We are constantly told that universities are hubs for critical, disruptive thought. Think again.
One legal advocacy group found educational institutions in Britain to be one of the most repressive actors in silencing and criminalising Palestinian solidarity. They ranked second…only beaten by the police!
There has been a targeted campaign against those who stand with Palestine, and, by extension, against the vested interests of university management. This campaign is waged through smears, disciplinary action, intensified policing, private security presence, or the threat of deportations.
700 communists defy state repression to say: For Palestine to live, imperialism must die!
Take the numerous disciplinary cases opened up against students at King’s College London (KCL).
An 18-year-old was banned from campus and forced to write a humiliating 2000-word reflective essay for posting in a WhatsApp group about a lecturer who served in the IDF.
Another KCL student from Egypt was indefinitely suspended by KCL over involvement in protests, resulting in his student visa being revoked.
Or take the spying scandal. Twelve universities paid £440,000 to Horus Security Consultancy to monitor students’ social media activity. Bristol University paid over £8,700 for a ‘bespoke’ monitoring service to track city-wide protest activities, specifically by pro-Palestine groups.
Rather than improving learning conditions, university bosses have spent astronomical sums surveilling and harassing students fighting for a free Palestine.
Cynical interests
Vice chancellors have followed the Labour government’s lead. But they have their own distinct interests. Universities are not neutral institutions. They are deeply integrated into the corporate, military, and financial networks that directly profit from imperialism and war.
Pro-Palestine activism threatens to expose and challenge the lucrative connections that university bosses have every interest in protecting.
While banning their own students from campus, KCL bosses were taking £3.3 million in direct research funding from major weapons manufacturers like BAE Systems – which manufactures key components for the F-35 fighter jets used to rain hell down on Gaza.
By December 2025, KCL’s specific holdings in Palantir – the tech firm with an official partnership with the Israeli Ministry of Defence – rose to £159,596.
But this is not an isolated case. As we have covered elsewhere, the UK government launched the Defence Universities Alliance (DUA) this summer with 35 universities taking part.
This alliance reveals the direct links of British higher education with the state’s military-industrial strategy. The DUA binds vice chancellors to re-focus academic research towards military technology, and to expand universities’ partnerships with the arms sector, which are already worth over £1 billion.
Free speech?
Needless to say, there was no consultation with students and staff. At the University of Glasgow, where almost 90 percent of its students voted for arms divestment in a referendum, they were ignored.
Not only are these arms companies deciding the specs for courses, and pushing students into their industries, they are also directly consulting with the universities on how to handle pro-Palestine activists.
At the University of Sheffield, for instance, following an interview with a BAE staff member, four students were penalised for posting comments such as “BAE kills kids”.
We are told pro-Palestine activists pose a real ‘threat’ to universities. That is true – we pose a ‘reputational risk’ to these shady institutions and their corporate partners.
This concerted campaign explodes the lie that we have ‘free speech’ on British campuses, and in our ‘liberal’ capitalist society more widely.
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When student activists challenge profiteering, militarism, and British foreign policy, these rights are quickly abandoned. University management is tied by a thousand threads to war profiteers and the state.
As many now understand, moral appeals to vice chancellors are futile.
Encampments show the way
During the 2024 Palestine solidarity encampments, we witnessed the kind of battles needed to put divestment on the agenda. Tents were pitched, buildings occupied, careers fairs disrupted – students brought the struggle against genocide directly to the doorsteps of management.
Following the lead from Columbia University, calls rang out in over 30 universities for British universities to divest from the Israeli war machine, and disclose their financial dealings to students and staff.
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The youth were leading the way for the Palestine movement. Revolutionary communists were involved in these struggles. As we wrote at the time:
“This call for divestment is a step in the right direction. But it raises broader demands: to kick all big business interests off our campuses for good. And this can only be achieved on the basis of a mass campaign by students and staff – those who are essential for the functioning of universities in the first place.”
Unfortunately, many encampments did not link up their struggle with the struggle of workers on campuses; forging a united front against intimidation and harassment of management and the state. Many were beaten back by the state, leading to a wave of demoralisation in their wake.
Two years after the genocide began, the only changes on campus have been the increase in private security firms. But the anger is still building on campus – searching for an expression.
What we fight for
The RCS is fighting to arm students with a clear, anti-capitalist programme to take on the bosses and militarists, and carry the struggle forward.
Such a programme would involve fighting to strip vice chancellors, appointed governors, and corporate-led boards of their executive authority.
So long as university management operates according to the logic of capitalism, they will ignore the needs of staff and students. University boards are more interested in pouring millions into futuristic vanity architecture, in order to snap up more cash from international students.
We therefore call to sweep away these well-paid, wasteful bureaucrats, and replace them with the elected leadership of staff and students.
By doing this, we could open up the financial books to staff and student inspection, and deliver real divestment. We say: Not a single penny of university money should fund the war machine!
We call for the termination of all research partnerships, endowment investments, and recruitment ties with weapons manufacturers, finance houses, and military contractors – from BAE Systems to Thales and Palantir.
To wrest education and research from the hands of the capitalists, we must link the struggle to reclaim our campuses to the broader fight for a socialist transformation of society.
This means reaching out to workers on and off-campus, and uniting behind demands to nationalise the big banks and monopolies, and to plan the economy for human need rather than profit.
We might be reproached that this is not ‘practical’. But we ask: where have the practical policies of negotiating with university management led us?
As French students turn society upside down – demanding educational reform and a future for their generation – we look across the Channel for our lead.
Revolutionary Communist Students are building a militant force of students fighting for their future. Join us in that task.
How BAE helps universities suppress pro-Palestine students
Harsh Singh, UCL
After recent revelations that British universities collectively paid private security firm Horus millions to spy on pro-Palestine students, 13 universities have now been found discussing how to actively suppress Palestine activities with Britain’s largest weapon’s manufacturer, BAE Systems – the same BAE Systems that makes weapons’ parts for Israel.
The research operation by Al Jazeera and Liberty Investigates implicates universities including Manchester, Nottingham, Southampton, Birmingham, Lancaster, Sheffield, and London’s Queen Mary University (QMUL).
These universities are considered ‘strategic partners’ by BAE Systems and collectively receive up to £15 million a year from the company. It is no coincidence that almost half of the 13 universities exposed are currently running a deficit: after over a decade of austerity, they’re sticking to a funding source when they see one!
The universities refused all the Freedom of Information requests for release of communications between the universities and BAE Systems, claiming it would be too costly to identify, redact, and release all relevant emails.
The Defence Universities Alliance: Kick imperialism off our campuses!
No wonder they want to keep as much under wraps as possible. Already, it has been revealed QMUL authorised additional security to protect arms companies’ interests, tasking staff with scouring social media videos to identify students in Palestine protests – so as to pass their identities on to the university misconduct team.
Despite every tokenistic claim that students’ rights to protest are ‘protected’, it is clear where university managements’ priorities lie. At UCL, RCP member Jamie was arrested for protesting for Palestine after the university called the police on him!
We cannot let our education be dictated to us by warmongers. We must kick imperialism off our campuses. If you want to fight this militarism, join the Revolutionary Communist Students at your university!
