Liberate KCL is a collective of students who work actively to dismantle the corporate university, as well as the racist, imperialist, white supremacist, patriarchal and cisheteronormative systems it reflects and reproduces.    

 

We have four fights: democratise, diversify, decolonise, demarketise.

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Universities are meant to be places of learning but are increasingly places of profit. Tuition fees have never been higher, yet standards at King's are falling, important services are being cut, and our teachers are seeing their pay and pensions reduced. The extortionate cost of a university degree means that those students who are already financially disadvantaged are more likely to end up owing the most in student debt. The same students are also more likely to work part-time and full-time jobs during term-time and rely on food banks for their next meal.

 

Women, people of colour, LGBTQ people and disabled people suffer a dual oppression: 

On the one hand, as students who are likely to be stuck in low-wage jobs and burdened by debt and, on the other, as members of an oppressed community. Rather than supporting these students and fighting against inequality, KCL actively upholds the oppressive status quo. Sexual harassment, poor accessibility, lack of diversity and attainment gaps are only the tip of the iceberg. 

 

KCL is an imperialist institution, complicit in war crimes and racist border control. The university has invested millions of pounds in the war industry and collaborates with immigration control and the military. Moreover, KCL’s securitisation and surveillance programs put Black students at risk of police brutality, as well as silence dissent through intimidation.

 

Liberate KCL stands against this violence and seeks to build a grassroots liberation movement. We believe that only by centering underrepresented voices in the fight against capitalist exploitation and imperialist, patriarchal and anti-LGBTQ oppression are we able to transform KCL into a truly democratic and community-based space of learning and knowledge sharing.

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