{"id":5979,"date":"2013-10-10T10:11:26","date_gmt":"2013-10-10T14:11:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=5979"},"modified":"2013-10-10T10:12:44","modified_gmt":"2013-10-10T14:12:44","slug":"our-investments-are-political-divest-harvard-to-drew-faust","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/10\/our-investments-are-political-divest-harvard-to-drew-faust.html","title":{"rendered":"Our investments are political –Divest Harvard to Drew Faust"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n\r\nDivest Harvard<\/a>\r\n\r\nsummed it up<\/a>:\r\n

\r\nOur investments ARE political.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd that’s just as true at VSU.\r\n

\r\nNot even\r\n\r\nTim DeChristopher<\/a> put it more pithily than that.\r\nSamantha Caravello wrote in the Harvard Law Record 7 October 2013,\r\n\r\nPres. Faust, There\u2019s Nothing Neutral About Investing in Climate Wreckage<\/a>,\r\nnoting that\r\n\r\nPres. Faust’s excuses<\/a>\r\nwere actually in response to\r\n“an invitation from undergraduates to participate in an open forum\r\non divesting Harvard’s $32 billion endowment from the top 200 fossil\r\nfuel companies.”\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nPresident Faust warned against using the endowment in ways that\r\nwould position the university as a political actor, claiming that\r\nthere is risk in “[c]onceiving of the endowment not as an\r\neconomic resource, but as . . . a lever to exert economic pressure\r\nfor social purposes.” What this statement implies is that the\r\nUniversity’s current investment strategy is politically neutral,\r\nthat the status quo is free of policy judgments.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\njust because it’s the norm
\r\ndoesn’t mean it’s not a choice.\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\nBut as comforting as it may be to believe that Harvard’s endowment\r\nis accruing interest in a sociopolitical vacuum, it’s not the case.\r\nInvesting in fossil fuel companies might not be an instance of overt\r\nand controversial activism, but it’s a political statement\r\nnonetheless.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nWhat is there to take away from the decision to continually and\r\nknowingly invest our resources in the fossil fuel industry other\r\nthan a belief in that industry’s viability and a hope that it will\r\ncontinue to bring us profitable returns?\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHer summary:\r\n

\r\n

\r\nDivesting Harvard’s endowment from fossil fuel companies would be a\r\npolitical statement, and investing Harvard’s endowment in fossil\r\nfuel companies is a political statement.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nThe question is whether it’s one we want to make.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nFossil fuel investments are just as political and\r\nthat same question is just as valid\r\n\r\nat Valdosta State University<\/a>.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Divest Harvard summed it up: Our investments ARE political. And that’s just as true at VSU. Not even Tim DeChristopher put it more pithily than that. Samantha Caravello wrote in the Harvard Law Record 7 October 2013, Pres. Faust, There\u2019s Nothing Neutral About Investing in Climate Wreckage, noting that Pres. Faust’s excuses were actually in […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[216,15,41,6124,559,22,23,73,24,134,36],"tags":[8753,1306,1003,1308,8705,8701,1300,8718,8702,12,7,562,8782,8712,8713,8731,8714,6,8743,8716],"class_list":["post-5979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coal","category-education","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-oil","category-politics","category-renewable-energy","category-safety","category-solar","category-vsu","category-wind","tag-coal","tag-derek-bok","tag-divestment","tag-drew-faust","tag-education","tag-georgia","tag-harvard","tag-health-care","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-natural-gas","tag-oil","tag-politics","tag-renewable-energy","tag-safety","tag-solar","tag-valdosta","tag-vsu","tag-wind"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1yr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5979"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5983,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5979\/revisions\/5983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}