Black and White by Heather Shayne Blakeslee Forget the Lafayette vs. Lehigh football rivalry, a Pennsylvania matchup that began in 1884. The longest running rivalry in college sports is progressive students and faculty lining up against conservative university administrations-and socially conservative thought in general.
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Vassar students have proved that they support fossil fuel divestment on paper and in practice. 91 percent of students voted in support of fossil fuel divestment in the recent referendum and more than 400 people showed up to the sit-in conducted by Vassar College Fossil Fuel Divestment Camp…
On April 12th, Yale’s Chief Investment Officer David Swensen announced the school’s decision to partially divest its endowment from fossil fuels. Swensen cited not ethical reasons, but financial prudence, as the top motivator behind the decision. Yale’s divestment came after Swensen asked their investment managers to consider the potential risks that investments in coal and…
Almost two years after Chief Investment Officer David Swensen added climate change awareness to Yale’s investment strategy, the endowment is starting to divest from fossil fuels. In a Tuesday letter to the Yale community, Swensen reported that after months of talking with Yale’s external investment managers about the potential risks associated with investments in coal, oil, around $10 million of the endowment has been removed from two publicly-traded fossil fuel producers.
On Wednesday, at 12:15 p.m., pro-divestment group Mountain Justice (MJ) announced a new ultimatum to the board of managers: three specific board members must refrain from participating in the board’s decision-making on divestment, or MJ will intensify its campaign.
Holding signs reading “Carbon emissions – air pollution – 8 million deaths a year” and “Rhonda Cohen – Board of Glenmede Trust – $1 billion in Fossil Fuel Industry,” 18 members of Mountain Justice, accompanied by Professor of Religion, Mark Wallace, staged a demonstration at the Philadelphia offices of investment and wealth management firm Glenmede Trust on Wednesday morning.
Today, Swarthmore Mountain Justice called on Board members Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and Harold Kalkstein ’78, to recuse themselves from future conversations on fossil fuel divestment. The Board’s decision not to divest last May was compromised by conflicts of interest among these three Board members who have considerable personal and financial ties…
The charge will levy a fee of 0.5% of each academic department’s budget. The money gathered will be used to establish a fund dedicated to carbon-reduction projects. Increasing carbon efficiency has been a major priority of facilities staff for a long time, according to Aurora Winslade, Director of Sustainability.
The national fossil fuel divestment movement started at Swarthmore with the student group Swarthmore Mountain Justice. In 2010, a group of students traveled to West Virginia on their spring and fall breaks to learn about mountaintop removal coal mining and its effects on the communities of Appalachia.
We write in response to the Feb. 25 guest opinion, “Board Members’ Conflicts of Interest in Regards to the Fossil Fuel Industry Leave Us No Choice but to Escalate”. Many of the assertions in the piece are unfounded and present a distorted picture of the efforts the Board and the administration have undertaken.