At the Hague Group’s recent People’s Congress, Irish author Sally Rooney explained her 2021 decision to join the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israeli apartheid. She cited her inspiration as Mary Manning, an Irish shopworker who refused to sell produce from apartheid South Africa in 1984. Following a prolonged trade union strike and consumer boycott, the Irish government ultimately banned all South African imports in 1987. 

Today, Rooney is one of a rising number of authors who have heeded the BDS call to refuse working with Israeli publishers. Globally, the uptick in BDS compliance has spanned industries, and here in the UK, we’ve seen major victories. From nationwide pension funds to London councils to university colleges, both public and private institutions have moved their funds away from Israeli government bonds, the settlement trade, and arms companies. And yet, a total import ban like the one invoked by Rooney still feels shamefully far off. Over the course of more than two years of genocide, Keir Starmer’s government continues to mount a reflexive defence of Israel’s right to murder, maim, starve, torture, and kidnap Palestinians. In fact, as Israel expands its ethnic cleansing campaign into Lebanon, the best that the UK can offer is a mealy-mouthed statement from Yvette Cooper demanding that both sides sit down and talk it out. 

Meanwhile, our national health service awarded a £330m contract to Palantir, the tech company responsible for using intercepted data to craft Israel’s “kill lists” of Palestinians in Gaza. British manufacturers continue to produce drone components and export them to Israeli clients. And barring Co-op, our supermarkets continue to stock Israeli produce on their shelves. 

The sad truth is that many British institutions have, if anything, doubled down on their right to profit off Israel’s machinery of death and destruction. One such institution is the University of Oxford, where I am a doctoral candidate. Of course, not every branch of British academia (or society at-large) is as deeply committed to colonial violence as Oxford has proven itself to be, but understanding the hoops that an educational institution is willing to jump through in order to protect its links to Israel can shed valuable light on just how deep our country’s complicity runs. 

Death by committee 

The global student movement made one of the earliest and most public inroads in the fight for BDS compliance. Thousands camped on the lawns of their universities, refusing to leave unless leadership agreed to divest from the arms industry and other sectors complicit in Israel’s genocide. But almost two years since the first tents were pitched, Israel remains emboldened by international support, including the vast majority of UK universities who have maintained their financial and research ties with the apartheid state.

In Oxford’s case, maintaining these ties was a calculated decision made by the Ethical Investment Representations Review Subcommittee, otherwise known as EIRRS, or the committee where divestment went to die. Established in 2021 in response to demands for fossil fuel divestment, the committee reviews representations made from across the university about its ethical investment policies. After internal debate, the committee makes policy recommendations to the university’s investment committee.

This month, EIRRS published its official recommendations following a lengthy review and university-wide consultation process regarding Oxford’s current and future investment restrictions, specifically in relation to its investments in arms and military technology. This review was initially greenlit in May 2024 after sustained pressure from students and faculty. At the time, the university’s restrictions on investing in arms were limited to companies which manufactured arms illegal under UK law (specifically the Munitions Act 2010 and the Landmines Act 1998).

Now, EIRRS recommends that the university expand its understanding of weapons illegal under UK law to include those prohibited under relevant international treaties to which the UK is a signatory. In practice, this means the university can no longer make money off the sale of chemical and biological weapons, blinding laser weapons, non-detectable fragments, and incendiary weapons like white phosphorus. Yet, this assurance means very little in a world where the vast majority of genocidal crimes committed by Israel, the United States, and their allies are carried out with conventional weapons.

Under these guidelines, Oxford maintains wide latitude to invest in the weapons manufacturers and military technology companies currently enabling genocide in Gaza, from Boeing and Lockheed Martin to Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. Of course, members of the university have no way of knowing if their employer is invested in these entities, even with new promises of “enhanced disclosure”. The Oxford University Endowment Management Fund (OUem) vociferously protects its ability to invest privately and opaquely, as the composition of its investments is considered “commercially sensitive". 

Profit over people

EIRRS’s official recommendations cite an engagement of over 500 individuals within the university, including 81 written submissions to EIRRS and 86 to the Student Union. According to the EIRRS report, a clear majority of students supported a total investment ban on armaments. The committee denied this clear mandate for full divestment by falling back upon its fiduciary duty, which of course has nothing to do with stopping a genocide, and everything to do with making money.

Citing the UK Law Commission, the committee states that it can only make a non-financial change to the university’s investment policies if two tests are met: “(1) trustees should have good reason to think that scheme members would share the concern; and (2) the decision should not involve a risk of significant financial detriment to the fund.”

Somehow, after two years of sustained pressure from students, faculty, and staff, alongside a rigorous public consultation process which reflected the desire for divestment, the committee came to the conclusion that it did not in fact have good reason to think that “scheme members would share the concern” over investments in arms companies.  

In addition, the committee was “mindful” that its fiduciary duties required it to focus on financial returns, especially in cases where “the issue is clearly controversial”. The fact that genocide is “controversial” rather than universally opposed should be cause for moral outrage. The fact that the university’s bottomline comes at the expense of human life is an indictment of its very existence. 

