Perspectives on Divest Harvard and Why They Won’t Give Up

Following over a year of visible student protests asking Harvard to divest from its holdings in fossil fuel companies, University President Drew G. Faust released a letter affirming the University’s stance against divestment.

“Climate change represents one of the world’s most consequential challenges. I very much respect the concern and commitment shown by the many members of our community who are working to confront this problem,” she wrote in her letter dated Oct. 3, 2013. “While I share their belief in the importance of addressing climate change, I do not believe, nor do my colleagues on the Corporation, that university divestment from the fossil fuel industry is warranted or wise.”

Faust’s letter added weight to the idea that Harvard “operates with a strong presumption against divestment,” according to University spokesperson Kevin Galvin. But members of Divest Harvard, the student group currently spearheading the divestment movement, say this letter serves as a source of motivation, rather than discouragement.

“Having a concrete ‘no’ is something to work against... it makes our campaign stronger,” said Pennilynn R. Stahl ’15, the student outreach coordinator for Divest Harvard.

The campaign is not backing down. Just this past Sunday, over 150 students from schools in the Boston area gathered on Harvard’s campus to rally for divestment.

Whether or not divestment happens in the near future, activists are hopeful that it eventually will. In the meantime, they hope to bring immediate awareness to the effects of climate change and how divestment might lend urgency to that issue.

“It’s going to be a fight that’s going to take time,” Stahl said of divestment. “I don’t know how many years it will take, but we just want to continue building awareness of this issue and placing pressure on the administration.”

IT’S MORAL, NOT ECONOMIC

Since its creation in 2012, Divest Harvard has been committed to one goal—convincing Harvard University to divest its direct holdings in fossil fuel companies.

The movement, which has brought together students, faculty, alumni, and staff from across the Harvard community, aims to rebrand the fossil fuel companies as “social pariahs” in hopes of lessening the influence of these organizations. Therefore divestment, advocates say, is not an economic tactic, but a moral and political one.

“Divestment is a social movement. It’s trying to collapse down the social chain that exists between people’s actions and their investments,” said Benjamin Franta, a Ph.D. candidate in applied physics at Harvard and an organizer of Divest Harvard. “It’s about changing a broader societal psychology that surrounds an issue that has very long lasting effects.”

Activists have turned to divestment throughout Harvard’s history, calling for it in hopes of ending the system of apartheid in South Africa and reducing the influence of the tobacco industry.

In 1990, Harvard divested from tobacco companies, following a national trend that Franta said did not “bring the industry to its knees,” but did contribute to changing public attitudes towards smoking. Members of Divest Harvard hope to replicate that success with the fossil fuel movement.

“They have successfully managed to prevent any legislation at the level we need to really do something about the [climate change] crisis,” Alli J. Welton ’15, an undergraduate organizer of Divest Harvard, said of fossil fuel companies. “By taking away their social license with divestment, we can create space for the government to finally act.”

Divest Harvard grew from an undergraduate coalition known as Students for a Just and Stable Future, which aims broadly to encourage activism related to climate change.

Though the divestment movement at Harvard is barely a year old, student organizers say that the rapid growth and fervor of the movement comes from the urgency of climate change.

Divest Harvard organizers point to research indicating that the potential ramifications of the climate crisis are varied and severe, ranging from rising sea levels that could destroy entire countries to climate disruption that could cause harsher droughts and floods.

The sentiments of Harvard’s student divestment leaders are shared with student activists from across schools nationwide.

“The ultimate goal is to get [legislative] action on climate change that would make it illegal to burn more fossil fuels than it is safe to burn,” said Daniel L. Jubelirer, an active member of Tufts Divest for Our Future. “Green energy is feasible, it just isn’t being funded.”

But the divestment movement is only one piece of the sustainability puzzle, said Franta. By changing the way people think about climate change on a massive scale, he said, divestment supports and accelerates the efforts of policy and technological change.

