Clare College MCR Divestment Referendum - Easter term 2026
Should Clare College adopt an investment policy that excludes its investment in companies that manufacture military weapons and companies that manufacture key or dedicated components of military weapons?
Clare College’s graduate students should receive the opportunity to vote on the College’s
divestment from companies that manufacture weapons or facilitate severe violations of
international law. The first question that motion poses is:
Should Clare College adopt an investment policy that excludes its investment
in companies that manufacture military weapons and companies that manufacture
key or dedicated components of military weapons?
Noting that
1.1. Clare College’s Investment Policy does not preclude the investment by Clare College
(henceforth the College) in companies involved in the trade of conventional military
weapons or companies involved in activities that facilitate severe violations of
international law.
1.2. The majority of the College’s investments are managed by Amundi, an asset
managing company. A minority of the College’s investments are managed directly by the
College. The College retains ultimate authority over and responsibility for all of its
investments.
1.3. The College has offered limited, negative responses to sustained student advocacy
for the College’s divestment from weapons manufacturing and from facilitation of severe
violations of international law. (For an overview of this advocacy and the College’s
limited responses, see Note A.)
1.4. The College is currently invested in companies that manufacture weapons and
companies that facilitate severe violations of international law. At a February 2026
meeting of the Investment Committee (henceforth the Committee), officials from Amundi
informed student representatives and other Committee members that the College is
invested in companies that manufacture conventional weapons and in companies included
in the United Nations Human Rights Office database of businesses involved in certain
activities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The activities that lead to companies’
placement in the database include the destruction of Palestinian property, the construction
of illegal settlements, surveillance, and the dumping of waste into Palestinian villages.
The Committee has not responded directly to student calls for reconsideration of the
College’s investments in companies that manufacture weapons or facilitate severe
violations of international law. It has provided no justification for the College’s continued
investment in such companies. It has not responded to student calls for the establishment
of a working group to discuss the College’s investment policies.1.5. While the College avoided justifying or reexamining its investment policy, King’s
College demonstrated that a different approach is possible. King’s College established a
working group to discuss divestment and surveyed its members on the issue. In May
2025, King’s College committed itself to divestment from weapons manufacturing and
violations of international law. The Responsible Investment Policy of King’s College
states that King’s College will exclude itself from “all meaningful exposure in financial
investments” to companies that “[a]re complicit in human rights violations and other
severe breaches of international law or involved in severe controversy, including those
that breach the UN Global Compact” and “‘[p]roduce armaments, including military
weapons; nuclear weapons; biological, chemical or other weapons restricted by
international treaty; or produce key or dedicated components of such weapons.”
Believing that
2.1. The network of human community is nonexclusive, tying all people into a system of
mutual obligation and entitlement. This network transcends boundaries between humans,
including those boundaries of self, city, language, and nation.
2.2. The College, as an international community of people pursuing research with global
implications and as a manager of an endowment invested in international corporations,
has particularly boundary-transcending ties to this human network.
2.3. The obligations incumbent upon those in this human network include the charge to,
when possible and of limited detriment to the self, limit the suffering of other humans.
Greater potential to limit suffering imposes upon this potential’s possessor a greater
charge.
2.4. The manufacture of military weapons contributes to intense human suffering.
Military weapons make possible widespread death, displacement, dismemberment, and
destruction.
2.5. The current structure of the military weapons industry precludes useful ethical
distinction between weapons manufacturers. Armed forces compete to maximize their
lethal potential, and weapons’ manufacturers compete to provide the armed forces with
the means to do so. Incentives to minimize human suffering are generally absent from
this schema. Certain ethical frameworks might defensibly support the use of weapons for
purposes of minimizing human suffering, such as a state’s accumulation of arms as part
of a deterrence strategy. But such avowedly ethical use of weapons bears no necessary
relationship to the general ethical practices of the weapons’ manufacturers. Unless
manufacturers sell only to ethical actors, they retain their implication in the furtherance of
human suffering. Do manufacturers restrict their sales in this way? No. Manufacturers
work within a system driven first by profit, not morals.
2.6. Severe violations of international law contribute to intense human suffering.
Examples of these violations and their subsequent suffering abound. Illegal occupation is
one. The College currently invests in companies identified by the United Nations HumanRights Office as complicit in international law violations that include illegal occupation
(see 1.4). Illegal occupation’s violation of communities’ rights to self-determination
prevents occupied people from holding occupying powers to account, thereby making
possible further rights violations. In occupied Ukraine, Russian authorities forcibly
disappear residents, close cultural institutions, and restrict education in the Ukrainian
language. In occupied Palestine, Israeli authorities demolish and transfer Palestinian
villages, kill men, women, and children, and prevent residents’ free movement via
hundreds of roadblocks and checkpoints.
2.7. The College’s divestment from companies that manufacture weapons and facilitate
severe violations of international law would meaningfully contribute to limiting the
suffering caused by both. The College is a prestigious institution at a prestigious
university. Its investment policies thus carry social force. Divestment would employ this
social force to affirm the value of human life and dignity. Effective social movements not
uncommonly result from a gradual upswell of such socially forceful affirmations. Over a
decade of university-by-university divestment from companies operating in apartheid
South Africa, for example, preceded the United States and United Kingdoms’ sanctioning
of South Africa and the subsequent end of apartheid.