And yet, reading the EIRRS report, it becomes painfully clear that the committee's purpose is ensuring that Oxford makes the heftiest profit while complying with the barest of minimum legal standards. Despite the “E” in the committee’s acronym, we are not supposed to trust these people to make ethical decisions. All they are here to do – and all that they are legally required to do – is make money. 

Reading up on the biographies of the members of the EIRRS committee makes this point even clearer. The chair of EIRRS, Huw van Steenis, opined in the Financial Times that the UK has too much financial regulation to achieve optimal growth. Instead, we should follow the starry example of the United States down the path of deregulation! Patrick Grant, a University Pro-Vice Chancellor and EIRRS committee member, was previously a member of the Rolls-Royce Materials, Manufacture and Structures Advisory Board. Yes, one of the members of a committee tasked with considering divestment from dual-use military technology has also served on the board of … a BDS target that produces dual-use military technology.

EIRRS was cleared of any potential conflicts of interest. Because of course it was.

To this concern, a university spokesperson replied: “The involvement of all members of EIRRS in the review of investment policy is entirely appropriate and in line with University policy on conflicts of interest. All conflicts of interest for members of EIRRS have been declared and were recorded for full transparency in the final report. No concerns about this have been raised at any committee meetings.”

Muddying the waters

Still, it’s not just sheer drive to profit that’s motivating the university’s foul play – nor is this the case in the wider genocidal complicity plaguing the United Kingdom. Throughout Israel’s genocide, it has consistently peddled the lie that it is actually the moral actor to support, and plenty of institutions in this country remain supportive of its crimes on that basis. 

In Oxford’s EIRRS report, this ideological stance revealed itself in the committee’s evaluation of a conduct-based provision, which would theoretically enable the university to explicitly screen for companies engaged in war crimes. The committee denied this approach, partially on the basis that any decision to add an entity to a so-called “bad actor” list would be “too ideological or political”, and “not sufficiently objective.” On its face, this seems like a reasonable evaluation. Those of us on the left know that international labels for “bad actors” are often selectively applied against groups involved in revolutionary political struggle or anti-colonial action. 

However, EIRRS’s attempt to avoid ideology falls short, given Oxford’s obstinate refusal to even entertain Israel as one such “bad actor”, while easily and readily ascribing that designation to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Israel’s abhorrent track record should not be a matter of opinion or ideology: it is a matter of fact. Oxford falls within a well-worn tract in British public life, where Israel is still viewed as ultimately, inherently “good”, despite all evidence to the contrary.

I’m not merely being cynical by suggesting that these views have influenced Oxford’s abysmal decision not to fully divest from the arms industry. The university continues to platform individuals who espouse genocidal rhetoric about Palestinians. One such recent addition to Oxford’s academic community, incoming visiting scholar Daniel Statman, has publicly advanced the claim that Israel’s mass killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza is justified.  

Far from disqualifying him from public life, philosophising on Palestinian death is an academic credential for people like Statman, and Oxford is actively contributing to a normalisation of these reprehensible views, muddying the waters between fact and opinion to facilitate genocide and ethnic cleansing. For Oxford, the operative definition of “ideological” does not encompass Israel’s actions, but only whether or not Palestinians have the right to resist them. 

Against complacency

Although universities are perhaps one of the most public targets for divestment campaigns, the lessons learned at Oxford are universal ones. Most readers will be facing a far different terrain of struggle than the one outlined here (though if you happen to be facing the same one, get involved with the Oxford BDS coalition), but I believe Oxford’s institutional doubling down can teach us all vital lessons about the extent of battle ahead.

Our complicity in Israeli apartheid runs deep: encompassing not only the investments of our employers, but where we buy our groceries, how we stream our music, and whose concerts we attend. When we put pressure on these institutions by cutting off their revenue streams or interrupting business as usual, they will not bend easily to our will. And if it seems like the win is coming too easily, it might not be a win at all. This isn’t to discount the small steps that build towards large-scale victories, but a caution against slipping into complacency. Sometimes, a new investment restriction from a multimillion pound institution is a genuine change, and other times, it is a piecemeal offering, intended to distract us from that institution’s continued role in upholding a genocidal status quo. 

Knowing the difference between these two outcomes is a matter of assessing both their material effects and the level of complicity at hand. In a place like Oxford, the rot runs deep. But if this is how a charity reacts to attempts to root it out, then we can expect for-profit institutions to cling even tighter to the economy of genocide. 

As the machine of death ramps up in speed and scale, we must refuse to accept anything less than boycott, divestment, and sanctions. Even then, we’d be well within our rights to demand far, far more.▼

When requested for comment, a University of Oxford spokesperson responded:

“The University’s investment policy places restrictions based on the activity companies are engaged in – not the identity of any specific company or the jurisdictions where they operate. If they are engaged in the production of weapons now excluded under the restriction list, the University will not invest in them. Any company engaged in the manufacturing of arms that are illegal under UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons will automatically be on the updated restriction list; this approach aligns with responsible investment frameworks that seek to mitigate risk and uphold defined ethical standards without singling out specific entities beyond their activities.  

This principles-based model reflects the University’s charitable duties and fiduciary responsibilities. It is designed to provide clarity, consistency and legal robustness, while ensuring that investment restrictions are grounded in established legal and ethical standards applied consistently.”