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New Delhi: A massive joint investigation by Al Jazeera English and Liberty Investigates has just pulled back the curtain on how some of the UK’s most elite universities are keeping tabs on their own students. As per the reports, twelve institutions including prestigious ones like Oxford, UCL, and Imperial College London have been paying a private security firm to monitor campus activism with a heavy focus on pro-Palestine demonstrations.

The investigation reveals that Horus Security Consultancy Limited was brought in to analyse and gather “open-source” data, as per reports. Since 2022, these universities have reportedly given over £440,000 to the firm. Though the universities are claiming this is all done for the “safety” and “risk assessment” but the internal documents tell a different story.

The reports didn’t just look at general trends infact they have given names. In one they mentioned about a Palestinian academic set to speak at Manchester Metropolitan University while flagging a PhD student at LSE for their pro-Palestinian stance in another. At the University of Bristol, the administration allegedly gave the firm a “hit list” of groups to track which ranges from animal rights activists to pro-Palestine student societies.

When confronted with the findings, the universities were quick to go on the defensive mode as Imperial College London insisted they don’t “spy” on students and claimed that they only use the firm to spot potential security threats that are already in the public domain. The University of Sheffield called the practice “horizon scanning” to prepare for large protests rather than targeting individuals.

However, many of the big names mentioned including Oxford, KCL, and Nottingham have stayed silent so far and refuse to comment on the investigation’s claims.

The firm at the centre of the row is Horus Security which was founded by a former British Army intelligence officer. The more interesting part is that its parent company director is former Colonel Tim Collins. Collins hasn’t made his views a secret, as he’s previously claimed that pro-Palestinian protests are fueled by foreign influence and has pushed for tougher crackdowns on demonstrators.

While the report makes it clear that none of this monitoring was illegal but it raises a big question about the atmosphere in the British campuses.