2.8. The College’s divestment from companies that manufacture weapons and facilitate
severe violations of international law would likely better align the College’s investment
choices with its students’ beliefs. A significant majority of participants in a June 2025
divestment-related poll of College students opposed the College’s investment in weapons
manufacturing and violations of international law (see Note A). Disjunction therefore
exists between students’ convictions and the College’s actions. Meanwhile, students and
their families give a considerable amount of money to the College. Students are also
directly impacted by the College’s wealth and budget. The desire of the College’s
students to contribute to and benefit from the College without violating their fundamental
moral convictions is alone sufficient to justify divestment.
Considering that
3.1. UK charity law allows charities to exclude from their holdings investments that
contradict their charitable purposes, even when such exclusions do not align with efforts
to maximize financial return.
3.2. Divestment from companies that manufacture weapons and violate international law
would align with the College’s Investment Policy (henceforth “the Policy”).
3.2.a. Under “Universal Ownership Approach,” the Policy states: “As a
universal owner, the College believes that it has a duty to act in the best
long-term interests of its beneficiaries by helping to preserve the long-term
health of the real economy and the social and environmental substrates on
which it relies. In this fiduciary role, the College recognises that
environmental and social systemic risks can have a material impact on the
financial performance of investment portfolios (to varying degrees acrosscompanies, sectors, regions, asset classes and through time). The College also
believes that applying this Universal Ownership Approach will better align the
College’s investment activities with its mission, consistent with the College’s
duty of obedience to its charitable purposes. The College intends to take
systemic environmental and social issues into account when making
investment decisions.” Weapons harm the long-term health of the global
economy. Economists estimate that war, which depends on weapons, decreased
global GDP by over a tenth from 1970 to 2014 and continues to send shock waves
through the global economy. Meanwhile, severe violations of international law
prevent our progression to a world where rule of law—and the economic
prosperity it brings—is universal. Divestment from companies that manufacture
weapons and facilitate severe violations of international law thus aligns with the
College’s interest in the long-term prosperity of the global economy.
3.2.b. Under “Intergenerational equity,” the Policy states: “The objective of
managing the endowment is to ensure an equitable distribution of benefits
between current and future beneficiaries.” Future students of the College come
from around the world, including places where weapons and severe violations of
international law devastate human life. Divestment from companies that
manufacture weapons and facilitate severe violations of international law aligns
with the College’s duty to all of its future beneficiaries.
3.2.c. Under “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” the Policy states that “a disregard
of DEI can create significant legal and reputational risks, and the magnitude of
these risks continues to grow as public opinion and legal requirements evolve …
the College intends to take DEI into account when making investment decisions.”
The growing public anger over the carnage of wars and the indignities of
international law violations presents a serious reputational risk to an institution
invested in companies that contribute to that carnage and those indignities.
Divestment from those companies aligns with the College’s intention to avoid
such a reputational risk.
The MCR resolves to
4.1. Pose the following two questions to the College’s graduate students in a referendum:
1. Should Clare College adopt an investment policy that excludes its investment
in companies that manufacture military weapons and companies that manufacture
key or dedicated components of military weapons?
2. Should Clare College adopt an investment policy that excludes its investment
in companies that facilitate human rights violations and other severe violations of
international law?
4.2. Advocate for a College investment policy that reflects the graduate student desires
expressed in the referendum.Note A.
On 18 March 2025, the Union of Clare Students (henceforth the Union) submitted a paper to the
College’s Investment Committee (henceforth the Committee) proposing that the College amend
its Investment Policy to preclude investment in companies involved in armaments and defence
and divest from all current investments in such companies. The Committee informed the Union
that they would respond to the paper’s proposals once Cambridge University’s Divestment
Working Group (henceforth the Working Group) released a pending report on the University’s
investment in the defence industry. Meanwhile, 89% of participants in a June 2025 referendum
of undergraduate students of the College voted in support of the College’s divestment from arms
and occupation. In October 2025, the Working Group released the report. In November 2025,
219 members of the College community (including undergraduate and postgraduate students,
fellows, staff, and alumni) signed a letter requesting that the Committee now respond to the
paper’s proposals. The letter further proposed that the Committee establish a working group with
students in order to discuss and work towards divestment. The Committee responded with a
letter titled Responsible Investment: An Update on the College’s Current Practice (henceforth the
Update). The Update affirmed that UK charity law permits the Committee to exclude
investments from its portfolio based on charitable purposes other than the investments’
profitability. The Update named the four Amundi funds in which the College has holdings. One
of these four named funds, the Amundi MSCI UK IMI SRI Paris Aligned fund, states in an
online factsheet that it excludes conventional weapons. At a Committee meeting in February
2026, Amundi officials informed student representatives and other Committee members that the
College is invested in companies that manufacture conventional weapons and in companies
identified by the United Nations Human Rights Office database of businesses involved in certain
activities in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. The activities that lead to companies’ placement on
the database include the destruction of Palestinian property, the construction of illegal
settlements, surveillance, and the dumping of waste into Palestinian villages. The Committee has
not responded directly to student calls for reconsideration of the College’s investments in
companies that manufacture weapons or facilitate severe violations of international law. It has
provided no justification for the College’s continued investment in such companies. It has not
responded to student calls for the establishment of a working group to discuss the investment.