BDS@UCL Launches campaign to cut UCL’S TIES WITH Google

21 Oct 2025

For the 2025-2026 academic year, BDS@UCL is launching a campaign to ask UCL to cut its ties with Google DeepMind, because Google DeepMind and its parent companies, Google and Alphabet, have become deeply complicit in aiding and abetting Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in Palestine

As signatories of the BDS@UCL pledge, we oppose UCL links with all complicit corporations. We are focusing our primary BDS campaign this year on Google DeepMind because:

  1. While there has been a lot of attention paid to the role of arms companies in supporting Israel’s assault on Gaza, we know that information technology and artificial intelligence has also played a central role in this genocidal war. We also know that UCL is centrally involved in artificial intelligence research and education, and has an overarching vision that “seeks to position AI as a force for good” in the world. We think it is essential to focus discussions of IT and AI here at UCL on how these technologies have been used in Gaza.
  2. Google DeepMind and its parent companies, Google and Alphabet, are one of several leading information technology and artificial intelligence companies that are complicit in Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in Palestine.
  3. UCL has a deep and extensive web of connections with Google DeepMind. In fact, the co-founders of Google DeepMind originally met here on campus at UCL and the company has enjoyed close ties with the university ever since. We believe that these dense ties give UCL both a moral duty but also the potential power to put pressure on Google DeepMind to end its complicity with Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

Our campaign is calling on UCL to cut all ties with Google DeepMind and focuses, in particular, on these core demands:

  • UCL should immediately divest from all shares of Alphabet, the parent company of Google DeepMind.
  • UCL should immediately rescind the Honorary Fellowship that it previously awarded to Demis Hassabis, co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind
  • UCL should immediately rescind all other Honorary Appointments that is has given to Google DeepMind employees, and no further such Honorary Appointments or Fellowships should be awarded.
  • UCL should immediately terminate the participation of Google DeepMind in teaching, public engagement and research at UCL.
  • UCL should provide funding to replace the Google DeepMind scholarships that are currently offered to students as part of its relationship with Google DeepMind.
  • UCL should issue a public statement confirming the cessastion of its relationship with Google DeepMind due to the company’s complicity with Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in Palestine.

Get involved with the BDS@UCL campaign to cut UCL’s ties with Google!

Sign the petition: Rescind the UCL Honorary Fellowship Awarded to Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind (launched 5th Nov 2025)

Letter writing workshops (week of 28th October)

Letter to the Provost (27 October 2025)

Passed a motion at the UCL-UCU general meeting ‘For UCL to cease its investment in and relationship with Google DeepMind‘ (21 October 2025).