Cambridge University’s endowment fund has invested more than £140m ($189m) in a fund that owns shares in companies linked to Israeli human rights violations, Middle East Eye can reveal.
The fund, which is meant to protect the university’s long-term finances and is run by the University of Cambridge Investment Management Limited (UCIM), has previously refused to disclose companies in the endowment fund’s portfolio, citing “legal reasons of confidentiality”.
But an MEE analysis of filings submitted to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this month has revealed that in the last quarter of 2025 the UCIM invested more than £140m in the iShares ESG Select Screened S&P 500 fund.
The fund is sustainable investment fund which owns shares in companies including Palantir Technologies, Caterpillar and GE Aerospace.
The revelations comes after 29 Cambridge academics last month accused the university of “maximal obfuscation” over details about its £4.2bn ($5.74bn) endowment fund and its links to arms manufacturers.
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Senior staff said they were unable to properly examine these investments because the university had not been open about which companies are involved.
UCIM operates as a “fund of funds”, a complex financial structure that means its money is spread across several sectors and overseen by an investment manager.
It was required to submit its investment holdings report to the SEC because its investment in the iShares fund, which is listed publicly on the US stock market, exceeded $100m.
Palantir, GE Aerospace and Caterpillar
The filings reveal that Cambridge owns around £800,000 of Palantir stock via the iShares fund.
US tech giant Palantir signed a strategic partnership deal with the Israeli defence ministry in January 2024 and has been a major partner for the US government’s controversial Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.
Palantir software was reportedly used by Israel in its 2024 pager attacks in Lebanon.
Last July Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories, alleged that Palantir had “executive-level knowledge and purpose vis-a-vis the unlawful use of force by Israel”.
In December, the UK’s Ministry of Defence awarded Palantir a £240m ($323m) contract for “data analytics capabilities supporting critical strategic, tactical and live operational decision-making across classifications” over three years.
The university’s indirect stake in GE Aerospace, an aircraft engine manufacturer, is worth around £900,000.
GE’s engines power many military jets used by the Israeli Air Force in Gaza, according to the Campaign Against Arms Trade.
The fund further gives Cambridge exposure to around £1m worth of shares in American construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar Inc.
Norway’s $1.9 trillion sovereign wealth fund, the largest in the world, last year announced it would divest from Caterpillar because “bulldozers manufactured by Caterpillar are being used by Israeli authorities in the widespread unlawful destruction of Palestinian property”.
“There is no doubt that Caterpillar’s products are being used to commit extensive and systematic violations of international humanitarian law,” the fund’s ethics council said.
UCIM declined to comment in response to an MEE request.
Protest and controversy
UCIM made the £140m investment after an internal working group completed a year-long review of the university’s investments in the defence industry in October 2025.
The working group was set up after students launched a pro-Palestine encampment in 2024, calling on the university to sever financial ties with Israel.
Student encampment lasted for several months, with the protesters agreeing to end their encampment if the university committed to reviewing its links to the arms and defence industry.
UCIM told the working group that it has no direct investments with arms companies.
It later admitted that a small proportion – approximately 1.7 percent – of its investments were held in the aerospace and defence sector. But UCIM declined to provide the working group with a list of the individual companies in the endowment fund’s portfolio for “legal reasons of confidentiality”.
The working group’s report said this contributed “to a suspicion… that the university’s investments…are much more extensive as regards companies which manufacture weapons than appears to be the case”.
The Cambridge University Council has repeatedly postponed a vote on whether to divest from arms manufacturers, according to student newspaper Varsity.
The most recent delay came earlier this month after council members expressed concerns that divestment would not be practical given the endowment’s “fund of funds” model, which sees UCIM allocate most of its assets to independent third-party fund managers.
The iShares ESG fund it invested in last year is managed by international asset management firm BlackRock, which Francesca Albanese’s UN report accused last year of being “directly involved in Israeli occupation and genocide”.
BlackRock is a major shareholder in Palantir, GE Aerospace, and Caterpillar.
