{"id":517,"date":"2012-12-01T02:39:27","date_gmt":"2012-12-01T02:39:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/?p=517"},"modified":"2012-12-01T02:39:27","modified_gmt":"2012-12-01T02:39:27","slug":"great-news-from-hampshire-college","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/great-news-from-hampshire-college\/","title":{"rendered":"Great News from Hampshire College"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a post from Bill McKibben on some exciting news out of Hampshire College:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

As you know, we\u2019ve been talking nonstop about the great folks at Unity College, who became the first school in the country to divest from fossil fuel. They\u2019re heroes.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s another school that has\u00a0essentially<\/em>\u00a0done the same thing, and they deserve massive credit too. That\u2019s Hampshire College in western Massachusetts, where the board of trustees recently voted only to invest in companies whose \u201cpolicies align with our core values of social responsibility and sustainability.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>In practice, the school\u2019s president Jonathan Lash said, that meant they wouldn\u2019t invest in fossil fuel companies.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

But for reasons I didn\u2019t completely understand, he told me when we talked earlier in the fall that he \u201cwouldn\u2019t call it divestment.\u201d I\u2019m still not sure why, since it actually is. But Hampshire, as its board chair Sig Roos pointed out when he took the job, is not just environmentally sound, it also embodies a \u201cdeep respect for individuality.\u201d\u00a0 So maybe President Lash just didn\u2019t want to be linked too closely to the larger movement. And in one respect their policy might be called \u2018divestment plus\u2019\u2014they\u2019ve committed to investing in renewable energy instead.<\/p>\n

President Lash is a revered environmental leader, helping shepherd the World Resources Institute, and he\u2019s owed great respect. But the movement that led to divestment was a student movement, and they deserve the right to call it what it is. Which is: a great victory. And they\u2019re not stopping\u2014they\u2019ve become leaders in the cross-collegiate divestment movement.<\/p>\n

Today, in fact, they\u2019re helping\u00a0rally<\/a>\u00a0students from around the Pioneer Valley to make sure other schools follow their lead. If I could be there\u2014instead of in Omaha, where the Do The Math tour is today sojourning, here\u2019s what I would say:<\/p>\n

\u201cSo many thanks to the great students of Hampshire College. They showed the way in the 1980s, becoming the first school to divest from apartheid South Africa. 154 other campuses followed their lead, and I\u2019m certain they\u2019ll have exactly as much impact this time around. To them great honor and credit\u2014and to the good folks at Amherst and UMass and Mt. Holyoke\u00a0 and Smith, we can\u2019t wait to watch you follow in their proud footsteps.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a post from Bill McKibben on some exciting news out of Hampshire College:\u00a0 As you know, we\u2019ve been talking…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":5569,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-517","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5569"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/divestment\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}