Harvard and Brown Climate Divestment Article
Harvard and Brown climate divestment was the subject of a 2014 opinion essay by James Lawrence Powell in The Nation. Powell argued that the two universities should have supported calls to divest their endowments from fossil-fuel companies.
An Opinion Piece Argued for Harvard and Brown Climate Divestment
Why university presidents Drew Gilpin Faust and Christina Paxson were wrong. They are the Presidents of Harvard and Brown which rejected calls for climate / fuel divestment from fossil fuel companies.
University presidents once spoke their conscience on matters of great public importance. In the early 1950s, many protested the loyalty oaths that required faculty members to forswear membership in the Communist Party. One of the most courageous critics of McCarthyism was Nathan Pusey, first as president of Lawrence College in Senator Joseph McCarthy’s hometown of Appleton, Wisconsin, then as president of Harvard. In the 1960s, some university presidents openly opposed the war in Vietnam. Even at the cost of donor support, Yale president Kingman Brewster Jr. publicly contested the war and decried the inequities in the draft. He permitted protest demonstrations and skillfully kept the Yale campus open and relatively calm.
1980s Protests Set the Stage for Climate Divestment
In the 1980s, a powerful protest movement spread across American college campuses. Students demanded that universities divest from companies doing business in apartheid-era South Africa.
The argument was simple. Universities should not profit from companies connected to a system of racial segregation and oppression.
However, university leaders did not always agree.
Harvard President Derek Bok resisted broad divestment over South Africa. Still, Harvard eventually sold much of its stock connected to companies with South African operations. Bok also supported selling university investments in tobacco companies.
Those decisions helped establish an important question for universities: Should an institution continue investing in industries when the social, health or environmental consequences conflict with its stated values?
Harvard and Brown Climate Divestment Became the Next Major Battle
Today, that debate has shifted toward climate change.
Students, faculty members and activists have pushed colleges and universities to divest from fossil fuel companies. Their argument focuses on the connection between burning coal, oil and natural gas and rising greenhouse gas emissions.
Moreover, the climate crisis affects public health, infrastructure, food systems, ecosystems and economies around the world.
Author Elizabeth Kolbert captured the scale of the challenge in Field Notes From a Catastrophe. She warned about the extraordinary contradiction of an advanced society continuing behaviors that threaten its own long-term stability.
Therefore, the Harvard and Brown climate divestment advocates began asking universities to reconsider where they invest billions of dollars in endowment assets.
Harvard and Brown Climate Divestment: Universities Faced a Moral and Financial Choice
Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust and Brown University President Christina Paxson were among the prominent university leaders who initially rejected calls for a climate / fossil fuel divestment.
Their decisions intensified the debate.
Supporters of divestment argued that universities could not claim leadership on climate science while continuing to invest in companies heavily tied to fossil fuel production. Opponents countered that endowments existed primarily to support education, research and long-term institutional stability.
Still, the protests created lasting pressure.
Just as students in the 1980s challenged universities over investments connected to apartheid, a new generation began challenging institutions over the financial and environmental consequences of fossil fuels.
The issue became larger than a portfolio decision.
It became a debate over responsibility, institutional values and the role universities should play in confronting climate change.
Faust and Paxson Were Wrong on Fossil Fuel Divestment
I believe Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust and Brown University President Christina Paxson made the wrong decision when they rejected fossil fuel divestment.
In fact, I believe they were gravely wrong.
Their decisions mattered far beyond university investment portfolios. Climate change already threatened public health, ecosystems, infrastructure and economic stability. Therefore, universities could not treat fossil fuel investments as ordinary financial holdings disconnected from their environmental consequences.
However, the issue also went directly to their responsibilities as university presidents.
Faust and Paxson had a duty to protect the institutions they led. More importantly, they had a responsibility to protect the interests of their current and future students.
Universities exist to prepare young people for the future. Yet those same institutions were investing billions of dollars in financial markets that included companies producing the fossil fuels driving climate change.
That created a contradiction.
Students were learning climate science in university classrooms. Researchers were documenting rising temperatures, melting ice, changing ecosystems and increasing climate risks. Meanwhile, university endowments continued investing in portions of the very industry at the center of the debate.
Furthermore, divestment was never simply about immediately bankrupting fossil fuel companies. It was about sending a financial and moral signal.
Universities have enormous cultural influence. Their decisions can help establish what society considers acceptable, responsible and forward-looking.
We saw a similar debate decades earlier with tobacco and apartheid-related investments. Divestment movements forced institutions to ask whether maximizing financial returns should always outweigh broader ethical considerations.
Climate change raised that question again.
Faust and Paxson chose institutional investment tradition over divestment pressure. However, universities must think beyond quarterly returns or established investment practices.
They educate the people who will inherit the consequences of today’s decisions.
Therefore, protecting students should mean more than providing classrooms, scholarships and research opportunities. It should also mean recognizing threats to the world those students will eventually inherit.
That is why fossil fuel divestment became far more than an investment debate. It became a test of institutional responsibility, leadership and the meaning of preparing students for the future.
Image Source: (Reuters/China Daily) via The Nation
Divestment Remained a Contested Strategy
The essay presented the case for divestment as a moral and financial response to climate change. Universities that opposed divestment at the time argued, among other points, that engagement, research and other institutional actions could be more effective.
This article is preserved as historical commentary and should be read as the author’s argument rather than a neutral institutional assessment.
Conclusion to Harvard and Brown Climate Divestment Needed
The piece captures an important stage of the campus divestment debate in 2014. It also shows how universities were being pushed to define the role their endowments should play in climate policy and institutional values.
Source: The Nation — “Harvard and Brown Fail on Climate,” James Lawrence Powell.
James Lawrence Powell January 28, 2014 | This article appeared in the February 17, 2014 edition of The Nation
