William Hague:
‘It would have killed me
to be JCR President
as well’
www.cherwell.org
Cherwell
Revealed:
Colleges’ dodgy
portfolios
• St Anne’s invested in corporations
producing nuclear weapons
• Multinationals associated with
major environmental damage and
human rights abuses
Håvard Yttredal
St Anne’s College invested in corpora-
tions associated with environmental
damage and the production of nuclear
weapons, Cherwell can reveal.
A Freedom of Information request
made by Cherwell shows that St Anne’s
invested in BAE Systems, Rio Tinto
Group, and Barrick Gold Corpora-
tion – all of which have been excluded
from the world’s largest sovereign
wealth fund, the Norwegian Govern-
ment Pension Fund Global, following
recommendations from its Council on
Ethics. Nuffield College also invested
large sums in Rio Tinto, totalling £2.5
million from 2006 to June this year.
Together, the corporations have
previously been accused of selling
arms to Saudi Arabia, producing
nuclear weapons, causing huge envi-
ronmental damage, and committing
human rights abuses. Despite this, St
Anne’s were found to have invested
in the corporations after their contro-
versies had been publicly reported.
Oxford SU VP for Charities and
Communities, Rosanna Greenwood,
told Cherwell: “It is scandalous that
colleges still invest in Fossil Fuels
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salary:
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Friday 2nd November 2018 | Vol.285 No.5 | 4th week
and companies with dubious ethics.
We would want to see all the colleges
disinvesting from unethical invest-
ments. We have seen the University
make that commitment after lobbying
from us and it’s time that colleges
follow suit.”
A spokesperson for St Anne’s told
Cherwell: “The College employs a
third party fund manager to manage
its investments. Both the College and
its fund manager take Environmental,
Social and Governance standards se-
riously and have recently undertaken
ESG benchmarking as part of a regular
review of its investments.”
St Anne’s and Nuffield are two of
only a handful of colleges that invest
directly in individual shares rather
than through pooled investment
funds. Foremost among such collec-
tive investment schemes is Oxford
University Endowment Management
(OUem), which manages investments
from 25 colleges, as well as the Uni-
versity and six associated trusts.
As a wholly owned subsidiary of the
University, OUem – which manages
a combined £3bn – is also subject to
the Freedom of Information Act.
However, citing a duty of confidenti-
Continued on page 3
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Oxford remembers Pittsburgh
synagogue attack victims
Benjamin Goldstein
Several hundred students and
members of the Oxford community
attended a vigil at Radcliffe Square on
Monday to commemorate the victims
of the weekend’s mass shooting at
a Sabbath service at the Tree of Life
Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
A multi-faith crowd listened to and
participated in Hebrew and English
prayers, and spiritual readings led by
leaders of the Oxford Jewish Society
(JSoc), who hosted the event.
Attendees also lit candles to com-
memorate the eleven dead and six
injured. Saturday’s attack is believed
to be the deadliest anti-Semitic attack
on the Jewish community in the his-
tory of the United States.
JSoc organisers began the vigil by
c2
proclaiming: “We stand here tonight
in solidarity with the Jewish com-
munity in Pittsburgh and all those
effected by the shooting at the Tree of
Life Synagogue.”
After noting, “our Jewish commu-
nity can always rely on the strength
and the solidarity of the wider Oxford
community,” they read aloud the list
of victims of the attack. The vigil
continued with Hebrew prayers for the
souls of the deceased and for healing
of those harmed in the attack.
The vigil formally concluded at
8:00pm with a reading “A Prayer for
Pittsburgh”, written by gun-control
advocate Rabbi Menachem. However,
attendees continued commemoration
and Hebrew prayer until 8:30pm.
During the vigil, JSoc President
Harrison Engler referred to recent
@cherwell_online
Ben Goldstein / CHERWELL
attacks in Charleston, Orlando, and
Finsbury Park, saying: “In all these
cases individuals were targeted at
places they felt safe, surrounded by
other like them.”
Engler told Cherwell that the vigil’s
large number of participants showed
“the people of Oxford stood up and
showed they wouldn’t stand for anti-
Semitism in Pittsburgh the same way
they won’t stand for it here.”
Vigil attendees were as young as
five years old and came from a variety
of faith backgrounds. One attendee
said she reacted “with shock but not
surprise” to the news of the attack and
wanted to attend the vigil to “share in
community with other students, both
Jewish and non-Jewish, to express our
grief at this trauma that has afflicted
our community.”