In 1988, a group of Connecticut College students urged a motion for the college endowment portfolio. Its goal was to get the College’s money out of apartheid South Africa in order to undermine the then apartheid regime. After contentious debate that resulted in the resignation of trustee Barry Bloom, the Board resolved not to further invest in companies doing business in South Africa.
“I have resigned as a Trustee of Connecticut College in order to protest the adoption of this ill-considered divestment policy,” wrote Bloom in a Letter to the Editor of The Day in 1988. Bloom was Vice Chairman of the Board of Trustees while simultaneously President of Pfizer Central Research, which had operations in South Africa. To divest from South Africa was to divest from Pfizer, and by that token the Board was forced to weigh the College’s relationship to Pfizer against the demands of the student body. Student activism, including a candlelight vigil outside a Board meeting, pushed the Board to prioritize the latter.
In 2006 the College was again urged to divest, with the aim to get College money out of Darfur. President Higdon sent letters to the College’s investment fund managers, asking them to investigate and sell any co-mingled funds in Sudan. The sum? Less than 0.4% of the then $189 million endowment.
“It is morally imperative that the community of institutional investors take every possible action to support the people of Sudan and to bring this tragic situation to a speedy and peaceful resolution,” Higdon’s letter concluded. The former president underlined the symbolic, political impact of divesting as well as the responsibility of Connecticut College to invest ethically.
Now, divestment has become synonymous with collegiate environmentalism. At a growing rate, students at American colleges and universities have begun to urge their administrators to take their money out of “dirty” companies; for example, the fossil fuel industry. It is a movement that has been countered by industry giants like Exxon, who have called it “out of step with reality.”
Because of the way Connecticut College exports the management of its relatively small endowment, explained Vice President of Finance Paul Maroni in a 2014 interview with The Voice, it would be difficult to divest. Maroni suggested that the College’s obligations to sustainability are in the hands of the Office of Sustainability.
“It makes no sense to green the campus without also greening the portfolio,” said Bill McKibben, an acclaimed environmental activist and Professor at Middlebury College, where the divestment debate persists. Meanwhile, at Bates, Amherst and Bowdoin, the movement to divest has been blocked by administrators.
It is clear is that the economic impact of our College’s divestment on the industry would be marginal. The significance of such a motion would largely be personal to the College. Divestment would be a demonstration of the College’s commitment to sustainability, to actual shared governance on administrative matters and, ultimately, to aligning itself as an intellectual institution fundamentally opposed to the fossil fuel industry, which has been long been characterized by disinformation campaigns and speculative science.
Advocates for divestment emphasize that buying into the ethically sketchy fossil fuel industry is hypocritical in academia, a sector we rely on to produce and advance knowledge. Connecticut College specifically, because of its pioneering history in environmental sciences – the Arboretum, the groundbreaking Goodwin-Niering Center for the Environment—appears especially behind the times. One might imagine the late Botany Professor Bill Niering rolling in his grave.
It is the beginning of a movement towards more morally informed, accountable or even “enlightened,” administrative policies. And, notably, it’s a movement that has always originated from the student body, which, at Connecticut College, has a history of high ethical expectations of the College as a whole.
For divestment to be feasible at Conn, trustees would need to be convinced that divestment would not impact the well being of the school. Such concern is the reason why many in the debate would vouch for caution. Restructuring investments according to social or ethical sentiment is unfamiliar territory for most schools. For many, it is seen as unintelligent investment. As a result, administrators voice concern over institutional longevity, history and tradition threatened by fossil fuel divestment.
Some schools have loudly denied students’ reform demands. “The concerns of the students are understandable but the message from the divestment movement is fundamentally misguided,” said Robert Stavins, Director of Harvard’s environmental economics program. Neither Harvard nor Yale have divested, despite nearly 100 Harvard professors independently petitioning their university to do so.
Harvard President Drew Faust responded to the professors that the endowment is not political and should not be used as such.
Among schools with more comparable endowments to Conn – where the economic impact of divestment would be largely symbolic—the administrators echoed Harvard. In the NESCAC, Bates soundly refuted a drawn out student divestment campaign, enumerating a host of reasons as to why divestment is fundamentally flawed.
“The transition would result in significant transaction costs, a long-term decrease in the endowment’s performance, an increase in the endowment’s risk profile and thus a loss in annual operating income for the College,” said President Clayton Spencer in an open letter to the students. From a solely financial standpoint, the administrative response of Bates (which had a 263.8 million endowment in 2014) would equally apply to Connecticut College (which had an endowment of 278 million in 2014). Bowdoin and Amherst joined Bates in deciding not to divest.
Is the symbolic action of divesting worthwhile? Historically, the College has responded that it is. As a campus movement towards fossil fuel divestment grows, the memory of an administration that has divested before will be an influencing factor concerning a much greater pool of money than a 0.4% share in Darfur.
To that end, it would be in character for Connecticut College to question the surprisingly naïve proclamation by Harvard’s President Faust that an investment as big as an endowment (Harvard’s approaches $40 billion) is not inherently political. In the arena of fossil fuel divestment, students will expect the College to lead from the front. •
