Wage Peace, an anti-war protest group, wants the University of Queensland to cut ties with the weapons company Boeing.
Alumni and protesters held a slow march, disrupting traffic, around the St Lucia campus on February 28, demanding the university’s engineering department cut ties.
Boeing, mostly known as an aviation company, is in fact a military company with weapons sales a significant part of its income.
Several speakers talked about Boeing’s war profiteering, its connection to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its operations at UQ. They chanted: “Boeing arms genocide”, “Boeing out of UQ” and “Beware Boeing’s wars”.
Former Vice Chancellor and President Peter Høj encouraged Boeing’s affiliation with the engineering department in 2017. A Boeing Research institute was built on the campus under the guise of broader research prospects for aerospace.
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Students studying engineering are encouraged to apply for internships and work for Boeing after they graduate.
The university is essentially funnelling young adults to work for one of the world's weapons companies.
Wage Peace is a grassroots collective committed to an ongoing resistance against Boeing on the university campus. We do not believe arms companies have a place in our schools.
[Aisling Geraghty is an activist with Wage Peace.]