The Portsmouth branch of the UCU (University and College Union) has passed a motion condemning the US and Israel’s illegal wars against Iran and Lebanon, and calling for an ethical review of the University of Portsmouth’s (UoP) relationships with arms companies and military forces complicit in the violence.
In line with the UCU’s national position, the Portsmouth branch of the union has strongly criticised the killing of up to 10,000 people in various Middle Eastern nations, over half of whom are civilians. War crimes have been committed including the US bombing of a school which caused the deaths of at least 165 young girls.
The branch points out that arms companies with whom UoP has partnerships, such as BAE Systems, are profiting from this new wave of mayhem and misery in the Middle East. The Royal Air Force are supporting US and Israeli armed forces. An RAF drone was spotted over Lebanon the day 300 people – mostly civilians – were slaughtered in Israeli strikes, while US bomber planes have been permitted to take off from British bases including RAF Fairford. UoP has a significant long-term contract with the RAF to deliver military education to its personnel.
The branch has called on UoP to conduct a review, which should scrutinise the following matters:
+ The effectiveness and consistency of institutional ethics policies
+ UoP’s potential culpability as an organisation that has supported or enabled war criminality, as the balance of international legal opinion shifts against Israel for not only these latest outrages but for its ongoing genocide in Gaza, which has so far claimed the lives of 75,000, almost a third of them children
+ How UoP can divest from unethical partnerships, as numerous other UK universities have, and instead seek financial relationships with more ethical organisations. These other universities include Kings College Cambridge, Trinity College Cambridge, Kings College London, Swansea University and Queen’s University Belfast.
Picture entitled ‘International Women’s Day and Leeds UCU signs, 2018’ reproduced under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 licence.
