Petition to Rescind the UCL Honorary Fellowship Awarded to Demis Hassabis of Google DeepMind

In 2016, UCL awarded an Honorary Fellowship to Demis Hassabis, the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind. UCL Honorary Fellowships are supposed to be awarded to individuals who reflect "the values and ethos of UCL." 

Yet, over the past few years, Google DeepMind and its parent companies, Google and Alphabet, have become deeply complicit in aiding and abetting Israeli genocide, ethnic cleansing, occupation and apartheid in Palestine. Since 2021, Google has held contracts with the Israeli government that make its cloud computing infrastructure as well as its artificial intelligence technology -- developed by Google DeepMind -- available for use by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli Defense Forces. This technology has directly aided combat operations and is described by the Israeli military as "a weapon in every sense of the word."

In June 2025, the United Nations called out Alphabet, the parent company of Google DeepMind, for its complicity in Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide, noting that the company was "central to the Israeli surveillance apparatus and the ongoing Gaza destruction," and calling on all civil society organisations to cut ties with the company and press for boycotts, divestment and full accountability. In April 2025, the Financial Times reported that Google DeepMind's own workers were seeking to unionise in order to push their employer to end its involvement with military and surveillance work with Israel and elsewhere.

Despite all of this, not only has Demis Hassabis made no public statement or action to bring the corporate complicity of Google DeepMind, Google and Alphabet to an end; Hassabis has openly supported sharing Google DeepMind AI technology with the Israeli Defense Forces during their genocidal war on Gaza.

Such activities and behaviours do not represent the values and ethos of our university.

As UCL staff, students and alumni, we call on Provost Michael Spence and the UCL Council to immediately rescind the UCL Honorary Fellowship awarded to Demis Hassabis, that now brings shame on our university.

List of confirmed signatories