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Harvard University has announced that it has no intention of making any future investments in fossil fuels and is ending previous investments because the university’s president, Lawrence S. Bacow, called “climate change” in an email to the Harvard community. It is the most important threat facing humanity.”
The announcement, sent out on Thursday, is a major victory for the climate change movement, given Harvard’s $42 billion endowment and prestigious reputation, and a dramatic change of tone for the school that has resisted putting all its weight on such a statement for years. Lobbying activities by students, faculty, and alumni activists.
Since last year, activism has managed to elect four pro-distraction candidates to Harvard’s Supervisory Board; The first candidates selected by a petition campaign since 1989, when anti-apartheid activists seeking purge in South Africa put Archbishop Desmond Tutu on the panel. This helps determine strategy for the school.
Divorce wars are based on the idea that tax-exempt university endowments are an obligation to take care of the public good, and large endowments like Harvard’s can be vehicles for change.
Harvard activists hope other institutions can follow the university’s lead.
“People pay attention to what Harvard does,” said 2018 Harvard graduate Danielle Strasburger, who, along with a classmate, Nathán Goldberg Crenier, co-founded the campus liquidation movement Harvard Forward.
“The fact that Harvard has finally shown that it is no longer supporting the fossil fuel community is a big domino,” he said. “Hopefully this will encourage other universities to put pressure on those who haven’t yet.”
Many other universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Brown and Cornell, have committed to giving up fossil fuels, according to Harvard Forward. But many others did not, and similar divestment movements spread through universities around the country.
Mr. Bacow said in the announcement that the Harvard Management Company has been reducing its exposure to fossil fuels for some time.
“HMC has no direct investment in companies that explore or develop more fossil fuel reserves,” Bacow said. “Furthermore, HMC does not intend to make such investments in the future.”
He added that Harvard does not believe such investments are “prudent,” implying that there are both financial and ethical arguments for the decision. Mr. Bacow said the management company has former investments as limited partners in a number of private equity firms with holdings in the fossil fuel industry that account for less than 2 percent of the funds.
The evangelical tone of Mr. Bacow’s announcement this week was different from 2019, when he faced protesters demanding the removal of fossil fuels and prisons. Mr. Bacow told the protesters he would respond to “cause” rather than “pressure”.
With the election of a supervisor approaching in April 2020, Mr. Bacow said the divestment was “painting with a very wide brush”.
In this week’s announcement, he boasted that Harvard had appointed the first vice president of climate and sustainability, saying it was “to build a portfolio of investments in funds that support the transition to a green economy.”
The move to influence the supervisory board has received support from more prominent climate change advocates, such as former Vice President Al Gore. But some Harvard alumni leaders wrote an open letter saying that Harvard Forward was trying to “buy” the election by raising money to support its campaign. The group said it was just “trying to democratize”.
The fossil fuel divestment campaign at Harvard was elected in 1986, when Harvard graduate Gay Seidman, now a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, campaigned on an anti-racist platform.
In the following years, other anti-apartheid candidates were elected, such as Archbishop Tutu. Harvard argued that the divestment could make things worse for Black people in South Africa, but gradually began divestiture from South African-related stocks.
Alain Delaquériere contributed to research.
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