This morning, Oxford students set up the Oxford Action for Palestine Solidarity Encampment. Over 60 faculty and staff members have signed a letter in support. You can sign too, here:
As members of faculty and staff of the University of Oxford, we stand firmly in support of the members of the university community who have begun an encampment outside the Pitt Rivers Museum to demand that the university divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as from Israel’s ongoing apartheid regime against Palestinians and its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Our students have demanded that the university call for an unconditional and immediate ceasefire, condemn the destruction of all of Gaza’s universities by Israel’s bombardment in the last six months, and commit concrete resources both to support Palestinian scholars’ education and to rebuild Gaza’s destroyed institutions of higher education. These sentiments have also been echoed in statements that members of Oxford’s community have initiated or signed, particularly the letter from the Scholars for Palestine group, which is led by Palestinian scholars in the UK.
The present situation in Gaza is catastrophic; the International Court of Justice has characterised it as plausibly amounting to genocide. We consider our students’ demands entirely reasonable given the University of Oxford’s commitment to global leadership in education and to furthering educational opportunities internationally. The University has called for the release of the Israeli hostages and for an end to the ongoing violence in Gaza. We further call for the release of Palestinian prisoners held under administrative detention in Israeli prisons, many of them arrested as children. We also ask the University itself to take a number of other urgent measures.
Currently, Oxford holds a policy of no direct investment in arms. We join our students in asking that the university review its ethical investment policy to explicitly restrict all investment – direct or indirect – in arms, weapons, and other instruments of war. To this end, we ask that the University instruct Oxford University Endowment Management to make available the granular detail of any investment in portfolios that may include arms investment, or investment in other instruments of war such as warplanes, so that we can have an open discussion on this issue with all the facts in hand. We also ask that the Vice Chancellor unequivocally condemn the killing of over a hundred university professors and Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s educational institutions and archives. Finally, we ask that the university immediately commit resources to (a) creating opportunities for Palestinian scholars to access library resources and educational support online so that they can continue their learning and to (b) rebuilding Gaza’s universities.
We see the encampment in solidarity with Gaza, in the words of Professor David Ludden, as “a public-facing global education project”. We hope that the university’s leadership will treat this political expression as the opportunity for dialogue that it is.
This is a statement from the undersigned faculty and staff at the University of Oxford, and does not set out to represent the views of the participants of the encampment.
Members of the University of Oxford who would like to sign can do so here.
- Walter Armbrust, Professor of Modern Middle Eastern Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- Robert Gildea, Emeritus Professor of Modern History
- Karma Nabulsi, Professor Emerita and Senior Research Fellow, St Edmund Hall
- Sudhir Hazareesingh, Fellow in Politics, Balliol College
- Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Fellow of St Antony’s College and former Professor of International Relations
- Neta C Crawford, Montague Burton Professor of International Relations and Fellow of the British Academy
- Arathi Sriprakash, Professor of Sociology and Education
- James McDougall, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History
- Wes Williams, Professor of French
- Patricia Owens, Professor of International Relations
- Nikita Sud, Professor of the Politics of Development, Oxford Department of International Development and Wolfson College
- Bernard Sufrin, Emeritus Fellow, Worcester College and Department of Computer Science
- Marilyn Booth, Emerita Khalid Bin Abdallah Al Saud Professor for the Study of the Contemporary Arab World, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- Pablo Mukherjee, Professor of Anglophone World-Literature, Faculty of English
- Sneha Krishnan, Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Dario Carugo, Associate Professor, Medical Sciences Division
- Debbie Hopkins, Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Sophie Smith, Associate Professor of Political Theory
- Meera Sabaratnam, Associate Professor of International Relations
- Jeanne Morefield, Associate Professor of Political Theory
- Nayanika Mathur, Professor of Anthropology and South Asian Studies, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
- Katherine Ibbett, Professor of French
- Amia Srinivasan, Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory
- Daniela Dover, Associate Professor of Philosophy
- Kate Tunstall, Professor of French
- Faisal Devji, Professor of Indian History
- Jocelyn Alexander, Professor of Commonwealth Studies
- Simukai Chigudu, Associate Professor of African Politics
- Maryam Alamzadeh, Associate Professor, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
