Words: Patrick (he/they)
On 17th April 2024, the first student encampment in solidarity with Palestine took place at Columbia University. The spread of the encampments to hundreds of campuses across the globe – fuelled by the sheer depravity of Israel’s atrocities, unconditional Western support, Palestinian resistance, the international solidarity movement, and police violence against students – marked a level of student activism unprecedented since the struggles over the Vietnam War and Black Civil Rights movement in 1968.
Less than a month later, Rishi Sunak had summoned the Vice-Chancellors of 17 universities to Downing Street. Called under the guise that students protesting against a genocide carried out by Israel (the Zionist entity) was an act of bigotry, this smear masked a deeper purpose. The establishment was scared of the arising student movement and was working to move against it.
Central to the global student intifada (Arabic for ‘shaking off / uprising’) has been the question of divestment. This falls under the wider strategy of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions). Modelled on the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the 70s and 80s, BDS seeks to isolate and delegitimise the Zionist entity. Divestment has been an incredibly useful tool for mobilising support for Palestine. The research done by Glasgow Against Arms and Fossil Fuels (GAAF) claims that Glasgow University holds £6.8 million in arms companies. By allowing them to connect the horrors that they witness on their phones to the institution they pay to be a part of, this research has motivated thousands of students to take action.
The Vice-Chancellors of our institutions are not ignorant to what has been taking place in Gaza since October 7th. Yet, except for a few places like Swansea and Aberdeen where students have been able to win serious concessions, in almost every institution, including ours, management have been able to hold the line.
To understand how institutions can believe that a genocide is taking place, that their university is complicit in it, and yet still uphold the status-quo, we have to understand the huge political and economic forces that twist the way they think and act. When we hold our own line, raising solidarity with Palestine and calling out institutional complicity with a genocide, we are not just against the individuals, but the wider social forces too.
Direct political pressure placed on Vice-Chancellors by the state can force their hand on certain matters. This is exemplified by the meeting with Rishi Sunak and the explicit legislation of bills such as the former Economic Activity of Public Bodies, which attempt to crack down on BDS. Politicians have an incentive to protect British regional imperialist interests through violence, this manifests in unconditional support for Israel, the bombing of Yemen, and cracking down on protest movements.
Increasingly insidious, earlier this year Rob Bauer, one of NATO’s most senior officials, articulated the trajectory of violence that officials like him are intent on leading us down.
‘Regional wars, as we see now, are probably part of our near future.’
The war mongering is obvious and their strategy is clear: if it wants to fight these wars, the West must re-arm. More money must be injected into weapons manufacturing. Unsurprisingly then, Bauer launched an attack on ethical divestment as a whole.
‘What has happened to your business instinct? Are you stupid?’, he demanded of pension funds divesting from arms. ‘If you are looking at return on investment . . . there’s so much money to be spent over the next 20 years’.
Rhetoric of this sort finds its echo in the chilling words given by the University Court – that it wouldn’t divest ‘because this could be interpreted as a signal that the University was opposed to the existence of the UK defence sector’ i.e. Glasgow University as an institution will not oppose this drive to war. For universities competing with each other on a financial market, research focused on producing the cutting edge technology most effective at eliminating human life will be the most lucrative.
If you’re an investment fund or a university looking for research contracts, it is profit that is going to speak the loudest, not international solidarity nor Palestinian lives. So long as we live in a society where the central source of power (wealth) is not subject to democratic control, any progress is easily undone by vested interest. Does all this mean that we should give up on divestment?
No.
It is a worthy goal, and in the course of this fight there have been serious victories: from the election of Dr Ghassan Abu-Sitta as rector on a landslide victory to the disruption of recruitment for arms companies on campus. The student movement has been central to challenging the argument that criticism of Zionism is illegitimate and has done much to isolate the Zionist entity on the world stage.
Divestment is a difficult thing to achieve, but this difficulty can be useful. It plainly exposes some of the most fundamental flaws of the world we live in. It gives us the opportunity to expose and critique them. And it implores us to continue fighting for a better world
