Above photo: Via SCCP.
A global movement growing?
As students in the US hold the line across multiple universities in their occupations over Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, young people in the UK are now joining them – with encampments being set up in both Manchester and Sheffield – as well as Edinburgh, Bristol, Leeds, Newcastle, and Warwick.
Manchester: students set up encampment
First, and over 50 students at the University of Manchester have taken camp in solidarity with Palestinians facing genocide in Gaza. They demand that the University ends its partnership with BAE Systems and other arms companies, cuts its ties with Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, stops all unethical research, and refrains from taking disciplinary action against students.
With a coalition of over 200 students involved in the encampment, inspired by other similar actions across the world, they are calling for the University of Manchester to be held accountable for its complicity in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people, and failure to take action over its extensive ties to Israel:
The Encampment demands that the university must:
- End its partnership with BAE Systems.
- Cut ties with Tel Aviv University and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
- Adopt a policy ensuring that all research is ethical and doesn’t contribute towards the arms trade.
- Not pursue disciplinary action against any students involved in the Encampment, occupations or other protests.
Universities: tied to genocide
Tel Aviv University – whom the University of Manchester has a research partnership with – developed the Dahiya Doctrine, which calls for the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure. The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is built on illegally occupied land, with exchange students from UoM sent to live in these settlements.
BAE Systems is Europe’s largest arms company and is involved in producing F-35 and F-16 jets, which are used against Palestinians in Gaza. The University of Manchester has no policy regulating whether research could be used to harm lives or for other unethical purposes, and has received at least £15 Million in research funding from arms companies in the last 5 years.
The current encampment follows the previous Roscoe and Simon building occupations, and other actions taken across campus by students, including several BAE and BNY Mellon event crashes.
The University of Manchester has not responded to the demands of the students, and when pressed on the issue of the University’s research ties during an open meeting in March, Vice-Chancellor Nancy Rothwell denied that arms companies are unethical.
Solidarity with the struggle
A student was suspended earlier this month for releasing a recording of Nancy Rothwell’s comments, as well as for participating in other protests on campus. Students are demanding that the suspension is lifted and that disciplinary action is not taken against any students participating in protests. There have been further controversial comments in open meetings by the Vice Chancellor since this occurred.
The launch of the encampment coincides with others in at least four other cities, who are joining Warwick and Edinburgh in camping for Palestine.
A spokesperson for the Encampment said:
The struggle of the Palestinian people to keep their dignity and livelihood is still going strong. We stand in solidarity with all who are fighting for a Palestine free of genocide and occupation, from the River to the Sea.
The movement is spreading across the UK now – with seven universities currently witnessing occupations:
For example, students in Sheffield have taken similar action over Israel’s genocide and apartheid.
Sheffield: the occupation begins
Students at the University of Sheffield have also begun a mass encampment in solidarity with the Palestinian people and in protest against allegations of their university’s complicity in Israel’s apartheid and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza.
On Wednesday 1 May, the action started with planned walk-outs of lectures and teaching activities, followed by a demonstration. As the demonstration neared its end, students could be seen setting up tents and gazebos outside university buildings.
Combined with solidarity encampments created by students at the Universities of Warwick and Edinburgh last week, this marks the spread of the tactics of the US student movement (as seen at Columbia and at least 30 other US institutions) to the UK. Multiple other coordinated encampments are expected imminently.
The protests are led by the Sheffield Campus Coalition for Palestine (SCCP), a coalition of staff, students, and alumni from the University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University. They are backed by staff members, local trades unionists, and community groups such as Sheffield Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and Jews Against Israeli Apartheid.
Calling out the university’s complicity
The latter have issued a statement of support, saying they welcome the walk out and:
call on all students and staff to do so and resolve to hold their University to account for its complicity with the genocide perpetrated by Israel in Palestine.
Student demonstrators point to the role played by the university’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) in manufacturing the F-35 combat aircraft used by the Israeli military. The AMRC boasts that its ‘novel, fully automated manufacturing process’ has been used to provide ‘critical fuselage panels’ for more than 500 F-35 Lightning II aircraft, saving arms manufacturer BAE Systems £15m in costs in the process.
A Dutch court recently ordered the country’s government to immediately suspend all exports of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, due to concerns that they were being used to violate international law.
Multiple demands
Sheffield students have several demands:
- Divest (سحب العلاقات): We call on the University of Sheffield to divest from weapons manufacturing. The University should not be aiding in supplying instruments of warfare to a genocidal state.
- Boycott (مقاطعة): We demand that the institution sever all ties to Israeli universities. Israeli academic institutions have long served as pillars of Israel’s system of oppression against Palestinians, with many universities utterly entangled in the violent machinery of Palestinian dispossession, occupation, incarceration, surveillance, siege and most recently genocide.
- Accountability (مساءلة): We hold the University of Sheffield accountable for their complicity in the genocide of the Palestinian people. The campus community demands that the University agree to a meeting with students and staff.
A student spokesperson for SCCP said:
The university can house decolonial lecturers in their theatres whilst simultaneously profiting off settler-colonial projects. But now the fig leaf has fallen, revealing the University of Sheffield not as an academic institution, but rather as a brazen hub for weapons manufacturers.
Most egregiously, the University has been found to have helped streamline and produce the very instruments of warfare Israel used in its ruthless and indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza. It is for that reason that we students have come to charge the university with complicity in the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Our demand is clear: divest now.
UK universities joining a worldwide movement
The university’s involvement in F-35 production supplying Israel is part of a pattern of close ties with the arms industry. In 2022, a freedom of information request (FOI) revealed that Sheffield took at least £72m in investment from the arms trade over the preceding decade.
This level of investment is exceptionally high in the context of British higher education. Last year openDemocracy reported that Sheffield University received more defence funding than any other institution, taking over £42m, while Oxford and Cambridge took £17m and £10m respectively.
University of Sheffield lecturer, Dr Lisa Stampnitzky, said:
I am proud to see our students taking a stand and joining this worldwide movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Our university needs to confirm its commitment to be an ethical institution and divest itself of ties to the development of weapons used to perpetrate atrocities.
Students have expressed concerns about the influence exerted by these companies on the university’s research agenda and teaching. The protesters draw attention to the AMRC’s membership scheme, which allows private companies to mould research priorities, and to the role played by Industrial Advisory Boards (IABs) in some university departments. Both feature representation from arms companies.