Huddersfield Students’ Union President Speaks Out on Defence Universities Alliance Partnership

Announced earlier in July by the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry Luke Pollard MP at the University of Manchester. The Defence Universities Alliance (DUA) is a partnership created to foster greater connections between the defence sector, the Ministry of Defence and academia.

The Alliance will also see the Government to be able to access research technology and intelligence from the participating universities to use for defence.

At the launch of the DUA Luke Pollard said: “As we prepare for warfighting readiness, working with universities, students and innovators boosts skills and helps keep our country safe. The Defence Universities Alliance will create meaningful connections between students, academia and defence, boosting research, skills and defence expertise across the UK to strengthen industry. Universities play a key role in innovating and supporting defence, and the DUA helps marshal those efforts.

“In this new era of threat our £182 million defence skills package is helping to create opportunities for students, apprentices and young people, making sure our historic £298 billion defence investment is an engine for growth across the UK, and building on the more than 272,000 industry jobs supported by MOD spending.”

The University of Huddersfield, as well as the 34 other UK universities make up the founders of the group.

In an article on the University’s website Professor Monty Adkins, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation at the University was quoted as saying: “We are delighted to become a founding member of the Defence Universities Alliance. This recognition reflects the quality and impact of our research, our strong culture of collaboration and our commitment to addressing some of the most pressing challenges facing society.”

Speaking directly to T’HUD, Students’ Union President Dobby Dey has spoken out against the DUA as a part of her campaign to force the University to remove itself from the partnership.

Among other issues, Dey raised concerns about how being a part of the DUA may clash with University’s strategic aims in regard to sustainability (the institution achieved first place in two United Nations Sustainable Development Goal categories).

Additionally, Dey called attention to rising distrust in the Government and its continued partnership with a number of “problematic” countries that she believes could bring the University closer to “immoral actions” with how its research may potentially be used.

In response to potential concerns from students who may be able to benefit from the DUA Dey said: “When I found out about this, I created like an A3 map of questions and I spent a good few hours with our Pro Vice-Chancellor of Research and Innovation because my point of view was if we are creating meaningful pathways opportunities for our students then I can see the value. But unless you can assure me that we are creating those pathways for students then I don’t understand why we would risk and compromise our position.”

“If we look at the actual impact to student life and experience in the next 12 months, in the next five years, we cannot say for our university, and it may be different for the other 34 on the list, that it’s actually creating opportunities. It’s not creating partnerships or jobs or anything like that because there’s only [a limited number of] researchers that may fit into it. And again, it’s so statistically unlikely that [students are] going to get these pathways.”

“This isn’t going to do anything for undergraduates either. (…) We have no other students here that this would benefit and it also in the charter for the DUA it it says that we have to explicitly promote military pathways, and the view of myself and other [Students’ Union Officers] across the region, especially Northern, but up and down the country, is that we don’t want to be militarising education.”

Dey also explained that through her engagement with the committee of the Huddersfield Engineering Society, the academic society representing University of Huddersfield engineering students, she understands that last year a comparable situation occurred, where there was a “difficult” conversation about the University’s partnership with aerospace and arms company BAE Systems. While they felt uncomfortable about the connection, they decided to continue partnering with BAE because it “created pathways” for students.

If you want to find out more about Dey’s campaign, you can view the Big Idea submission on the Huddersfield Students’ Union website.

Here you can view the Defence Universities Alliance Charter.