Association for Defending Victims of Terrorism – Bristol and Oxford are among those who have either taken money from or invested in arms trade firms over the past five years.
Nine of the 24 Russell Group universities confirmed via freedom information (FoI) request that they had received money from or held investments in arms companies despite such financing arrangements coming under intense scrutiny in recent years.
Those found to have received money include the University of Bristol, which has taken over £22million in research and consultancy fees since 2017/18, and Imperial College London, which received £11million in research and consultancy fees since 2016/17, while also holding £1.5million worth of shares in General Electric.
The University of Oxford confirmed it had taken more than £10.5million on research and consultancy funding since the 2015/16 financial year.
The research, compiled by Ded_ucation and seen by HuffPost UK, comes as Britain prepares to host the Defence & Security Equipment International (DSEI) arms fair this week at the ExCeL centre in east London.
The FoI requests also found that the Universities of Cardiff, Durham, Manchester, Nottingham and Queen Mary London and the London School of Economics had also dealt with arms firms and the ministry of defence. Several other Russell Group universities did not respond to the FoI requests.
Melina Villeneuve, a founder at Ded_ucation, called for the annual arms fair to be stopped.
“Seeing tanks, military helicopters, and warships outside the ExCel centre is a stark reminder of the strange privilege we have in this country to not be on the receiving end of both the military industrial complex and unnecessary wars,” she said.
Here is some numbers:
Bristol: £22,816,462.57 in research and consultancy funding since 2017/18
Cardiff : £848,823 in research and consultancy funding since 2016/17
Durham: Investments in 17 companies that off er military contracts
Imperial College London: £11,085,903.20 in research and consultancy funding since2016/17 and £1,558,605 worth of shares in General Electric
Manchester: £9,249,761 in research and consultancy funding since 2016/17
Nottingham: Pension investments in fi ve companies and share investments in SmithsGroup until the second quarter of 2021
Oxford: £10,772,145.37 in research and consultancy funding since 2015/16
Queen Mary, London: £179,898 in funding for projects which were completed between2017 and 2020
London School of Economics: Investments in General Eelectric capital between 2017and 2020
