for Palestine.

Sign here.

FAQs

Why doesn’t the text acknowledge the 7th October massacre or the hostages? 

The topic of the text is specifically academic boycott. Its goal is to explain why individuals should support a BDS call in general, and provide a context for why UCL staff specifically should join the boycott. The pledge does not seek to deny or downplay the events of Oct 7th but rather place BDS activity within the broader context of Israel’s decades-long settler colonialism and occupation in Palestine and the current plausible case for genocide brought by the ICJ.

How are you planning to use the pledge and list of signatures? 

The pledge is intended as an organising tool. Signatories may be contacted on issues related to the BDS movement at UCL. In the pledge we commit to further the BDS movement at UCL – stay tuned for future actions!

Will the list of signatures be made public?

We launched the pledge at a townhall at UCL once we reached over 400 signatures (see news & events). We have also shared the pledge widely on social media.

I work with Palestinian scholars/colleagues in Israeli universities, what would an academic boycott mean for them?

As made clear by the PACBI guidelines, the academic boycott applies to Israeli institutions and institutional activities, rather than individual scholars acting in their individual capacity at Israeli universities. The pledge also directly calls for us to support Palestinian academics, educators, and students (action 3).

Decisions on who to collaborate with at an Israeli institution and in what capacity may be complex and the BDS movement website gives the following recommendations to boycott individuals where “an individual academic is an official representative of, not merely affiliated to, her/his complicit Israeli academic institution”.

Furthermore, an individual academic (Palestinian, Israeli or otherwise) “cannot be exempt from being subject to “common sense” boycotts (beyond the scope of the PACBI institutional boycott criteria) that conscientious citizens around the world may call for in response to egregious individual complicity in, responsibility for, or advocacy of war crimes or other grave human rights violations; incitement to violence; etc. At this level, Israeli academics should be treated like all other offenders in the same category, not better or worse.”

Can I share the pledge form with people outside the university? 

Although the document is open access and can be shared more widely, the pledge calls specifically for commitment from UCL employees, so it is not relevant to external signatories.

Who can sign the pledge?

All UCL staff  are invited to sign the pledge committing to the BDS movement for Palestine. This includes teaching staff, PhDs, post-docs, professional staff, researchers, and (emeritus) professors.

PhDs are invited to sign regardless of whether they have a PGTA or not. Some will be contributing to academic staff research, organising conferences, or publishing their research with employed staff and therefore can be included in departmental REF returns. They are in a labour relation with the university regardless of whether they teach or not. That’s why they can join UCU for example.

Why have you given the option to sign anonymously?

We want to give people the option to pledge to the academic boycott while acknowledging that doing so publicly may put them at risk e.g., due to insecure immigration status.

 Why are we only singling out Israel? Should we not be boycotting other countries / institutions complicit in human rights abuses?

The call for BDS was issued by Palestinian civil society in 2004. If we had acted on this call in large numbers, the number of individuals who have suffered or been killed by the Israeli state in the intervening years could have potentially been dramatically less.

The academic boycott is crucial because Israeli universities are well documented to have been complicit in Israel occupation, apartheid, and genocide: discriminating against Palestinians and developing military systems, doctrines and rationales for Israeli occupation and genocide.

Finally, we believe that UCL shouldn’t be engaging with any military companies or institutions involved in human rights abuses.

Does BDS achieve anything or is it just more clicktivism?

The international boycott movement was pivotal in helping to end apartheid in South Africa. Likewise, we see the BDS movement and associated academic boycott called for by Palestinian civil society organisations as a powerful way of affecting change.

I have been told it is a conflict of interest to sign the pledge and that I have to report pledging to UCL. Is that true?

No. This is not a ‘conflict of interest’, and you do not need to report pledging to UCL.

According to UCL UCU:

  1.  Conflict of interest policies are concerned with things like financial interests, personal interests (relationships), or commitments owed to other organisations.
  2. Having an ethical view and acting on it is protected by human rights and equality law – it cannot be considered a ‘conflict of interest’. These laws include the European Convention on Human Rights (Articles 10 and 11) as empowered by Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010.

If you have a question we haven’t answered here, please email us.

Successful university BDS campaigns

Universities that have cut ties with, or divested from, Israel

Belgium

University of Ghent (Cutting academic ties)

University of Antwerp (cutting academic ties)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) (Free University of Brussels) (In the process of cutting academic ties, reviewing all 7 research projects, already cancelled 1)

Canada

Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) (divestment and cutting academic ties)

University of Windsor (disclosure, divestment, scholarships, no insitutional ties, calling for immediate ceasefire and decolonisation)

Chile

University of Chile, Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities (cutting academic ties)

Denmark

University of Copenhagen (Divestment)

England

King’s College London (divestement from contraversial weapons manufacturing)

University of York (divestment)

Manchester Metropolitan University (dropping Barclays banking)

Finland

University of Helsinki (cut academic ties with Israel)

Ireland

Trinity College Dublin (divestment, supporting Palestinian scholars)

Mexico

Mexico’s Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) (cutting academic ties with Israel, condemns genocide)

The National Autonomous University of Mexico (cutting academic ties, calling for immediate ceasefire)

Netherlands

Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA) (cut academic ties)

Dutch Royal Academy of Arts (cut academic ties)

Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study (cut academic ties)

 Northern Ireland

Queens University Belfast (divestment, immediate ceasefire, support for Palestine staff and students)

Norway

Oslo Metropolitan University (cut academic ties with Israel)

The University of South Eastern Norway (cut academic ties with Israel)

The University of Bergen (cut academic ties with Israel)

Bergen School of Architecture (cut academic ties with Israel)

Nord University (cut academic ties with Israel)

University of Stavanger (cut instutitional and procurement agreements)

Spain

Confederation of Rectors of Spanish Universities (CRUE) representing 76 Spanish universities including:

 Wales

Swansea University (divestment from Barclays, scholarships)

 

Universities that are reviewing divestment or ties with Israel

Abdelmalek Essaadi University (reviewing academic ties)

Brown University (vote on divestment in October)

Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington (Reviewing Divestment)

Galway University (reviewing divestment, call for immediate ceasefire)

Leiden University (reviewing academic ties)

Trinity College Cambridge (reviewing divestment, but no official statement by the college)

University of Ljubliana (reviewing academic ties, calling for ceasefire and condemning genocide)