Cambridge for Palestine (C4P) have projected messages onto the front of St John’s College calling for the master to support arms divestment in an upcoming vote of the University Council.

At around 7:30pm on Friday (23/01), a small group of activists projected a series of statements onto the Great Gate of St John’s College, including “no arms, no oil, no empire,” “Cambridge University funds arms,” and “our fees fund genocide”.

A spokesperson for C4P told Varsity that they were “here telling St John’s College, specifically the master of St John’s College, that we don’t want our university to put money in arms and weapons”.

The master of St John’s, Heather Hancock, sits on the University Council, which is due to vote in February on the extent to which the University will divest from arms companies.

The vote was originally scheduled for November, but it was delayed after several undecided councillors requested further information about the University’s current financial exposure to the defence sector.

This comes after the University accepted the recommendation of a Working Group on Investment to divest from “any company which manufactures weapons illegal under UK law,” including chemical, biological, or cluster munitions.

Announced in October, this decision marked the first time the University has excluded companies from its investments on the basis of weapons manufacturing. However, the Working Group’s report stopped short of recommending full arms divestment.

Instead, it offered the Council three options for divestment from conventional weapons, which are due to be voted on during its next meeting on 2 February.

The first option is to implement no new restrictions on investments in conventional weapons, but to publish a transparency report if they ever exceed 1% of the University’s overall investments. The second is to set a formal 1% cap on such investments, while the final option is to fully divest from arms companies.

C4P support complete divestment, with one protester arguing: “That working group report gives the University, for the first time, the option to do the bare minimum in the world that we live in.”

“It’s not just about the genocide of Palestinian people, but just the militarism, the blatant imperialism that we are seeing around us,” they continued.

The other college masters with seats on the University Council are Lord Simon McDonald at Christ’s, Baroness Sally Morgan of Fitzwilliam, and Prof Alan Short from Clare Hall.

The C4P spokesperson told Varsity: “I think you will see us around in all of the colleges that have connections to University Council members. We would like all of them to remember that they sit on this Council as representatives of the community.”

The Students’ Union (SU) has also ramped up its divestment campaign ahead of the Council meeting, publishing a video on Friday (23/01) asking students to “reach out to the councillors who sit on University Council to ask for them to vote for divestment”.

In October, the SU published an open letter calling for full divestment from arms companies, and held a referendum on whether it should campaign to end collaborations and investments with institutions involved in “occupation and weapons manufacture”. The motion passed with 3,000 votes in favour and 615 against.

Some members of the University Council, such as Prof Jason Scott-Warren and student representative Darragh O’Reilly, have also voiced their support for divestment. However, others are reportedly concerned about preserving the University’s role in national defence.

The Working Group on Investment was established in July 2024 in exchange for C4P disbanding their encampment in front of King’s College. Its report was initially due for publication in Michaelmas 2024 but was delayed, leading C4P to launch a new series of protests and encampments.

St John’s was one of the colleges C4P chose to target, setting up an encampment on its lawn in June 2025. However, the activists were evicted two days later, with help from the police, after the College obtained a High Court injunction.

C4P also disrupted the College’s May Ball in 2024, scaling the New Court building and dropping a banner calling on St John’s to “divest from genocide”.

St John's College and the University of Cambridge have been contacted for comment.