- Raihan Ismail, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani Professor of Contemporary Islamic Studies, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
- Barbara Harriss-White, Emeritus Professor of Development Studies
- Paul Dresch, Emeritus Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford
- Morgan Clarke, Professor of Social Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
- Roxana Banu, Associate Professor and Tutorial Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall and the Faculty of Law
- Leila Ullrich, Associate Professor of Criminology
- Stuart White, Associate Professor in Politics
- Chihab El Khachab, Associate Professor in Visual Anthropology, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography
- Ian Klinke, Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Patrick McGuinness, Professor of French and Comparative Literature
- Amanda Power, Associate Professor of Medieval History
- David Chivall, School of Archaeology
- Amogh Dhar Sharma, Departmental Lecturer, Oxford Department of International Development
- Ana Valdivia, Departmental Research Lecturer in AI, Government and Policy, Oxford Internet Institute
- Dylan Carver, Departmental Lecturer in English
- Alexis McGivern, Net Zero Standards Manager, School of Geography and the Environment
- Catherine Sloan, Hertford College
- Henry Clements, Faculty of History
- Aliya Khalid, Senior Departmental Lecturer in Comparative and International Education
- Sara Hijazi, Blaschko Fellow, Department of Pharmacology
- Hashem Abushama, Departmental Lecturer, School of Geography and the Environment
- Jack Doyle, Faculty of History
- Mobeen Hussain, Junior Research Fellow, University College
- Ankita Pandey, Departmental Lecturer, Modern South Asian Studies
- Rowan Wilson, DPhil Student and Tutor, English Faculty
- Emily Dyson, DPIR Political Theory DPhil and Graduate Teaching Assistant
- Carina Uchida, DPhil Candidate and Tutor, Department of Politics and International Relations
- Kaya Axelsson, Head of Policy and Partnerships, Oxford Net Zero, School of Geography and the Environment
- Nicola Stevens, Trapnell Research Fellow in African Environments, Environmental Change Institute
- Camilla Hyslop, Net Zero Tracker Data Lead, Oxford Net Zero, School of Geography and the Environment
- Matilda Becker, Strategic Partnerships Manager, Oxford Net Zero, School of Geography and the Environment
- Rebecca Berrens, Sir Henry Wellcome Fellow, Department of Pediatrics
- Samira Barzin, Senior Researcher, Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment Change Institute
- Kaveri Medappa, Postdoctoral Researcher in Human Geography, Department of Continuing Education
- Kerry-Anne Grey, Project Assistant to the Ecosystems Lab, ECI, SoGE
- Orlando Lazar, Early Career Research and Teaching Fellow in Politics, St Edmund Hall
- Michael Mayo, Worcester College
- Amber Murrey, Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Thiruni Kelegama, Departmental Lecturer in Modern South Asian Studies
- Katherine Lebow, Associate Professor of History
- Hugh Nankervis, Postdoctoral Researcher in Microbiology
- Dorothee Boulanger, Career Development Fellow in Women’s and Gender Studies
- Emma Bond, Professor of Italian and Comparative Studies
- Ross Moncrieff, DPhil Student and Examination Fellow, All Souls College
- Dr Pelagia Goulimari, Co-director, MSt in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies
- Alex Vasudevan, Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Neeraj Shetye, Partnerships and Communications Manager, Oxford India Centre for Sustainable Development
- Aradhana Cherupara Vadekkethil, Early Career Fellow in Law, Somerville College
- Thirza Wakefield, Rosemary Pountney Research Fellow, St Anne’s College
- Alice Willatt, Research Fellow
- Bee Jones, DPhil Candidate and Tutor
- Marta Zboralska, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Ruskin School of Art
- Jamie Linsley-Parrish DPhil Candidate and Research Assistant, School of Geography and the Environment
- Simon Gilbert, Nuffield department of population health
- Timothy LaRock, Postdoc; President of Oxford UCU
- Daniella Lock, Postdoctoral Fellow, Faculty of Law
- Katie Higgins, Research Fellow
- Ammar Azzouz, British Academy Research Fellow
- Pratinav Anil, Lecturer in History at St Edmund Hall
- Eve Ess, Departmental Lecturer, Ruskin School of Art
- Raúl Zepeda Gil, Departamental Lecturer in Development Studies
- Uttara Shahani, Departmental Lecturer
- Catherine Phipps, Postdoctoral Associate Member
- Nadia Jamil, Senior Researcher
- Jade de Montserrat, Senior Ruskin Tutor
- Katherine Paugh, Associate Professor, Department of History
- Lucia Akard, College Lecturer in Medieval History, Oriel College, Oxford
- Adrita Mitra, DPhil student and Tutor
- Maryanne Saunders, Career Development Fellow
- Anton Jäger, Departmental Lecturer in Political Theory
- Gaurav Mittal, Researcher in Mobility Governance
- Felicity Leary, Department of International Development
- Lillian Fontaine, DPhil Francophone Postcolonial Studies, Stipendiary Lecturer
- Mai Musie, Project Manager, TORCH
- David Kampmann, Career Development Fellow, Oxford Sustainable Finance Group, School of Geography and the Environment
- Chambrez-Zita Zauchenberger, Clinical Researcher, Department of Psychiatry
- Elly Walters, DPhil Candidate and Tutor
- Laura Trajber Waisbich, Departmental Lecturer, Oxford School of Global and Area Studies
- Umme Hani Imani, Project Assistant