Oxford University should stop investing in arms companies.

摘要

It will surprise nobody to learn that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq-so deadly to those who have suffered in them-have reaped enormous profits for arms companies. What may come as a surprise is that many of the UK's most respected universities-including ours, Oxford-have also cashed in on these wars, by investing (either directly or indirectly) large amounts of their endowment capital in shares in major global arms companies. Oxford University provides a revealing-but by no means unique-example: requests under the Freedom of Information Act made by Campaign Against the Arms Trade and our student group have revealed that, between 2008 and 2010, Oxford's endowment and capital funds were investing on average pound4-5 million of their assets (through third-party funds) in BAE Systems, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and other UK and US arms manufacturers. For Oxford, as for other universities, the lure of large returns appears to have been too lucrative to resist. Yet at a time when there is an increasing public awareness about the conduct of these and other wars, helped in large part by the WikiLeaks release last year of thousands of US military files, with their evidence of what many would consider to be promiscuous rules of engagement and indiscriminate killings, universities like Oxford can no longer ignore the ethical implications of their investments.