“Infrastructural technologies societies use to sustain economies are developed over a long period of time, under the support of permanent economic policies,” Franta said. “So it really comes down to the political level. How much money will we put into low carbon industry research? Are we going to intentionally try to phase out use of fossil energy sources or are we just going to keep using it?”

IS IT PRACTICAL?

Though Harvard maintains its firm stance against divestment, it has not ignored the national movement towards sustainability. In December 2012 Harvard announced the creation of a separate social choice fund to which donors could choose to direct their gifts. Two months later, amid rising calls from student groups, the Harvard Management Company created the position of vice president for sustainable investing.

In her October letter to the Harvard community, Faust described the vice presidential position as helping HMC to “think in more nuanced, forward-looking ways about sustainable investment, including the consideration of environmental, social, and governance factors.”

According to a Harvard official, Jameela Pedicini, who was appointed to the position earlier this year, has already begun meeting with Harvard students.

Administrators maintain that the most effective way to address climate change and sustainability is through Harvard’s significant teaching and research on climate and environmental issues.

In her letter, Faust pointed to the academic work being done across the University, as well as the efforts of the Office for Sustainability, all of which the endowment helps to support.

“Conceiving of the endowment not as an economic resource, but as a tool to inject the University into the political process or as a lever to exert economic pressure for social purposes, can entail serious risks to the independence of the academic enterprise,” she wrote.

“The endowment is a resource, not an instrument to impel social or political change.”

There are environmentalists and academics alike who say they understand the University’s position and do not wholeheartedly support the divestment movement, although they applaud the student efforts.

Christie Lee, Vice President for Sustainability of the Energy Environment Club at Harvard Business School, said she believes that from a practical standpoint, divestment will be difficult to achieve.

“If you consider divesting from [the top] 200 fossil fuel companies, the largest market cap companies in the stock exchange, actually detangling Harvard’s endowment from that will take quite a while,” she said.

Environmental Science and Engineering Professor Daniel P. Schrag, who serves on President Barack Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, said he commends the students’ symbolic efforts to use the endowment to “point a moral finger” at the rest of society, but is not convinced that the University should follow through with student requests.

“Harvard divesting doesn’t build windmills, doesn’t make solar panels. It doesn’t transform oil to biofuels,” Schrag said. Real change, he added, will take a long time and effort from every individual.

“Everyone I know drives a car, rides airplanes, plugs in their laptops with electricity that uses coal and natural gas. This is on all of us...we need to rebuild the infrastructure that supports our modern existence,” Schrag said.

NOT GIVING UP

Although they have heard administrators’ stance time and time again, students are not letting up the pressure on Harvard to divest.

“We’re going to keep going with our campaign until it happens,” Stahl said.

But they have also broadened the scope of their efforts in hopes of influencing other underwriters of the coal industry. In late November, a group of students from Students for a Just and Stable Future staged a protest at a Bank of America recruiting event as part of a campaign by the Rainforest Action Network to persuade banks to divest from the fossil fuel industry.

“Whether it is Harvard or Bank of America, we absolutely need to decarbonize their lending portfolios,” said Todd Zimmer, a campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network. “I think [the] administration should understand that if they aren’t willing to make progress on campus, then students will continue to grow, continue to put pressure on all different parts of the carbon web whether it’s banks or higher institutions.”

Stahl said that for Divest Harvard, this semester was mostly focused on faculty and alumni outreach. Next year, the organization will try to mobilize the student body. Through student, alumni, faculty, and media support, Stahl said the plan is to continue to “put pressure on Harvard to the point where [the] Harvard administration will feel like it has to divest to maintain student support.”

Student members of Divest Harvard are optimistic that the movement will eventually prevail.

“We’re going to succeed because there are millions of lives at stake in the climate crisis, including our own,” Welton said. “We don’t have any choice but to fight harder.”

—Staff writer Selina Y. Wang can be reached at selinawang58@gmail.com. Follow her on Twitter @Selina_y_wang.