University investments

AN MSP has joined campaigners in calling on a leading Scottish university to move its money away from two controversial arms trade companies.

 John Finnie MSP, a consistent campaigner on war and arms activities, told Com monSpace: “Students at Glasgow University were rightly praised for getting the University to divest in fossil fuel industries and it’s therefore […]

The Student Council of King’s College London Students Union has passed a motion calling for a stronger ethical investment policy that excludes investments in arms. The KCL SU is now mandated to lobby the university to produce a comprehensive ethical investment policy which explicitly rules out investments in sectors such as the arms trade and fossil fuels. The […]

The London Student has revealed that, in spite of ethical investment policy claims, London universities have over £7.4 million investing in arms trade company shares. We can stop this. In 2007-9 Disarm UCL ran a successful campaign to pressure the university into dropping it’s shares in Cobham PLC. Student activism is an essential part of […]

Rolls Royce are confirmed to be investing in a planned £400m ‘science and innovation’ university campus. Phase one, costing £200m, is due to be opened in three years time. The university is hopeful to attract other arms trade investors such as Airbus UK and BAE Systems. Accepting funds from the arms trade is not acceptable. […]

After a spectacular campaign, Edinburgh university have divested from Ultra Electronics – a company which makes components for drones. The Guardian reports – ‘The company, headquartered at Greenford in Middlesex, makes navigation controls for the US fleet of Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles. Armed with Hellfire missiles, they are sent on covert “targeted killing” […]

After an excellent campaign by Leeds University student group Let’s Disarm Leeds, students voted Yes in a referendum on whether they wanted to end their university’s links with BAE Systems, the world’s third biggest arms manufacturer. This victory mandates the Students’ Union to lobby the University to do three things in particular: to stop inviting BAE to […]

On Wednesday 6 March, six months before the DSEI arms fair is due to return to London, students and other activists across the UK took action against arms companies at their universities and in their communities, sending a strong message that their business will not go unchallenged. Warwick Weapons out of Warwick took non-violent direct […]

A new study has found that College and Uni endowments’ investments in the US aren’t doing as well as expected in terms of environmental, social and corporate governance, despite a history of leadership in the area (dating from anti-apartheid campaigns in the 1970s). The good news is that where there was good investment, this was generally because […]

Freedom of Information requests by the Oxford Anti-War Action group helped The Independent to write this article on Oxford University’s investments in Lockheed Martin.