The Cheese Grater spoke to two members of UCL Action for Palestine about a new campaign for ethical research at the University which has been launched in coalition with other student societies who have signed an open letter in support of this movement.
For the sake of anonymity, this article will refer to the two members as B and R.
The open letter and its key demands
Their explicit, targeted goals are an end to all research partnerships with BAE Systems, a weapons manufacturer that provides arms to Israel, and Airbus who collaborate with the state owned company Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) and applied for a UK export license to sell weapons to Israel between 2008 and 2021. They also demand the creation of a more comprehensive framework on ethical research going forwards.
Research partnerships with BAE and Airbus alone are estimated to be valued at over £40 million.
Amid UCL200 celebrations, students involved with the coalition are discontented with the way the University is currently conducting itself regarding its research partnerships.
As R puts it, “students want to feel pride in UCL because it isn’t complicit in war crimes and genocide, not pride despite its complicity”.
The campaign has been launched by way of an open letter, signed by an assortment of societies listed at the bottom of the article and addressed to Provost Michael Spence and others which outlines the key demands listed above.
As stated in the open letter, BAE makes “key components for the F-35 fighter jets” which are used by Israeli forces as well as “artillery which Israel has used to fire white phosphorous munitions in densely populated areas”, which may be considered a war crime.
Involved groups hold that this degree of complicity in violence in Gaza should have ended UCL’s research ties with both companies and that the ongoing connections implicate the University which the letter describes as “significantly failing its ethical responsibilities to not be complicit in war crimes”.
In a meeting with AFP in April 2024, B and R claimed that Provost Michael Spence was unable to guarantee that UCL research had not aided the development of components supplied to the Israeli military. The Cheese Grater cannot verify this claim.
A student say in ethical research
The final goal of the campaign is a strong research policy going forward.
“AFP would want to be involved with the writing of an Ethical Research Framework”, R told us, “or, at the very least, student involvement would be important”.
B and R explained how there are hopes that a new research policy could work better than the existing policies on research and investment if it was written collaboratively to plan for the future on a strong moral foundation.
“It would hopefully exclude all arms companies”, with the campaign opposing any UCL involvement in the development of weapons as well as weapons manufacturers being banned from campus and careers fairs.
“The Policy is an important goal,” B told us, “it’s about setting a precedent so that BAE and Airbus don’t become a single issue.”
When asked about why they felt that the University had an obligation to take into account the views of students in regards to their investment and research decisions, B and R said:
“Because UCL sells itself as a place where the status quo is challenged, a place for ‘disruptive thinking’”. R told us that he chose to attend UCL because of their promotion of these values and that the lack of accountability, to them, is dishonest. “Higher education shouldn’t be a way for students to be encultured into violence”, B continued.
Both B and R were cautiously optimistic about the success of the campaign. The Cheese Grater asked whether the core aims would be met by 2030, to which B responded: “It’s hard to imagine a concrete timeline but the demands are intentionally fairly restrained.”
R added: “We are planning for a long struggle.”
Working in coalition
The founding of a coalition to work on the campaign to demilitarise research was a strategic decision.
“Collaborating with Students’ Union affiliated societies is important because we recognise that UCL are more inclined and even obligated to listen to the Students’ Union as representatives of the student body than they are to us as a disaffiliated group,” B told The Cheese Grater.
Whilst the coalition was founded by AFP, the intention is for it to be non-hierarchical and self-sufficient as a body that can “outlast any of our individual times at university”.
This possible longevity was explained as another advantage of organising through societies.
“One of the main difficulties of student organising”, R told us, “is that central people in your campaigns graduate.”
Support from permanent groups rather than individuals could be a pathway to avoiding this issue.
We asked whether the breadth of the coalition risked ideological confusion within the campaign.
“The idea”, B answered, “is that the clear and limited aims of this particular campaign allow the coalition to be open to a broader group of participants than other ways to voice disapproval might be.
“The aim is to gather as much support as possible and further action taken by the group isn’t planning to go beyond demonstrations and speeches which are permitted on campus”.
“So you wouldn’t say that the coalition is explicitly anti-Zionist?” I asked R. They responded, “No, not at this stage.”
UCL200
Both R and B also agreed that AFP would be open to working with any group at UCL within the coalition as long as it could subscribe to the core aims listed in the open letter.
With UCL200 celebrations beginning, B and R were asked if they felt students supported the potential damage that AFP strategies can do to UCL’s reputation: “The student body does recognise the unconscionable things UCL supports. I don’t think there’s a significant cadre of the students who are frontlining UCL’s reputation as their own beyond its reputation as an education institution,” was the response from B
“Because of UCL’s presentation, it attracts students who are interested in critical thinking rather than just blindly adhering to UCL’s narrative,” R continued.
As the University celebrates its past, this student block demands that it interrogate the realities of its present and invests serious energy in responsible planning for the future.
A UCL spokesperson said:
“Like other universities, various parts of UCL have research collaborations and partnerships with technology companies.
“All such partnerships are, of course, subject to legal controls and restrictions, and all research applications involving new partners are subject to due diligence in relation to our legal, financial and national security duties.
“Our university is a place that values diversity and upholds academic freedom and freedom of speech for everyone even-handedly. Academic freedom includes the freedom of the individual researcher to choose with whom they partner, within the law.”