THE University of Glasgow faced a vote to cut links to arms investments today as the Morning Star went to press.

The motion came just days after the institution was reported to the charity regulator over its £6.8 million arms investments.

The Scottish Charity Regulator received an International Centre for Justice for Palestinians complaint warning that the institution could be breaking the law by “profiting off investments made in companies supplying weapons to a military that uses them in the commission of war crimes.” 

As a result, the university’s ruling court considered a motion today to cut ties with organisations such BAE Systems, involved in arming Israeli war machine.

Ahead of entering the court meeting to make the case, Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah — a British-Palestinian surgeon elected rector of the university just two months ago — spoke at a rally of students and staff.

“The decision coming up today, it’s really very, very simple,” he said.

“Institutions across the globe need to understand the apparatus of impunity that has allowed Israel to persist for 76 years from one massacre to the other, from one crime to the other.

“To the point where when this genocide started, its leaders were so intoxicated by this impunity that they verbalised their genocidal desires, and they articulated their ethnic cleansing plans.

“And the apparatus of genocide are these weapons, these 108 export licences that the British government has allowed to be sent to Israel since October 7, that have killed 16,000 children, that have [left] 4,500 kids with amputations for their lives, that have wounded over 100,000 now, but has killed probably close to 45,000 to 50,000.

“We need to be able to create a clear moral distance between our institutions and this genocidal war that continues today, every day, every minute.”

The University of Glasgow was contacted for comment.