We, the undersigned, note with grave concern that members of faculties at major British universities (including Cambridge, De Montfort, King's College London, Lancaster, the London School of Economies, and UCL) have been providing academic expertise to the Ministry of Defence's Defence Cultural Specialist Unit (DCSU).

As revealed by recent student-led investigations, we note that the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) plays a specific role in designing and delivering these 'cultural specialist' trainings on behalf of the MoD, and has received at least £400,000 since 2016 to do so. We believe this cooperation goes against the ethical principles of our profession, as a continuation of the British university system's historic complicity with militarist and imperial endeavours. We urge institutions working with the DCSU to reconsider their involvement.

The DCSU was formed in 2010 in response to the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. It functions under the 1st Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance Brigade of the British Army, focused on military intelligence. It is designed to use the world-class talent and perspectives of academics in the UK to train military cultural specialists that can better understand the populations in which the British Armed Forces operate, which includes at least 20 military bases, 43,390 deployed troops and seven 'covert wars' across the globe. As of 2016, the DCSU was served by 64 regular 'Cultural Advisors' (and 26 reserves) in at least 22 countries, from Chile to Chad, Nigeria to the DRC. We also note that militarism and war plunder and pollute the earth, contributing significantly to the climate and ecological crises.

DCSU-trained cultural specialists are supposed to tap into culture and psychology--or 'hearts and minds'--to generate more targeted military policy that furthers the UK's strategic and economic objectives (along with those of its NATO allies), as well as 'compliance' from local populations. Effectively, the British higher education sector is helping the military craft more effective strategies at maintaining control over people considered to be potential sources of resistance or opposition, be they in Mali, Afghanistan, Somalia, Oman, Yemen, or anywhere else.

We believe that this initiative goes against the spirit of our fields, which seek to expand the treasury of human knowledge. Instead, it is a regression to a darker era of knowledge production shaped explicitly by the needs of the British Empire, and symptomatic of a broader culture of surveillance and militarism entrenching itself in our universities, from the Prevent programme to the 'Hostile Environment.'

We agree that academic knowledge production should not be used to support and enhance the multiple forms of harm and domination inherent to imperial projects. We reject the objectives of the MoD's DCSU, and call on any and all lecturers and universities collaborating with it to immediately cease their involvement.

Signed,