Pro-Palestine student protesters have taken aim at Britain’s two most prestigious universities in what marks just the latest in a wave of demonstrations sweeping campuses across the UK – and the world.
Earlier this morning, demonstrators set up tents outside the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum in protest at its contents – which they claimed was a “disturbing hoard of artefacts stolen from colonised peoples across the world”.
While in Cambridge, around 60 student protesters established an encampment on the famous King’s College lawn over what they claim is the university’s support for “Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza”.
A joint statement from organisers Oxford Action for Palestine and Cambridge for Palestine slammed the pair of universities’ “historic complicity in the colonisation of Palestine”, and stated “Oxbridge’s profits cannot continue to climb at the expense of Palestinian lives”.
Students were seen erecting encampments at King’s College, Cambridge, while others did the same at Oxford University
Wikimedia Commons/Pexels/X
At Oxford, protesters in their self-titled “liberation zone” issued a series of demands to university execs, including calls to “boycott Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation”, to “disclose all finances”, “stop banking with Barclays”, and “divest from Israeli genocide, apartheid and occupation”.
In a further statement, demonstrators claimed “There is no university in the history of human civilisation that is more complicit in violence, dispossession, and the building of destructive colonial empires than the University of Oxford.”
A spokesman from the camp in Cambridge, Ibrahim, a 27-year-old physics PhD student, refused to condemn Hamas or describe them as a terror group when questioned by a reporter from the Telegraph, claiming “we’re not really describing anything in terms of broader geopolitics”.
A rally at the university this afternoon drew a crowd of hundreds, with activists chanting: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, “Israel is a terror state” and “disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest”.
MORE PROTEST MADNESS:
Miriam Cates MP said spending three years “detached from the real world spending someone else’s money is not always the best start to adult life”
PA
Tory MP Miriam Cates, who went to Cambridge, slammed the protests, saying: “The Blairite aspiration to send half of all young people to university has backfired spectacularly.
“Spending three years detached from the real world spending someone else’s money is not always the best start to adult life. Academic learning & common sense are not the same thing.”
The protests follow a string of demonstrations at universities across the UK, in the US and beyond calling for their universities to cut financial ties with Israel or Israeli companies in light of the country’s ongoing military response in Palestine to the October 7 Hamas attacks.
While on May 1, activists targeted BAE Systems facilities and a government department over their ties to UK arms exports to Israel.
A union protester claimed there was “not a single person” in the Department for Business and Trade thanks to protests on May 1
PA
An Oxford University spokesperson told GB News: “We are aware of the ongoing demonstration by members of our University community.
We respect our students and staff members’ right to freedom of expression in the form of peaceful protests. We ask everyone who is taking part to do so with respect, courtesy and empathy.
“Oxford University’s primary focus is the health and safety of the University community, and to ensure any impact on work, research and learning, including student exams, is minimised. As we have stressed in our student and staff communications, there is no place for intolerance at the University of Oxford.
The Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum remain open.”
While a University of Cambridge spokesperson told GB News: “The University is fully committed to academic freedom and freedom of speech within the law and we acknowledge the right to protest. We ask everyone in our community to treat each other with understanding and empathy. Our priority is the safety of all staff and students.
“We will not tolerate antisemitism, Islamophobia and any other form of racial or religious hatred, or other unlawful activity.”
