Pro-Israel donor pulls Trinity College Cambridge funding over investments row

An American donor has withdrawn funding from Cambridge University’s richest college, accusing it of failing to properly investigate the defacing of a painting of Lord Balfour – and of considering divesting from arms companies linked to Israel.

This is the latest in a series of controversies that have hit Trinity College Cambridge over the past year because of its ties to c0mpanies complicit in Israel’s war on Gaza.

Middle East Eye revealed in February that the prestigious college, which is one of the UK’s wealthiest landowners, had $78,089 invested in Israel’s largest arms company, Elbit Systems, which produces 85 percent of the drones and land-based equipment used by the Israeli army.

MEE further reported that the college also had millions of dollars invested in other companies arming, supporting and profiting from Israel’s war on Gaza.

In response to these revelations, students organised several protests over the following months.

In March, two weeks after the MEE report, an activist from Palestine Action spray-painted and slashed a 1914 painting of Lord Arthur Balfour at Trinity – sparking condemnation from senior British politicians.

Now Ivan Berkowitz, a Jewish-American corporate executive and the son of Holocaust survivors, has accused Trinity of failing to properly investigate the incident. 

“There’s a video of the occurrence, and the claim is still that there’s not sufficient evidence,” he told the Jewish Chronicle (JC), revealing that he has withdrawn a £315,000 donation to fund a book project at the college, his alma mater.

Berkowitz suggested the college failed to take the defacing of Balfour’s portrait seriously.

Having graduated with a second-class degree in moral sciences from Trinity, Balfour was Britain’s foreign secretary in 1917 when he issued the Balfour Declaration – a statement of intent to support the establishment “in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”.

He was widely accused of antisemitism, including by Edwin Montagu, the only Jewish member of the British cabinet when the declaration was issued. 

Berkowitz told the JC that he could not believe that “the forensics at Trinity are so bad” that the college could not identify the activist who defaced Balfour’s portrait, considering the number of “Nobel laureates sitting at high table [reserved for academics in the college’s dining hall] in science and physics”.

“There’s a video of the occurrence, and the claim is still that there’s not sufficient evidence.”

Trinity’s investments in arms companies

This was not the only reason for Berkowitz’s withdrawal of his donation.

According to the JC, the philanthropist was “dismayed at reports claiming that the Master of Trinity, Dame Sally Davies, was considering divesting the college from arms companies linked to Israel following pressure from pro-Palestine student activist groups.”

Middle East Eye first reported in May that Trinity’s student union told students that senior academics had confirmed that the college’s administrative body had voted to divest from arms companies.

But when MEE put this to the college, it declined to confirm or deny that the vote took place, saying: “Trinity College continues to review its investments regularly.”

Then the college went silent. Over the next three weeks, Trinity declined to respond to MEE’s repeated requests for clarification on its investments.

In late May, the student union publicly called on the college to show “greater transparency”, adding that “members of the college have indicated… that the college plans to divest from arms companies over the summer”.

In addition, MEE learnt that multiple students at Trinity emailed the college leadership seeking clarification on its investments, but they also received no response.

Months later, in November, after the new academic term had begun, many students were shocked when it emerged that the master of Trinity said the college had “no interest in divesting from arms companies” during a meeting with Trinity’s undergraduate and postgraduate students’ unions.

Freedom of information requests, seen by MEE, show the college has maintained its investments in arms companies, including Elbit Systems.

It is unclear whether Berkowitz was aware of this before withdrawing his £315,000 donation.

‘Aiding and abetting international crimes’

Multiple students at Trinity told MEE they felt misled. 

“If the college didn’t want students to believe it was divesting, why didn’t it publicly clarify the truth back in May?” asked one.

‘It’s deeply shameful that the college has misled its students by not being transparent regarding its investments’

– student at Trinity College, Cambridge

“It seems that for months, Trinity allowed its students and others to incorrectly think it was divesting from arms companies.

“It’s deeply shameful that the college has misled its students by not being transparent regarding its investments.”

Earlier this week, it emerged that Trinity was one of multiple British charities which were referred to the United Nations special rapporteur for the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, in November over allegedly “aiding and abetting international crimes against Palestinians”.

The International Centre of Justice for Palestinians (ICJP), a UK-based rights group, announced on Monday that it had answered Albanese’s call for evidence ahead of a report to the UN Human Rights Council on “how the private sector has contributed to establishing and maintain Israel’s presence” in the occupied territories.

Berkowitz’s £315,000 donation had been to support the Rabbinic Book Project at Trinity’s Wren Library, aimed at preserving under-studied books important to Jewish history. 

“I would have loved to be identified with something so special and something that is so representative of what the Wren Library stands for, which is preservation of and study of archival material that is unavailable elsewhere,” Berkowitz said, adding that he felt he had to “to make a statement”.

He also objected to the activities of the college’s Lauterpacht Centre for International Law (LCIC), where he is an honorary fellow. The centre is set to host an upcoming panel event called, “A Discussion on International Law and Palestine: Responsibility, Reparations & Reconciliation”.

Berkowitz thought the panel was likely to take an unbalanced approach to the ongoing war.

“Many of the younger professors are very ‘woke’ when it comes to Israel”, he said. “They do not side with the Israeli view, and they don’t side with the idea that Israel has a right to defend itself.”

The centre’s director, Professor Sandesh Sivakumaran, responded that “there is no possible line-up that would satisfy everyone as to its composition”.

Middle East Eye has contacted Trinity College Cambridge for comment.