King’s College Cambridge, the University of Cambridge’s largest college, has announced that its governing body has agreed to “adopt a responsible investment policy” by the end of 2025 and no longer invest in arms companies.
This is the direct result of months of student protests against Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. King’s College has invested £2.2m in arms companies like Lockheed Martin, Korea Aerospace and BAE Systems, who supply Israel and Russia with weapons used against the people of Gaza and Ukraine.
King’s new financial investments will now exclude companies involved in activities “generally recognised as illegal or contravening global norms, such as occupation”. They are the first Cambridge college to take such measures.
Stella Swain, youth and student officer at the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, told the BBC that it is a massive victory. “If King’s College, at the heart of Cambridge, can finally listen to its students and divest from the arms industry and companies complicit in the illegal occupation of Palestine, then every university can act to ensure they are on the right side of history.”
This news follows the announcement that the supermarket, the Co-op, will no longer be selling Israeli products in their stores after the Co-op board voted in favour of a motion to cease all trade with Israel. Additionally, graduates booed Columbia University President Claire Shipman during her speech at one of the Columbia University graduations this week. They chanted “Free Mahmoud [Khalil]”, the Columbia graduate who was, and still is, being detained by US immigration officials for his role in campus protests against the war in Gaza. Furthermore, Palestinian Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was arrested during a citizenship interview in Vermont in April, was freed on bail last month after a judge ordered his release, and earlier this week, he attended his graduation at Columbia.
Yesterday (May 20), the UN declared that this week could see 14,000 babies die over 48 hours in Gaza under the Israeli aid blockade. Over the last 19 months, 53,573 Palestinians have been killed and 121,688 wounded at the time of writing. But this week has shown that sustained collective pressure is working, no matter how hopeless things may feel.