On Monday 13th July 2026, the Ministry of 'Defence' (MoD) launched the Defence Universities Alliance (D.U.A.). This alliance marks an unprecedented new stage in the government's militarisation of higher education. Thirty five British universities have signed the alliance’s founding charter, committing "to reorientate academia towards Defence and National Security".

The alliance has three stated aims:

• Increased Military Research in universities.
• Building a career pipeline of students between universities and the military industry.
• Increasing collaboration between universities, the MoD and the military industry.

It is clear that the D.U.A. aims to wholesale transform our universities into academic army bases controlled by the MoD. This is how our universities have chosen to respond to almost 3 years of British-backed genocide in Gaza.

We know that when our government talks about "Defence and National Security", what they mean is increasing imperialist brutality across the globe. They mean supporting the Zionist state's genocide in Gaza, its invasion of Lebanon, and the joint U.S.-Israel war on Iran. They mean backing the US blockade suffocating the Cuban people and the kidnapping of the President of Venezuela. They mean increasingly aggressive threats of global war by the US empire.

The D.U.A. is just one part of the state’s wider goal to militarise the “whole of society”. This means building consent for British imperialism by expanding Cadet Forces across the country and rolling out pro-military propaganda in schools. Even our healthcare system is not free from militarisation, as the government forges ahead with Palantir’s £330 million contract with the NHS despite serious criticisms.

It is no coincidence that this alliance is being launched whilst the manufactured financial crisis in higher education is reaching boiling point. Whilst our institutions are at risk of full collapse, making mass redundancies and course closures, the government is offering them massive incentive in joining this murderous alliance.

Over the last three years, our campuses have been key sites of resistance to US-British imperialism and Zionism from inside the imperialist core. Therefore we must not only understand the D.U.A. as an attempt to serve the interests of imperialism abroad but also to shut down dissent and resistance within Britain and on our campuses.

A “whole of society” approach to militarisation can only be met with a “whole of society” resistance to it. This means increased collaboration among student organisers nationally as well as stronger connections between campus and wider organising. When we campaign for the demilitarisation of our campuses, we are campaigning not just against our individual universities but the imperialist state as a whole.

Students won’t stand by and watch as we are made complicit in the British state’s war crimes. At every step of the way, we will oppose the ongoing militarisation of our education and the complicity of institutions in British, US or Zionist imperialism. Our demands are clear: the 35 universities who have entered this shameful alliance should leave immediately, and no others must join.