Universities and arms companies: a special relationship

Sixty seven UK universities and university colleges currently hold significant investments in arms companies. This is just one aspect of a growing relationship between universities and the arms trade. Many UK universities (including Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, Manchester, Southampton, Swansea, Birmingham, Leeds, York and University College, London) both invest heavily in arms companies, and work with them on campus, through a spate of new research schemes, partnerships and funds.

The deepening relationship between arms and the academy in recent years has gone largely unnoticed. This is predominantly a failure of university democracy. The decision to invest directly in an arms company, or in a managed fund which includes arms companies, rests with the financial officer of the university. Although she or he acts on behalf of the university's members to safeguard the economic health of the institution, students and staff at most universities have no direct input into such important decisions. For the most part they are unaware that they have even been made. In several cases where students and staff have discovered that their university invests in arms companies, they have taken steps to push for divestment. In 2000, for example, a campaign by members of the University of East Anglia, backed by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, secured an ethical investment policy for the university's charitable funds which excluded arms companies.

Undoubtedly the impetus for these growing ties stems from the fact that UK higher education funding is suffering from significant shortfalls. Research collaborations provide substantial funding for university departments – but in return for them becoming outsourced research facilities for private companies. Universities' science, engineering and technology agendas are inevitably shifted from independent research to the stimulation of particular industrial sectors: like the guided weapons technology centres at Cranfield University and Imperial College London, part-funded by arms company Qinetiq; or the 20 University Technology Centres funded by military aerospace giant Rolls-Royce. Arms companies are already subsidised by public money to the tune of £890m annually – just short of the £950m which will be raised each year by top-up fees, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies. It seems that public money can be found for weapons, but not for education. Yet universities are expected to provide research for these already over-protected companies. And whether or not students and dons regard the commercialisation of higher education as financially necessary, they shouldn't be made to contribute to commercial interests which involve not just corporate profit, but the development of products designed to maim and kill; nor to collaborate with companies whose core markets include conflict zones and human rights abusers.

Nor would universities be putting their finances at risk by cutting their investment ties with the arms industry. Of course these are lean times for UK higher education funding. But investment in the arms trade is often financially risky because the arms trade relies upon large, widely spaced and highly competitive orders. A single arms deal can make or break an arms company. By contrast ethical investment funds that preclude arms company shares are amongst the most profitable. In the past decade the Church of England’s £4.3 billion ethically-managed fund, for example, was the 2nd best performer of more than 1,000 funds.

It seems, then, that the justification for such investments often simply boils down to financial habit. Without anyone questioning the status quo, institutions renowned for their commitment to internationalism and human progress continue to support companies whose profits rest upon proliferating weapons and sustaining international tension.

Moves towards ethical investment have already begun in many other public institutions. By uncovering the scale of university investment in the arms trade, and by providing university members with information and support, Campaign Against Arms Trade's new University Clean Investment campaign hopes that students and staff will lead the way in getting arms out of education. Divestment from companies who market killing will be a major step forward.