It’s been really exciting to follow the fossil fuel divestment campaign at Harvard as it gains steam — and national media attention. Earlier this month, Harvard students voted on an official student resolution to divest from fossil fuels and supported the measure 72%. The Crimson, who originally editorialized against divestment, is now advocating on the students behalf as they continue to push for a meeting with President Faust to discuss divestment.<\/p>\n
The campaign has gotten some great media attention, including a story on PRI’s “Living on Earth”<\/a> which plays on NPR stations across the country. Below is a recent article from the Crimson<\/a> on the campaign. We particularly like this piece because it shows the ways in which students at colleges across the Northeast are beginning to work together on divestment (kudos to our partners at places like the Responsible Endowments Coalition who have been laying the groundwork for years).<\/p>\n As Other Colleges Discuss Divestment, Harvard Stays Mum While a number of colleges have expressed enthusiasm at the overwhelming Harvard student support for the divestment of the University\u2019s endowment from the fossil fuel industry, many student leaders also voiced concern at the Harvard administration\u2019s silence on the issue.<\/p>\n More than 70 percent of the roughly 3,600 Harvard undergraduates who cast ballots in the Undergraduate Council presidential election voted in favor of a referendum calling for divestment of Harvard\u2019s $30.7 billion endowment from the fossil fuel industry, adding Harvard\u2019s name to a slew of similar campaigns at other colleges.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are so excited that Harvard and so many other schools have joined the movement. In particular, we were thrilled to hear that 72% of the Harvard student body supported the referendum,\u201d Sachie Hopkins-Hayakawa, an organizer of the fossil fuel divestment campaign at Swarthmore College, wrote in an email.<\/p>\n But despite such immense student support, the Harvard administration said last week that it is \u201cnot considering\u201d divestment, and student attempts to meet University President Drew G. Faust to discuss the issue have been unsuccessful thus far.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s two-and-a-half weeks that we\u2019ve been waiting for a response\u2014and we sent reminder emails,\u201d said Alli J. Welton ’15, a board member of Divest Harvard, the student organization that championed the referendum.<\/p>\n Student leaders at other schools said their administrators have been much more receptive to student divestment campaigns.<\/p>\n \u201cHonestly it\u2019s terrible that the [Harvard] administration is refusing to [discuss the issue] considering that there are students that are really concerned about it,\u201d said Catherine E. Martin, an organizer of the fossil fuel divestment movement at Syracuse University. She added that the Syracuse administration has been \u201cvery willing\u201d to work with students\u2014the chancellor formed a committee of five trustees to evaluate the college\u2019s investments after students inquired about investment in fossil fuels.<\/p>\n Amherst College\u2019s administration has also been \u201cvery willing\u201d to engage in dialogue, said Deidre Nelms, who is spearheading fossil fuel divestment efforts there as president of the Green Amherst Project.<\/p>\n Amherst administrators will likely vote in January whether or not to divest from the coal industry, and a robust campaign at Harvard could influence the outcome.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019d be more likely to divest if other colleges were actively pursuing it as well,\u201d said Nelms. \u201cKeep protesting, and try to make the issue as high profile as possible, because people pay attention to what people do at Harvard.\u201d<\/p>\n Martin echoed Nelms\u2019 words of advice and is optimistic that the Harvard administration will not be able to ignore divestment if student involvement in Divest Harvard accelerates. \u201cIf people are even vaguely interested they need to go out and support [the campaign] because change isn\u2019t easy,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you want to get involved don\u2019t think somebody else is going to take care of it for you\u2014make sure your voice is heard.\u201d<\/p>\n The nationwide environmental initiative was catalyzed in large part by environmental author and activist Bill E. McKibben ’82\u2019s \u2018Do the Math\u2019 tour, in which the former Crimson president traveled to dozens of university campuses to encourage investment in sustainable energy rather than fossil fuels.<\/p>\n This article has been updated to reflect the following clarification:<\/p>\n CLARIFICATION: Nov. 27<\/p>\n An earlier version of this article stated that more than 70 percent of undergraduates voted in favor of a referendum calling for Harvard to divest from the fossil fuel industry. To clarify, that number refers to the 72 percent of the roughly 3,600 students who voted in the Undergraduate Council presidential election who supported the referendum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s been really exciting to follow the fossil fuel divestment campaign at Harvard as it gains steam — and national…<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-381","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=381"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/381\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gofossilfree.org\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<\/strong>by Melody Guan<\/p>\n