Caleb Schwartz, an organizer from Fossil Fuel Divest Harvard, said his group’s goal is to get the university to disclose its investments in fossil fuel companies by Earth Day 2020. Without that transparency, “we can’t even begin to have an honest conversation about Harvard’s role in the climate crisis,” he said. Schwartz said Harvard administrators have gone from ignoring calls for divestment to engaging in conversation with activists to ultimately deciding to address climate change through shareholder engagement rather than divestment. In September, Harvard announced it was joining Climate Action 100+, an investor-led initiative to ensure oil and gas companies are taking steps to curb emissions. Meanwhile, Yale has partially divested. In April 2016, Yale chief investment officer David Swensen wrote a letter to the student body announcing that two of Yale’s investment managers had sold “less than $10 million” in holdings from coal and oil sands companies. However, the investment office’s official statement on climate change states that “Targeting fossil fuel suppliers for divestment, while ignoring the damage caused by consumers, is misdirected” and that “modern society could not exist without fossil fuel consumption.” A statement from Yale in response to Saturday’s protest stated that the university stood “firmly for the right to free expression” but added that it was “regrettable that the orchestrated protest came during a time when fellow students were participating in a collegiate career-defining contest and an annual tradition when thousands gather from around the world to enjoy and celebrate the storied traditions of both football programs and universities.” A statement from Harvard provided to the New York Times on Saturday read, “While we agree on the urgency of this global challenge, we respectfully disagree with divestment activists on the means by which a university should confront it.” The statement went on to vow that Harvard would demonstrate climate leadership “through research, education, community engagement, dramatically reducing its own carbon footprint, and using our campus as a test bed for piloting and proving solutions.” Students involved in the protest said that Yale and Harvard should be leaders in divestment. Martin Man, a recent alumni of Yale’s architecture school, said that Yale’s chief investment officer, David Swensen, is an influential figure in the world of university investing and that other schools will likely follow his lead. “We know there’s political will for this right now,” said Yale freshman Josephine Ingall. The entire University of California system announced its plan to fully divest its $13.4 billion endowment and $70 billion pension fund from fossil fuel companies earlier this fall. Two small liberal arts colleges, Smith and Middlebury, have also decided to divest from fossil fuel companies in the past year. Heaphy, who was charged with a misdemeanor for disorderly conduct and will need to appear in court, said it was a small price to pay. “I’m feeling very hopeful that this could be the moment that changes the tide,” she said. “The people who flooded the field were on our side, and they were willing to, in the moment without knowing this was happening beforehand, show their support in demanding that our universities listen.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The historic protest at the Harvard-Yale football game was years in the making on Nov 25, 2019.