A joint statement by Action for Palestine (AFP), BDS at UCL, Jews for Palestinian Justice, UCL Stands 4 Justice
UCL Council (the university’s highest decision-making body) has agreed to support the joint student-staff initiative to establish a review, with student and staff representation, into UCL’s investments. We applaud this decision, and are committed to working closely with UCL to ensure we fully end any and all complicity in our university with Israeli genocide in Gaza.
This is a significant milestone for the unified mass movement for Palestinian liberation at UCL. Over the past year, students have occupied a lecture hall and encamped on the main quad with full support of the three main campus unions. Over 850 members of staff have pledged to support and enact the Palestinian led Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
Council have established this review after UCL staff voted in support of Palestinian rights. In June 2024, Academic Board (the body representing UCL’s senior academic staff and other elected representatives) voted overwhelmingly for a paper jointly proposed by students and staff to investigate UCL’s complicity in Israel’s genocide and wider crimes against humanity.
Academic Board endorsed three recommendations:
- To establish a review body to examine all of UCL’s ties with arms companies and other relevant industries involved in providing weapons to states under investigation for genocide or crimes against humanity and that this review body reports on its findings to Council and Academic Board within 3 months
- That a similar review and report is undertaken of UCL’s ties with or investment in organisations that actively support or facilitate human rights violations abroad
- To establish a scholarship and fellowship project for Palestinian students and academics respectively to visit and study at UCL
The establishment of a review into UCL’s investments is testament to the power of student-staff solidarity and the consistent campaigning of the Palestine solidarity movement. However, it is only the start.
Research by the BDS movement at UCL has found that in 2022-3, at a bare minimum, over 7% of UCL’s investments, approximately £15 million, were invested in companies on BDS lists for their support of Israel’s genocide. UCL also maintains countless ties, including research collaborations, with arms companies supplying Israel’s military.
We must now ensure that the investment review actually leads to full divestment from all complicit companies; and that UCL Council also agrees to Academic Board’s recommendation that the university set up a parallel review of all research partnerships and other links with complicit companies.
We will continue to take action until all of UCL’s ties to genocide are ended and until Palestine is free, from the river to the sea.