The divestment movement has escalated in recent weeks due to a coordinated effort on college campuses in Mass. and beyond. As they lined both sides of a hallway in UMass Amherst’s Whitmore Administration Building last week, dozens of students chanted “Ain’t no power like the power of people, ’cause the power of people don’t stop.”
In response to President Valerie Smith and Chair of the Board Tom Spock Last week, President This Thursday, three Swarthmore Honorary Degree recipients, labor organizer and anti-war activist John Braxton, linguist, philosopher Today, Swarthmore Mountain Justice called on Board members Rhonda Cohen ’76, Samuel Hayes III ’57, and
Holding signs reading “Carbon emissions – air pollution – 8 million deaths a year” and “Rhonda This past weekend, the Board of Managers at Swarthmore College approved an internal charge on greenhouse This Thursday, three Swarthmore Honorary Degree recipients, labor organizer and anti-war activist John Braxton, linguist, philosopher
On the Friday before Board of Managers meeting, activist group Mountain Justice (MJ) held a rally to once again call on the board to divest and deliver a previously published letter to the president’s office. The next day, the board announced a new sustainability-motivated carbon charge initiative, but made no public mention of divestment.
At its meeting this weekend, Swarthmore’s Board of Managers approved the budget for the College’s 2016-17 fiscal year. The budget includes $300,000 for a new carbon charge, initially proposed by a working group of members of the faculty and staff this fall, that will provide funding for campus initiatives and projects that increase energy conservation and efficiency and promote renewable energy.
This Thursday, three Swarthmore Honorary Degree recipients, labor organizer and anti-war activist John Braxton, linguist, philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky, and Berkeley sociology professor Arlie Hochschild called on the college to divest its endowment from fossil fuels. On Tuesday, MIT Professor Emeritus of Management Lotte Bailyn added her name to the letter.
Today, published a The Daily Gazette pro-divestment letter signed by three recipients of Swarthmore honorary degrees: sociologist Arlie Hochschild ’62, activist John Braxton ’70, and, most notably, linguist and social critic Noam Chomsky. Here is an excerpt from the letter, which references Swarthmore’s 1989 divestment from South Africa: Swarthmore has been a powerful voice for justice at critical moments in history.
TO: Board of Managers of Swarthmore College We are writing to you as proud recipients of honorary degrees from Swarthmore College. Whether it was divesting from Apartheid, refusing to bow to McCarthyism, developing leaders in the civil rights and peace movements, or admitting women from its founding, Swarthmore has been a powerful voice for justice at critical moments in…
As students across the country engage in nonviolent direct action calling on their administrators to divest from fossil fuels, calling out conflicts of interest embedded within their decision makers over the last two weeks.
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.