Is the public entitled to know exactly where Oxford University invests billions of pounds of its endowment – and if that includes firms profiting from Israeli military operations?
This is the question now facing a tribunal, following a legal challenge brought by an Oxford climate scientist and heard over two days in a cramped, airless courtroom in London last week.
In May 2024, Dr Ellen Dyer filed a Freedom of Information request with Oxford University Endowment Management (OUEM), which oversees the Oxford Endowment Fund.
The vast majority of Oxford’s £4.2bn central endowment is invested in this fund, along with most of the university’s colleges and several British charities.
What Oxford does is significant. The total value of the collegiate university – the central endowment plus the funds of individual colleges – is understood to be the largest of any British university.
Nine months into Israel’s war on Gaza, as university campuses became flash points for pro-Palestinian activism and boycott campaigns, Dyer wanted to know: what was the value of OEF’s holdings in Elbit Systems, Rolls-Royce Holdings and Caterpillar.
All three companies are on the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions campaign’s divestment shortlist.
Elbit is Israel’s largest arms firm, Rolls-Royce manufacturers and supplies engines and power-pack systems used by the Israeli military and Caterpillar’s heavy machinery is used by the Israeli military to demolish Palestinian homes.
A month after her request, the OUEM responded, refusing to confirm or deny whether it held the information, a decision later upheld by the Information Commissioners Office – and appealed by Dyer.
This January, 10 months before the appeal was heard, OUEM disclosed what Dyer had been asking for: the OEF, at the time of her request, had around £16,000 invested in Elbit Systems, £150,000 in Rolls-Royce and none in Caterpillar.
So the tribunal hearing last week focused on the principles of the matter, rather than the release of the information she had sought.
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Returns vs Debate
OUEM argues that disclosing the types of details that Dyer requested could risk exposing the strategies of the third-party fund managers who directly invest OEF’s money.
In turn, that could turn fund managers off from working with OUEM and harm its ability “to work with the best and get the best returns,” argued Robin Hopkins, OUEM’s barrister.
“If the door closed on us by a small number or even one, that would be harmful,” Hopkins said.
“If our returns start to drop, we lose, but so do the 46 charitable endowments that invest in us. Less return for us means less value for them.”
Neil Hayes, the OUEM’s general counsel, said his organisation sought the “ruby in the dust” of fund managers in a competitive market.
That strategy has been successful, allowing it to achieve returns of five percent above inflation for investors, a target that holds “irrespective of what the market is doing”.
Dyer’s barristers contend that the risks painted by OUEM of the damage that could be done to the fund are overblown and poorly evidenced.
They pointed to only one email the OUEM shared in evidence sent from a fund manager in December 2025 who had learned about the FOI dispute and wrote to underline that he valued the confidentiality of his fund.
“You don’t have reams of evidence to grapple with and engage with fund managers to agree or disbelieve. You don’t have past scenarios about whether they would occur,” said Tom Tabori.
He questioned why OEUM had gone ahead and released the information sought by Dyer ahead of the tribunal, despite the apparent risks of driving the OEF’s fund managers away.
“If you were willing to disclose it in Jan 2026, presumably you should have been willing to disclose it in May 2024,” Tabori said. OUEM said that it had established by then that the information was no longer commercially sensitive.
Tabori said even if the risk of potentially losing fund managers was established, the value of the information being shared with the public to debate “whether a £6bn fund owned by a public authority should go in this direction” should outweigh it.
“It’s not about the merits, if you like, of the investment. It’s to enable those merits to be debated,” Tabori said.
Digging for information
Dyer’s FOI was among over 150 such requests filed by the Oxford BDS Coalition since October 2023.
Their goal was to try to find out if and how much of Oxford’s endowment is invested in arms companies or firms operating or complicit in the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories.
During this period, the coalition learned that the university has indirect investments , worth more than £19 million, in at least 49 companies flagged by the UN and human rights organisations for their involvement in illegal Israeli activities in the occupied territories.
The investments are made through a passive equity tracker fund that was purposefully developed by BlackRock and the university in 2020 to screen out firms involved in fossil fuels and controversial weapons.
But the vast majority of the university’s company-level holdings have remained a mystery because the OEF, which holds most of the endowment, doesn’t disclose that level of detail to the public.
OUEM made clear in the tribunal that investors in the fund can get that kind of detail if they ask for it, but that it cannot be shared with the public.
“You get it on confidential terms,” Hopkins said. “You get it in a way that means you may not be able to share with all of your college fellows or staff members.”
Clearly, that would not satisfy Dyer or the coalition who have waited years for the information to be released so that it can be publicly scrutinised.
Tribunal Judge Gilda Kiai concluded the two-day hearing asking both parties for patience. “This is going to be a very difficult decision to make. It may take me a while,” she said.
The post Oxford academic challenges secrecy around university’s endowment fund appeared first on Declassified UK .
Oxford academic challenges secrecy around university’s endowment fund
Aggregated summary from an independent source. Read the original at DeclassifiedUK.