Did UK universities pay to ‘spy’ on pro‑Palestine students?
The Take
Al Jazeera
4.7 • 747 Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Twelve elite British universities are accused of hiring a private security firm with military intelligence ties to track pro-Palestine student protests. Students were reportedly flagged through social media monitoring without their awareness, sparking debate over surveillance and free speech in UK higher education.
Learn more about the campus accountability mapping project.
In this episode:
- Aaron Walawalkar (@AaronWala), Investigative Reporter, Liberty Investigations
Episode credits:
This episode was produced by Chloe K. Li and Sarí el-Khalili with Spencer Cline, Catherine Nouhan, Tuleen Barakat and our host, Malika Bilal. It was edited by Tamara Khandaker and Noor Wazwaz.
Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Rick Rush mixed this episode. Our video editors are Hisham Abu Salah and Mohannad al-Melhem. Alexandra Locke is The Take’s executive producer.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Al Jazeera Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Today, did British universities pay to spy on pro-Palestine students? |
| 0:16.0 | To think that universities were paying an external company to keep track of things that me and my peers might have been posting on social media. |
| 0:24.1 | It really wasn't within my imagination at that time. |
| 0:26.2 | A new investigation uncovers the limits to organizing for Palestine on UK campuses. |
| 0:33.3 | I'm Malika Milal and this is The Take. |
| 0:42.8 | Hey everyone. |
| 0:47.7 | We know that as an audience, there's a lot of news that you're trying to keep track of. |
| 0:51.1 | And at The Take, we're doing our best to cover it all. |
| 0:56.1 | So leave us a comment about what stories you're keeping an eye out for and what you want to see on your feed. We really do take the time to read each and everyone. Now, here's the show. |
| 1:08.8 | I'm Aaron Waller Walker. I'm a reporter at Liberty Investigates and a Bertha Challenge fellow, |
| 1:12.9 | and Liberty Investigates is a small team of journalists in the UK focused on exposing injustices. |
| 1:17.6 | I'm currently in Bristol, one of the universities that featured in our report, but I'm normally based in London. |
| 1:22.3 | Well, Aaron, welcome to The Take. We are sitting down together today because you recently broke the kind of news that will make a person stop scrolling. That is literally what happened to me this week, thumb in midair when I saw this headline on Al Jazeera.com. British universities paid security firm to spy on pro-Palestine students. |
| 1:46.4 | Tell me about the investigation that led to that headline and what you found. |
| 1:50.6 | So we've been looking into the repression of protesters in the UK since the incumbent movement started in 2024. |
| 1:56.4 | When video emerged of students in the US in handcuffs and lecturers also facing all sorts of issues, |
| 2:02.6 | we began to look into what sorts of things might be happening in the UK that were going on behind the scenes. |
| 2:10.6 | So I started by submitting freedom of information requests to all of the UK's 150 plus universities, |
| 2:16.6 | asking for things like their correspondence with the police, |
| 2:19.3 | discussing pro-Palestinian protest activity, and also their conversations with each other. |
| 2:23.3 | And that unearthed for me the existence of this membership body that exists between campus |
... |
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