TEMPLATE LETTER TO VC ABOUT LOCKHEED MARTIN AT NORTHUMBRIA
Letter to Northumbria University Vice Chancellor Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive
Dear Professor Long,
I am deeply concerned about Northumbria University’s relationship via NESST with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest weapons manufacturer. Staff, students and the wider community deserve to know the terms governing any partnership and the safeguards surrounding any research involving LM. In their Wages not Weapons campaign, the TUC implicates LM’s technologies in “grave violations of international law”, reinforced by the findings of the Palestine Space Institute.
I am writing to ask you to:
- Confirm and guarantee no technologies or research developed in the relationship between Northumbria and Lockheed Martin will be for military purposes or ‘dual use’, i.e. for both civilian and military purposes.
- Publish details of the agreement between Northumbria University and Lockheed Martin in a transparent way.
- Explain how the relationship with the world’s largest arms manufacturer aligns with Northumbria University’s values and behaviours.
- Commit to follow the ‘Recommendations for Universities’ in the Weaponising Universities
Northumbria’s future must be shaped by its staff, students and communities — not by the interests of the arms industry. A university can be better, and should mean more, than this.
The North East’s communities deserve good, secure, sustainable jobs and education. But we should not have to accept militarisation as the price of regional investment. I will be writing to my MP about this matter.
Yours sincerely,
