Cambridge University’s Judge business school sought permission to pursue a memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry to provide leadership development and innovation management, after an introduction by the UK’s Ministry of Defence.
Documents seen by show the proposed agreement would set preliminary goals and terms for potential collaborations covering executive education, innovation management, leadership development and healthcare administration strategies. The work would be with the civilian administration of the Saudi defence ministry.
The request was approved in January by Cambridge’s benefactions committee, which backed it by a majority vote and said an agreement would in principle be acceptable, but that individual contracts would still need separate consultation. The school has not signed such an MoU, a spokesperson said.
The proposal prompted sharp concern inside the university. Confidential minutes show committee members raised fears about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record, its climate change stance and whether Cambridge could safely protect staff academic freedoms if work went ahead. A senior academic on Cambridge’s university council called the proposal “horrifying,” saying the university was selling out its principles to what he described as the world’s most murderous regime.
David Whitaker told the committee the proposal fit the university’s mission to benefit society through education and was strategically aligned with the UK government. But that case sits uneasily beside the warnings from within Cambridge, where critics said the idea that academics would be safe in a country that arbitrarily imprisons and murders dissenters was “shameless and disgusting.”
UK universities regularly sell consultancy and training to foreign governments, with some contracts running into the millions of pounds, but this proposal drew particular alarm because of Saudi Arabia’s role in regional conflicts including in Iran and Yemen. The Judge business school charges £98,000 for an executive MBA and £107,000 for a global executive MBA starting in January, underlining the commercial scale of the school’s executive education business.
The immediate question is not whether Cambridge can win approval in principle, but whether it is prepared to turn that approval into signed work with a defence ministry already under intense scrutiny.
