Protesters gathered outside Great St Mary’s Church on Sunday (17/05) to demonstrate against the Multigenerational Leadership for Sustainability programme, which one protester called “bunker environmentalism” and “eco-fascism”.

The programme, which costs £13,695 per person and took place from 17 to 21 May, is delivered by the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability’s Leadership (CISL) in partnership with the University of Cambridge.

Protesters gathered at around 2pm from organisations including the Organisation of Radical Cambridge Activists (ORCA), Stop the War Coalition, Cambridge for Palestine (C4P), the Cambridge Community Kitchen (CCK), the Lockon, and the Cambridge Solidarity Fund, alongside trade union representatives.

During the protest, six speakers criticised the programme, in front of a crowd of around 40 people.

Jasmine, who spoke at the protest and represented C4P, said: “This event, which has attracted billionaires, is being delivered by an imperial institution which has maintained its ties to arms companies after two years of supposedly committing to address it.”

She claimed that CISL had engaged in “multiple projects which have supported arms and fossil fuel companies whilst greenwashing their image,” such as the “Aviation Impact Accelerator project, which partners with Boeing and Rolls Royce – two companies which are supplying arms to Israel to continue the genocide”. The protester added: “This hypocrisy is baffling and unsurprising.”

Jasmine responded to the claim made by Philip Marcovici, a founder of the leadership programme, that it will help “families to navigate an increasingly troubled world where risks to business owners are abound,” saying: “They’re prioritising the risks to their wealth, they’re prioritising the risks to their comfort and greed of the billionaire class. They’re treating them like toddlers in the face of the genocides and climate collapse which they are creating.”

A representative from ORCA said the program is “not something we think the University of Cambridge should be upholding,” adding: “What they’re sustaining is not our futures. They’re sustaining their own futures, their own intergenerational wealth.”

Behind the speakers were banners with the slogans “Cambridge university. Backing growth. Burning futures.” and “CISL: Leading In… Greenwashing.”

After every speech, spectators repeated chants including “The rich are safe but not the poor, climate change is class war,” and “Cambridge Uni hear our call, every dynasty must fall.”

In an Instagram post about the protest, ORCA said the Multigenerational Leadership for Sustainability programme is “a scheme designed to equip ultra-wealthy dynasties with with [sic] the means to greenwash their inherited wealth, and tidy their public image.”

The post continued: “A city as divided as Cambridge, where those with the most money enjoy a 12 year life-expectancy increase over the very poorest, deserves better than a red carpet being laid out for those who are killing us with their wealth hoarding and extractive business practices.”

In their speech, a representative from the Cambridge Solidarity Fund addressed the inequality within Cambridge city, telling the crowd that, according to statistics from five years ago, “19 per cent of the wealth in Cambridge is held by the richest six per cent of its residents,” while the “poorest 20 per cent in Cambridge share two per cent of the city’s wealth between them”.

They added that, while the Cambridge Solidarity Fund is currently able to stay open for 90 seconds per month with a monthly budget of about £2,500, the cost of one person attending CISL (£13,695) would keep the fund running at its current rate for nearly six months.

The final speaker said: “It seems like the only thing that matters to Cambridge now is ‘money, money, money’. At one end it’s making money – it’s charging £14,000 per head plus accommodation to the children of the global super-rich so they can fly in to the country’s most unequal city, for a sustainability workshop. They know it doesn’t make sense. They don’t care because they’ve got the money now.”

They continued: “It is a joke that a place like this professes to have anything to say about sustainability when it can’t even stop exploiting its own workers,” in reference to the strike action currently being undertaken by University staff over a “1.4% pay rise to its staff across the city” which is “well below inflation, that is a real terms pay cut”.

Attendees also chanted: “Cambridge Uni shame on you, CISL shame on you,” and “Cambridge Uni it’s not funny you can’t greenwash bloody money”.

All relevant parties were contacted for comment.