Dis-invest / de-install: Universities

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Divest / Deinstall: Microsoft Teams in education

A growing list of resources for addressing tech-complicity in the context of higher education. Gathered during the online workshop Uni as infrastructure workshop: Microsoft teams, organised members of Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics (CCIP), Critical Media Lab (CML) and Centre for the Study of the Networked Image (CSNI) in September 2025.

Actions

  • Ask whether a software tool is actually needed
  • Make decisions on software in groups rather than individually
  • Adopt alternatives for specific events whenever possible.
  • Make multiple complaints to IT about problems with provision, and encourage others to do the same.
  • Expose contradictions of policies (e.g. EDI, environmental impact and bullying/harassment).
  • Join Working groups and try to influence policy decisions.
  • Create awareness by formulating and distributing an Open Letter to your University's board (at Academic Board which is the highest level meeting and/or lobby Governors)
  • Set up an autoreply to your MS-powered email address https://www.voxweb.nl/en/professor-closes-down-radboud-university-email-address-in-protest-against-microsoft

Open Letters

Campaigns

Articles, papers, news stories

About education and IT

https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951725136523 (EN)

  • The Economic Risks of Divestment from Israel for University Endowments

https://www.adl.org/resources/article/economic-risks-divestment-israel-university-endowments

https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/can-universities-keep-control-over-their-data-in-the-cloud-and-if-so-how

  • New York Times article about proposal by Columbia students for divestment from Microsoft, Airbnb, Amazon and Alphabet, among others (EN)

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/opinion/divest-campus-protest-israel.html

  • Eduface: Do We Really Want AI to Grade Our Papers? (EN)

https://baismag.com/2025/06/24/eduface-do-we-really-want-ai-to-grade-our-papers/

  • Various actions at Edinburgh University, linked through UCU (Union) (EN)

https://www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/7nhe6nfect3a9djkczclnakgp6m9zc https://www.ucuedinburgh.org.uk/blog/court-letter-divestment

  • Boggs, A. & Mitchell, N. (2017). Critical university studies and the crisis consensus. Feminist Studies, 44(2), 432-463
  • Prinsloo, P. (2020). Of ‘black boxes; and algorithmic decision-making in (higher) education--A commentary. Big Data & Society, 1, 1-6.
  • Fochler, M. (2016). Variants of Epistemic Capitalism: Knowledge Production and the Accumulation of Worth in Commercial Biotechnology and the Academic Life Sciences. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 41(5), 922–948. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916652224
  • Hackett, E. J. (2014). Academic Capitalism. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 39(5), 635–638. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243914540219
  • Hall, G., Wortham S., Eds. 2000. Special Issue: The University Culture Machine. Culture Machine Vol. 2.
  • ADD upcoming Culture Machine special issue (that we are working on)
  • Rouse, W.B. (2016). Universities as Complex Enterprises: How Academia Works, Why It Works These Ways, and Where The University Enterprise Is Headed. New York: Wiley.
  • Stevens, M., Kraaijeveld, S. R., & Sharon, T. (2024) "Sphere transgressions: reflecting on the risks of Big Tech expansionism", in Information, Communication & Society, 27(15): 2587–2599.
  • Wheeler, S. (2025). "The Hidden Curriculum of the LMS". Accessed online at https://personalpages.manchester.ac.uk/staff/stephen.wheeler/blog/0029_the_hidden_curriculum_of_the_lms.htm

Privacy, data-extraction

Assessment of Copilot impact on privacy (EN) https://www.surf.nl/files/2024-12/20241218-dpia-microsoft-365-copilot.pdf

About tech-complicity

https://algosoc.org/results/from-infrastructural-power-to-redistribution-how-the-eus-digital-agenda-cements-securitization-and-computational-infrastructures-and-how-we-build-otherwise (EN)

Links and references regarding Microsoft's complicity in the genocide

‘A million calls an hour’: Israel relying on Microsoft cloud for expansive surveillance of Palestinians

Environmental concerns

Other

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