Cambridge University has announced plans for a £400m collaboration with the United Arab Emirates, despite the University itself, in its internal documents, warning of a “values gap” and a threat to “academic freedom and institutional autonomy”.

The UAE has a shocking history of human rights abuses and violations of international law. Arbitrary detention continues to be practised in the country, with at least 10 people continuing to be arbitrarily detained after completing their prison sentences. More than 25 prisoners remain in jail on account of their peaceful political criticism as of 2020, according to Amnesty International, including prominent human rights defender Ahmed Mansoor, whose 2017 arrest was described by a group of United Nations human rights experts as “a direct attack on the legitimate work of human rights defenders in the UAE”.

Academics have also faced instances of human rights violations by the UAE state. Matthew Hedges, a researcher at Durham, is currently pursuing legal action against the UAE over alleged false imprisonment and torture.

Cambridge UCU have said that this deal actively puts university staff in danger as “they would have little or no protection from repression on grounds of their sexuality or gender identity, or in the event they expressed views considered critical of the UAE’s authoritarian regime. They would be working in a context notorious for massive violations of labour rights”.

LGBTQ+ and women’s rights have also been found lacking in the UAE by numerous human rights organisations. The UAE’s repressive laws criminalise “all sexual acts outside of a different-sex marriage” according to Stonewall, which also notes that “there is no legal prohibition of discrimination in employment based on sexual orientation or gender identity”. In addition, “significant discrimination against women and girls remains” in the UAE, according to Human Rights Watch. Sheikha Latifa, daughter of the Dubai ruler, described the conditions of her imprisonment after being abducted and forcibly returned to the UAE in 2018: “I am enslaved...my life is not in my hands”. Her sister, Shamsa, was abducted from Cambridge in 2000 and has not been seen in public since.

In proposing this collaboration, the university is legitimising the actions of the UAE government and is making itself complicit in the human rights abuses listed above.

Cambridge University claims they need this faustian pact to “weather the challenges faced by universities as a result of Covid, Brexit and a constrained funding environment”. 

Yet, the University of Cambridge is the richest higher education institution in the UK, and the 13th richest in the world. The University and its colleges have consolidated net assets of at least £11.8bn. They are hardly ‘constrained’. The University should be putting its already-significant capital towards positive environmental, social and scientific progress, not selling its soul to oppressive regimes. 

The collaboration with UAE also begs the question as to whom the University would not be willing to collaborate with. From arms manufacturers to the fossil fuel industry (from whom the university has received more than £12.8 million since 2015), the time for the University of Cambridge to hold itself to basic moral standards is long overdue. 

We call on the University to scrap the planned collaboration immediately, and implement stringent criteria to ensure that the perpetrators of human rights abuses will never again be considered for financial or academic collaboration.