CAMP: THE CAMPUS ACCOUNTABILITY MAPPING PROJECT
This is a journalistic project investigating the influence of corporate power on the clampdown on student protest in the UK.
From the climate crisis to the South African anti-apartheid struggle, students have long been a powerful force for social change. In spring 2024, students across the world set up protest encampments and demanded their universities cut ties with companies implicated in Israel’s military action in Gaza, alongside other atrocities and climate destruction.
As reports emerged in the US of students being teargassed and lecturers in handcuffs, UK investigative journalism unit Liberty Investigates turned its attention to uncovering hidden repression of the student movement in Britain. We’ve since exposed how:
- Almost one in four universities have launched disciplinary investigation into student and staff protesters between October 2023 and March 2025, with up to 201 people affected
- Thirty-six universities discussed pro-Gaza protest activity with police between October 2023 and February 2025
- UK campus security staff met with US counterparts to discuss the backlash to their crackdown on protest encampments, then lobbied UK university bosses for support
- Some universities have agreed to monitor students social media and chat groups on behalf of arms companies concerned about protests at a careers fair
- A law firm which helped one university obtain a campus protest ban, which could see students jailed, has quietly coached others to take similar legal action
- A group of protesters became the first in a decade to be convicted for occupying a own university building – before successfully appealing their convictions
We’re now launching the Campus Accountability Mapping Project to investigate a systemic issue at the heart of this trend: how is the funding many universities have come to rely on from arms, oil and gas companies influencing their approach to campus protests?
Our research will go live this summer 2026.
This project is led by Liberty Investigates journalist Aaron Walawalkar with the support of the Bertha Challenge Fellowship. If you have information you want to share or would let to find out more, get in touch.
