Study War No More: Military Involvement in UK Universities

JamieSW — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:17:56 +0000

Imperial College London sounds like the kind of place where you’d expect to find attitudes sympathetic to the military. London was, after all, once the capital of an empire of such size and scale – encompassing about a quarter of the world – that it required immense military might to enforce its rule. Looking at the level of military research that is being conducted by academics at Imperial and many other UK universities today, you could be excused for thinking that the empire never really went away – at least in the minds of those who seek to defend it.

In December last year, letters were sent to students, academics, staff and alumni at 26 UK universities drawing their attention to a recently published report entitled ‘Study War No More – Military Involvement in UK universities.’ The report, written by Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FoR) details the hundreds of military projects that UK universities conduct on behalf of arms companies and public bodies such as the Ministry of Defence. As one of the 26 UK universities covered by the report, letters were sent to representatives of Imperial highlighting how, between 2001 and 2006, the college conducted a minimum of 95 military projects – the 7th largest number in the UK – which netted the university at least £24 million.

The following response to this letter was received from Stephen Brown, Imperial College’s Union President:

“I am delighted that Imperial College has performed so well in yet another league table although given that we only finished 7th there is clearly still a lot of room for improvement. Several of our students are very proud of the excellent work that the College does with our industrial partners and the government to make sure that our armed forces have every possible technological advantage in what is unfortunately a dangerous world. The recent concerns raised in Parliament about the under funding of the UK Armed Forces reinforces the need for this important work to continue to make our service personnel less vulnerable as they bravely go about their jobs protecting UK subjects from those who would do us harm.”

Mr Brown needn’t worry about Imperial’s position in the league table, for the college is working hard to improve its ranking all the time. For example, in 2006, the Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defence joined forces with Imperial to form the International Technology Alliance (ITA). According to Imperial’s website, the ITA will “undertake a research programme exploring advanced technology for secure wireless and sensor networks to support future coalition operations, over a potential 10 year period, with a value of up to $135.8 million”[1]. Other members of the consortium include Boeing and Honeywell – two of the largest arms companies in the world. Imperial’s department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering received a government grant of £1.4 million for its work on this project and there may well be more to come.

It is important to consider the actual practices of Imperial’s ‘industrial partners’ in order to appreciate the likely applications of the military projects conducted at Imperial. As noted above, Imperial works with some of the largest arms companies in the world. As well as Boeing and Honeywell, Imperial is involved in numerous projects with BAE Systems, Rolls Royce, QinetiQ and General Dynamics. As Stephen Brown points out, these companies produce equipment for the UK military, which will have been used in, amongst other places, Iraq and Afghanistan. Notably absent from Mr Brown’s account however, is a reference to the foreign markets that these companies supply through arms exports. For example, BAE Systems, the company that was British Aerospace before it became too ‘global’ for ‘British’, is the world’s fourth largest arms producer. It makes fighter aircraft, warships, tanks, armoured vehicles, artillery systems, missiles, munitions and much more.

These arms are sold indiscriminately around the world and the company thrives on insecurity. Its 2005 Annual Report candidly states that “New threats and conflict arenas are placing unprecedented demands on military forces and presenting BAE Systems with new challenges and opportunities…”. The company claims to have military customers in “some 130 countries”, with its foremost markets being the repressive Saudi Arabian regime and the US, to which BAE Systems has steadily been moving its business. Other export deals to areas of conflict and widespread human rights abuse include sub-systems for Israeli F-16 fighter aircraft and Hawk light combat aircraft to Indonesia during its repression of East Timor.

One of the larger military projects involving Imperial and BAE Systems is FLAVIIR. This is a £6.2 million, public-private funded project, running between 2004 and 2009 and involving ten universities, predominantly in their Engineering departments. According to its website, FLAVIIR will “look at technologies for future unmanned air vehicles (UAV) funded jointly by BAE Systems and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.” A recent report in The Guardian outlined just how deadly the FLAVIIR research could one day be. It describes how the FLAVIIR research is intended to develop existing UAV technology used by UK and US forces. The RAF initially plans to use the unmanned drones for reconnaissance before arming them with Hellfire missiles for ground attacks. The CIA already used similar drones last year to “target a Pakistani village where it was thought Ayman al-Zawahiri, the deputy leader of al-Qaida, was in hiding. Instead, more than 20 villagers, including five women and five children, were killed.” Unshaken by such tragedies, “British ministers and military chiefs think the drone will be the frontline attack plane in years to come.”

The military sector – both governmental and industrial – has been able to push its way into Imperial and other UK universities through funding a variety of projects, mainly involving research. By sub-contracting research to universities, which have world-class, publicly-funded staff and facilities, the military sector can keep overheads down and, in the case of military companies, profits up. The ease with which military organisations can influence university departments, through purchasing research and services and providing sponsorship, is indicative of the general trend towards commercialisation in higher education. Moreover, the hundreds of projects conducted at UK universities between 2001 and 2006 for the military sector indicate that the military has, in particular, built up strong levels of influence over science, engineering and technology departments.

Public money, mainly from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s collaborative research grants scheme, heavily subsidises many of these military projects, in particular those conducted by military companies, which contribute relatively small amounts of money. The public financing of military research makes these projects more attractive to universities, especially those suffering from funding shortfalls. Academics thus accept and actively seek out military money because they are under pressure to attract research funding to their department. Furthermore, because the university funding system has been used by the government to introduce policies which promote research with economic benefits to industry, science, engineering and technology departments’ funding options have narrowed. Academics may also be more willing to accept military funding if they do not perceive the work to be military. This may be because they don’t associate the research they are being paid to conduct with a direct military application. This is despite the fact that it is often possible to identify work which has been paid for by the military that either have very high military revenues or spend millions of pounds on military production and/ or procurement.

In spite of the Freedom of Information Act, accessing data regarding the funding of universities by the military sector (for example from university and research council websites in addition to FoI requests) is time consuming and only presents a partial picture of the actual economic relationships. Two reasons for this- apart from the fact that institutions are often not compelled to provide such information- are the need for commercial confidentiality between competing organisations (including universities) and the cloak of secrecy surrounding the military sector. Without full transparency in the future, including clear and easily accessible information concerning how public money is used to support projects conducted by the military sector, it will not be possible to accurately assess the extent of military involvement in UK universities or monitor developments and trends.

The first step towards challenging the dependence of UK universities on funding from military organisations is to ensure that information regarding this relationship is publicly available so that it may be freely discussed. Transparency can only be achieved through the use of the media, public debates, meetings and campaign groups to press for change within universities and government. Ultimately, the decision-making structures of universities and government must change if the military sector’s research agenda is to stop being pushed onto university departments and there is to be a reduction in the amount of military projects conducted at UK universities. Thankfully, there are encouraging signs that students and staff will not stand for their universities’ being turned over to the military. Campaigners have already taken part in meetings at several UK universities, including Warwick, Nottingham, UCL, LSE, Sheffield and Southampton and there are plans for many more events at other universities in the future. One would hope that Imperial College and its Union President will continue to take part in this debate, for it is clear that students and staff want to discuss current levels of university participation in military projects given the urgent challenges of climate change, resource conflict, nuclear proliferation and economic inequalities that the UK and the world are currently facing.

1. http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummar…

Universities and Arms Companies

Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:51:18 +0000

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 Englands £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.

Tim Street | ukwatch.net

Study War No More: Military Involvement in UK Universities

Universities and Arms Companies