Laura Shewan, SGR, describes the increasingly close relationship between the military-industrial complex and the academic sector in Britain. She also highlights the increasing antagonism of university authorities to protest against that relationship.   

Article from Responsible Science journal, no.8; advance online publication: 21 November 2025
 

The latest phase of the relationship between the arms industry and higher education in the UK is gradually being exposed alongside a growing awareness of the complicity of universities in the facilitation of global conflict. [1]  In response to this pressure, the discipling of dissenting voices by university administration has intensified, with increasingly authoritarian measures being used to deter and to punish the student and teaching bodies who continue to speak out against the influence of the arms industry in education.
 

Arms industry and academic partnerships

The growing commercialisation of higher education in the UK – which began in the 1980s and has accelerated since the 2010s – has brought to the foreground a number of ethical and moral issues, forcing consideration of who and what university education is really for. With spiralling costs of tuition fees for students coupled with high inflation, universities have become more of a commodity, treating students as consumers and seeking to provide a positive ‘customer service’ experience. One key element of this customer experience is the need to justify and legitimise the value of their degree. Most academic programmes are now required to demonstrate impact both within research and teaching, in many cases to show direct indicators of translatable skills through the transition into the workforce, post-degree.

Consequently, we have been left with a hollowed-out university system, brutalised by national policies and processes of neoliberalism, that has become answerable to the leverages of bureaucracy and political agendas. Cash-strapped universities are looking to cut costs, most commonly targeting humanities and social sciences which are seen to be the least transferable in terms of vocational skills. In the last month alone, the Royal Geographical Society has spoken out against the funding crisis in higher education and the risk of departmental closures, [2] while entire linguistics departments have been threatened with closure at the Universities of Nottingham and Leicester. [3]  These economic decisions and cost cutting measures are not neutral. They betray ideologies of neoliberalism that bely broader questions of the purpose of education.

In these pressurised and financially constrained conditions, arms corporations and the wider military sector offer universities economic security and a material professional pathway for potential students. This situation is particularly common in the STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics), where the radical innovations and fast paced developments in technologies are urgently sought for the rapidly changing landscape of war. As funding and subsidies for national education are hacked away, simultaneously UK military spending is sky-rocketing. [4]  The sector is pouring money into the arms race, and a source of labour is readily accessible through research laboratories in every university in Britain. [5]  Companies such as BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and Raytheon are keen to exploit the intellectual labour of students and staff in the development of their technologies, through research placements, grants, careers fairs and sponsorships. [6]  Impact and income therefore intersect to make the partnership between the arms industry and higher education as dangerous as it is mutually beneficial. 
 

Students speak out

However, the demise of higher education as a space of societal critique has not been without push back. Traditionally, the university as an institution has prided itself on being a space of critical thought, with the exploration of knowledge and enquiry as an end in itself. All universities in the UK have a requirement to public benefit responsibilities, which funding from the arms industry breaches. Many hope that, despite the constraints and political agendas shaping the administrative direction of the university sector, those who live and work on the front line of education – the teachers and students still learning in these spaces – continue to aspire to these ideals.

Over recent years campus mobilisations have become increasingly co-ordinated around institutional complicity in armed conflict and related injustices, with sustained pressure directed against both local institutions and Universities UK. There have been several successes. For example, in May this year, staff and students at King’s College at the University of Cambridge voted to divest from companies producing arms in a referendum on university investments. [7]  King’s College has subsequently committed to a new responsible investment policy with full divestment from the arms industry by the end of 2025, withdrawing £2.2 million invested in companies such as Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and Korea Aerospace. [8] 

In the case of King’s College, and on many other university campuses across the country, the movement towards demilitarisation has come alongside pressure to distance these institutions from human rights violations and breaches of international law, especially given UN recognition of genocide in Gaza. [9]  Students have mobilised outside careers fairs to protest against the presence of arms corporations attempting to recruit graduates. 

The nature of the relationship between the arms industry and the bureaucratic machinations of the university sector means that frequently their agreements are made below the radar. The campaigning voices of staff and students therefore have successfully brought to light the hidden processes that drive research agendas and university discourse. The complicity of the universities in some of the worst humanitarian crises in the world has been exposed as an element of the commercialisation and militarisation of academic institutions.
 

Disciplining dissent

The reputational risk that these co-ordinated acts of mobilisation have accelerated has incited an increasingly authoritarian response from university administrations. In the case of King’s College, the win on divestment came following an attempt by the University of Cambridge to secure a five-year anti-protest injunction. [10]  Although unsuccessful in its entirety, the application did manage to secure a year-long ban on pro-Palestine protests on parts of the campus reflecting the nationwide push towards subduing dissenting voices speaking out on national policies and practice.

In tandem, university administrations have been deploying more coercive measures of control in order to placate the military-industrial complex, and to maintain its influence on the discourse and direction of governance. In October, it was revealed that several universities consented to surveillance of student activity in an attempt to mitigate anticipated disruption at careers fairs where arms companies would be present. [11]  Glasgow, Loughborough and Heriot Watt Universities agreed to actively monitor the social media of student societies in order to provide intelligence about possible protests against firms supplying the Israeli military. At the University of Cardiff, the careers fair was moved online at the request of BAE Systems, in an attempt to avoid acknowledgement of the dissenting voices.

However, equally concerning has been the increased securitisation of these spaces, and the visible threat of force posed by the police and security presence. The Association of University Chief Security Officers (AUCSO) which has staff employed at more than 140 UK universities deployed ‘static and mobile officers’ to monitor careers events in a co-ordinated crack down on campuses throughout the country. [12]  Ultimately, this unprecedented escalation of securitisation has led to heavy police presence and the subsequent arrest of three students at a STEM careers fair at the University of Leeds in October this year.

The authoritarian measures being strategically employed by UK universities present a radical movement away from commitments to freedom of expression which they proport to uphold. These processes of surveillance and securitisation are deeply concerning within a broader national and global push towards greater measures of coercion and control. Students and staff teaching and learning together deserve to do so without interference from the state or other bodies carrying out public functions, and to sustain the right to speak out against the destruction of people, places and their planet in whatever form this may take.
 

Laura Shewan is campaigner on the militarisation of science education at Scientists for Global Responsibility. 
 

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