Top British universities been revealed to have paid a private firm to "spy" on pro-Palestine protesters and academics, drawing backlash from activists.
Twelve institutions, including the University of Oxford, King's College London (KCL), University College London, the London School of Economics, and Newcastle University, were all found to have paid Horus Security Consultancy Limited to monitor campus protests, a joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates found.
"KCL paying £12,500 a year, not to improve the quality of our education, but rather to Horus, an intelligence and security consultancy, to spy on its own students is a fragment of a much wider attempt to shut down student activism on campus and to repress the voices of those advocating for Palestinian liberation and condemning KCL's complicity," a spokesperson for KCL Stands for Justice, a society in Kings College London advocating for Palestinian liberation, told The New Arab .
The spokesperson adds that this theme of surveillance and systematic oppression is evident in many of the 27 disciplinary cases given to students for their pro-Palestinian activism. In many instances, students who took part in the Gaza encampments in 2024 were identified via pieces of their clothing or from their bags captured by the university's CCTV.
The spokesperson also highlighted that a student was excluded due to a conversation on WhatsApp in which they discussed wearing a keffiyeh to a class taught by a former Israeli army soldier.
"These draconian measures are proof that the student movement is having an impact and that KCL are desperate to silence us. However, we will not let these fear-mongering tactics stop us from continuously standing for justice," the spokesperson added.
The investigation found that Horus, a firm run by former military intelligence officials, scoured through student social media feeds and conducted covert counter-terror threat assessments.
The investigation involved submitting freedom of information (FOI) requests to over 150 universities.
Other institutions include Imperial College London, the University of Sheffield , the University of Leicester, the University of Nottingham, Cardiff Metropolitan University, the University of Bristol, and Manchester Metropolitan University. Al Jazeera notes among those monitored was a Palestinian academic who was invited to give a guest lecture at Manchester Metropolitan University and a pro-Gaza PhD student at the London School of Economics.
At the same time, the University of Bristol gave Horus a list of student protest groups it wanted to receive alerts about, including pro-Palestinian and animal rights groups.
In total, universities across the UK paid Horus £443,943 ($587,399) between January 2022 and March 2025. The firm did not respond to Al Jazeera's questions about the allegations.
"It's disgraceful that any university would surveil its own students in an attempt to suppress protest," Stella Swain, Youth and Student officer for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign , told The New Arab .
Swain notes that the PSC's research has found that universities collectively invest almost £460 million in companies complicit in Israel's occupation and genocide, which she says students are "rightly angry about" and "are right to protest over it".
"These revelations show that universities feel that their complicity is threatened by powerful student organising," Swain adds.
"Students across the country are coming together in greater numbers than ever before, organising to end their institutions' complicity, and hiring the services of an ex-military private 'security' firm won't stop them."