Fair’s Definitely Not Fair: A Response to Protests Outside the Careers Fair

Khan Younis, Gaza, 25^th October. Devastation reigns. The ground is a sea of rubble and dust, hollowed-out apartment blocks gape soullessly, telegraph poles hang limply. People sift through the debris, grimacing, nursing broken bodies, and searching for survivors. This is the aftermath of the Israeli airstrike on the central Palestinian town, confirmed to have killed 38 people. Given communication difficulties, the final number could well be much more.

Wind back 10 days and over 2,500 miles to the Newcastle University campus. The ground is clean, buildings stand proud and tall, groups of people bustle. Passersby are contently engrossed in their day.

Though these scenes may feel worlds apart, there is one key link between them: weapons. More precisely, the very same companies that created and sold the weapons that killed these 38 people (and many more across Palestine and Lebanon) were standing and smiling in the Lindisfarne room and the Hadrian building on 15^th and 16^th October. The university had even actively invited them to be there; they all had stands at this year’s Graduate and Recruitment Placement fair.

They included construction company Caterpillar, whose bulldozers are used by the Israeli military to detonate explosives, aerospace group Airbus, which has signed a contract to supply drones to Israel, and BAE Systems, which provides the IDF with lethal fighter jets. These companies are simultaneously enabling a brutal war in which whole populations are at risk and cheerfully telling final-years about interpersonal skills and workplace culture.

If this feels palpably infuriating, many others thought so too; a protest was organized over the two days outside the careers fair building by the Apartheid Off Campus group. Participants peacefully picketed the entrance, waved flags and gave speeches. And rightfully so.

The indignation is both practical, since these companies stand to gain from employing graduates from a relatively high-ranking University like ours and so will keep selling to warmongers, as well as moral, because in inviting them the university is showing disregard to the Palestinians whose lives are torn apart by these bulldozers, drones and fighter jets every day. This puts Chris Day to shame.

No graduate prospects are more important than human lives. Gaza may be 2,500 miles away but every action has its knock-on consequence and as an institution Newcastle University is in a position of power. If it condones and enables the likes of Airbus and Caterpillar, it is sending a message. And that’s a message I don’t want my university to send.