Pro-Palestine protesters held rallies at Edinburgh and Glasgow universities on Wednesday, marking the third anniversary of the deadly October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel. Hundreds of people gathered for a rally outside George Square in Edinburgh, outside the University of Edinburgh’s Main Library.
From there, they marched to the Bayes Centre – the university’s hub for data science and artificial intelligence – before finishing in the Old College quadrangle. A similar demonstration was held on Library Hill in Glasgow, outside the university library.
Chants and Banners at Edinburgh Rally
Attendees at both rallies carried Palestinian flags and banners, many bearing slogans about the ongoing conflict in Gaza. In Edinburgh, the demonstrators were accompanied by drummers and were led in chants including “Free, free Palestine” and “Israel is a terror state”.
When they reached the Old College, a banner was unfurled containing a handwritten list of the names and ages of thousands of Palestinians killed during the first three weeks of the conflict. Tens of metres in length, the banner wrapped all the way around the far side of the quad where the demonstrators were gathered.
Calls for Divestment
The event in Edinburgh also focused on calls for the university to cut its financial ties to companies with links to Israel – something it has faced calls for since the conflict began. Attendees were led in chants of “Dispose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest”, and some carried banners with such slogans as “Stand with Palestine, divest now.”
A number of speakers at the rally also addressed this theme, with one saying that university management had made a “conscious choice” to retain its investments, and that it was using “bureaucratic barriers” to frustrate attempts to review them. Speaking to the Press Association, Courtney Stafford-Walter, a lecturer in information studies, said she was protesting because the university is “deeply complicit in the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people”.
“That complicity is historical, political and financial – we currently hold £50 million worth of investments that either support the genocide directly, or support the state of Israel,” she said. “At the moment we’re quite frustrated because both our senate and our student body have all agreed that we should be divesting, and yet we have seen no real movement from our senior management team, and we believe that we are the university community. Those of us who attend the university, work at the university – we make up the university, and we have said over and over again that we refuse to be complicit for any longer.”
University Response
This was echoed by Marion Lieutaud, a lecturer in social data science, who said processes that had been put in place to review the investments have been “neutralised” by the university. “We have not progressed on divestment beyond the pause on further investment that was agreed back in 2024, and yet the democratic mandate is as clear now as it was before,” they said. “Divestment is inevitable. Historically, nobody will be able to justify that this went on for this long. We all know this, but the reality is that we’re faced with a senior management that procrastinates as much as they can and tries to ignore the very clearly stated demands of its university community as long as they can.”
A University of Edinburgh spokesperson said: “We are very conscious of the wider concerns around the protest and its timing. The protest is taking place in a public space which the university does not control. We are clear that lawful protest does not provide a licence for harassment, intimidation or other unacceptable behaviour. In the event that members of our community are identified as having acted in breach of our dignity and respect policies, we will investigate and take appropriate action.”
They added: “We have a sector-leading approach to responsible investment with robust procedures in place to ensure our policy reflects the values of our University. This includes a clear commitment to upholding human rights in the companies we invest in, and our investment managers follow that guidance.”
