Written by Janset An
Illustrated by Anonymous
BP and LSE
Universities today have become increasingly hinged on capital accumulation. Ours is not exempt from this trend: in 2016, LSE announced its intent to grow its endowment fund, currently valued at £539 million, to £1 billion. This immense feat necessitates the entrenchment of corporations within LSE’s web of associations.
The university currently has over £131 million invested into companies associated with crimes against the Palestinian people, the global arms trade, and ecological destruction. This is a financial Goliath difficult to make sense of. Where do we begin addressing this complicity in egregious corporations?
This year, LSE Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) have responded to this question by targeting British Petroleum (BP), which LSE currently invests over £2 million into as of June 2025. To gain further insights into these efforts, The Beaver sat down with student campaigners from SJP to anonymously discuss their campaign.
The campaigners clarified that the choice of BP did not entail walking away from calls for whole-scale divestment. They explained, however, that centering BP in discussions helps students “place LSE within imperialism and capitalism worldwide”.
One student noted that they took inspiration “from Energy Embargo for Palestine (EEFP) and their work around the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline”. BP is currently the operator and largest stakeholder of this pipeline which runs from Azerbaijan to Georgia to Türkiye, and supplies Israel with 28% of its oil. EEFP has shown how this oil fuels Israel’s military machine by tracking Türkiye’s secret oil shipments to Israel. Today, Israel is accused of committing genocide against the Palestinians, and its Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is facing an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for war crimes.
For the students, the pipeline encapsulates how “the oppression of Palestinians is connected to global systems of oppression like ecological destruction”. This point is exemplified by the fact that BP was granted gas exploration licenses in occupied Palestinian waters by the Israeli Ministry of Defence in November 2023.
Focussing on BP also reveals its “bad human rights record”, according to another student campaigner. For decades, BP has been associated with violently displacing indigenous and local populations in pursuit of securing oil fields. From funding Colombian paramilitaries in the 1990s to extracting £15 billion worth of oil after the Western occupation of Iraq, BP’s profits have come at the expense of innocent human lives. Hence, one student claims, these practices “require ideological justification”. It is at this point that our university comes into play.
In 1990, LSE accepted £1.25 million to establish the BP Centennial Professor scheme, a one year visiting appointment. The Professor contributes to “the internal education programme of BP and to develop contacts between the School and BP.”
One interviewee assessed how this scheme gives BP the “tools to frame itself in a positive light” by habituating the company in the language of “sustainability, development, and corporate social responsibility”. These discussions highlight how institutional complicity goes beyond financial investments: it also encapsulates knowledge production and cultural alignment.
Going Beyond the Classroom
As higher education becomes increasingly commodified, students explained how the BP campaign has “opened up a lot of questions” on the purpose of university education and being a student. One campaigner noted how “students embody an understanding of themselves as consumers of education”, seeing university as the means to becoming advertisable CVs in pursuit of a job.
Therefore, the activists explained, campaigns like the one targeting BP give students the opportunity to undergo a “process of unlearning”, helping them recognise their potential to become “political and historical agents”. By drawing on revolutionary thinkers learnt in the classroom like Fanon, Said and Nkrumah, theory no longer remains docile in the footnotes of a summative essay — they form the basis of social change.
“We need to try to imagine what a university space looks like when it’s actually for students and learning is for social goods” — this encourages a widening of political imagination and possibilities. What would it look like to have students and staff democratically decide the initiatives, investments and projects the university pursues?
Currently, LSE’s most senior decision-making body, the Council, has the final say on these matters. Despite the power this body wields, it is far from representative of LSE: of the 20 members that sit on its board, 8 are internal to LSE only one position (SU General Secretary) represents the student body. One campaigner identified how amongst the external members most are from “massive investment firms” reinforcing the financial positivist logic within the university.
These discussions highlight once more the interconnectedness of the Palestinian liberation struggle with struggles closer to home. Reversing the marketisation of the university means not just draining corporations upheld by LSE but also, as the students state in their petition on the BP campaign, “a fight for a liberated education with students and staff in control.”
From Lobbying to Student Power
Today’s BP campaign has been built on previous student activism — the most recent of which culminated in the encampment of the Marshall building in the summer of 2024. LSE at the time became the first university in the UK to evict its students from an encampment for Gaza after receiving an interim possession order from court. Despite this, students carry on the persevering spirit of this period and have drawn lessons from it.
Students expressed recognition in identifying the “limitations of a lobbying-type strategy that appeals to the moral conscience of those high powered agents”. Efforts into researching, negotiating with the university, circulating petitions that cite international law, or appealing to the university’s own Environmental, Social, Governance policies have not amounted to a tangible reduction in investments to date.
This seemingly anti-climactic outcome, however, began a new direction for student activists on campus. Instead of engaging with mechanisms within the institution that push for reform, students have employed more escalatory tactics, such as their recent “Boycott the National Student Survey (NSS)” campaign.
The campaigners explained that this survey, “encapsulates the marketisation the BP campaign highlights.” The survey contributes to the Teaching Excellence Framework which determines whether universities can charge the maximum tuition fee. Hence, the LSE’s financial interests are indirectly tied to the outcome of the survey. The campaigners noted that refusing to fill the survey will incur reputational damage on the LSE, rejecting the survey and its framing of “ the student as a consumer rating the ‘university product,’ reducing education to a transactional experience.”
As demonstrated by both the BP and NSS campaigns, student activists have their sights set on “building student power from the bottom up”. Given the annual influx and outflux of students onto campus, and a shorter turnover especially amongst Masters students, the campaigners believe it is imperative to build an organisational capacity that reinforces the long term sustainability of a movement.
One way in which LSE SJP’s campaigners are set on achieving this is through “mass consciousness and coalitions” across campus to entrench a grassroots culture of activism. As such, they have collaborated with a range of societies from Futsal, Kurdish to Feminism society. The purpose here is fostering a network of students and staff conjoined in their resistance to any and all systems of oppression.
Revolutionary Optimism
Some students may feel pessimism at the prospect of change. Given how entrenched corporate axioms are in LSE, can the BP campaign really achieve its demands?
In response to this, one student encouraged drawing on campus history to “connect to previous movements that have successfully pushed back against LSE’s ties to BP”, such as in 1988 when LSE once divested from the company following a two-week occupation of Connaught House.
Another student discussed the importance of solidarity as expressed through“learning from the Palestinian liberation struggle.” They explained how Palestinians had “restored libraries and archives or made decorations for Ramadan and Eid” in the face of adversity.
Ultimately, for these student campaigners, recounting the victories of past movements and embodying the steadfastness of the Palestinians is their source of inspiration. As a student says,
“I think the most important thing is to ground ourselves in anti-colonial movements all over the world, where they faced setback after setback, but they kept on fighting”.
An LSE Spokesperson said:
“LSE is committed to strengthening our approach to responsible investment in line with the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Policy, which was recently reviewed.
“The Review Group was comprised of experts from across the School to oversee the process and make recommendations to Council. To further facilitate the work of the Review Group, a separate Consultative Group was created, consisting of nine members of the LSE community (both staff and students) to provide insight and feedback across the year. The review itself included a thorough assessment of the policy and addressed questions raised by LSE students and staff related to the School’s investments.
“LSE Council will maintain the current approach to review the ESG policy every five years, as is the general practice at peer institutions.
“The BP Centennial Professorship has been independently assessed by The Ethical Funding and External Review Board. The External Funding Ethical Review Board is comprised of senior academics, LSE alumni, LSE Council members, members of the School Management Committee and Professional Services Staff who review due diligence for major funding and donations.
“The ESG report is available to read on the LSE website.”
