Faust Will Host Climate Change Forum

After repeated requests from faculty members, University President Drew G. Faust has agreed to host an open forum this spring “on how the University can best embrace its essential role in confronting climate change,” according to her spokesperson, Jeff Neal.

Faust “reiterated” her plans to host the climate change forum this spring in a mid-December email to a group of 235 faculty members from across all of Harvard’s schools who have signed an open letter urging the University to divest from fossil fuels, Neal said on Tuesday.

Drew G. Faust By Robert F Worley

Faust has repeatedly argued against the divestment of Harvard’s $35.9 billion endowment, even as campus voices in support of it have grown louder. Harvard affiliates, including the Divest Harvard activist group, have frequently demanded an open forum on climate change and divestment.

Another group, Harvard Faculty for Divestment, formalized its request for a forum in a Dec. 1, 2014, email to Faust and Harvard Corporation Senior Fellow William F. Lee ’72 requesting that both “join us in a well publicized and well planned open forum this spring semester to discuss the university’s role in addressing climate change.”

After Faust replied with the proposed spring forum on climate change, the Faculty for Divestment group responded at the end of last semester with another email to Faust about the importance of discussing the University’s investments specifically, but according to Professor of Psychiatry James M. Recht and Economics professor Stephen A. Marglin ’59, have not received a reply to that message.

Neal wrote in an email that Faust received two emails from the group and responded to the first.

“No questions were asked in the final email she received and there was no indication that a response was expected,” Neal wrote.

Other emails sent last year by the group to Faust and Lee that are available on the group’s website were more explicit in their calls for an open forum specifically about divestment. This week, some members of the Harvard Faculty for Divestment Group, who said they they would participate in the forum Faust proposed, maintained that they wanted Faust to partake in a forum specifically targeted at the University’s investment in fossil fuel companies.

“It would be wonderful if the University were willing to hold this forum on divestment with us, but we don’t see any sign yet that that’s going to happen,” Recht said.

He added that the group hopes to hold an educational event in April at the same time a Harvard student group, Divest Harvard, plans to host a week-long sit-in to demand that the University divest from fossil fuels.

Some members of the Faculty for Divestment met formally with Faust and Lee for the first time last October in a “cordial” meeting to discuss their respective views, according to Marglin, but have not met with the administrators since.

Faculty have aired concerns about communication with Faust amid a flurry of divestment activity on campus. On Feb. 12, students from Divest Harvard occupied Massachusetts Hall for a 24-hour sit-in.

—Staff writer Karl M. Aspelund contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Meg P. Bernhard can be reached at meg.bernhard@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @meg_bernhard.