by James B. Stewart, "Common Sense," The New York Times, May 17, 2014
Kate
Aronoff didn’t arrive at Swarthmore College in fall 2010 expecting to
be an environmental activist. Nor did she know much about the stock
market. She knew even less about asset management and college
endowments.
That
all changed her freshman year, when she and about a dozen Swarthmore
students made a field trip to West Virginia to meet Larry Gibson, widely
known and celebrated by environmentalists as the “Keeper of the
Mountains.” A short walk from his two-room cabin on land his family has
owned for generations, the students could see thousands of acres laid
bare by mountaintop removal coal mining operations.
“The
difference between the majesty of the Appalachian Mountains that hadn’t
been ruined and the mountain peaks that were flattened was so stark,”
Ms. Aronoff told me this week, as she was studying for finals. “We saw
and heard about how toxic the coal mining industry is and how much of
the economy is structured around coal mining. It was a moment when the
connection between economic injustice and environmental injustice was
just so clear.”
That
moment, and others like it, have touched off a nationwide movement that
is beginning to affect how colleges, universities, other institutions
and pension funds are investing their vast financial resources. A week
ago, Stanford University rocked the endowment world
when it said its $18.7 billion endowment would not make direct
investments in publicly traded companies whose primary business is
mining coal for energy generation.
Stanford
joins 11 other colleges that, to varying degrees, have pledged not to
invest their endowment resources in fossil fuels. But Stanford’s
prestige and the size of its endowment have suddenly thrust the divisive
issue of fossil fuel divestment, and what is more generally considered
socially responsible investment, onto the agendas of investment
committees everywhere.
But
at Swarthmore, one of the country’s most selective and prestigious
colleges, where the student-led divestment movement had its origins, the
college’s board members and administrators have listened repeatedly to
the student activists — yet have firmly rebuffed their proposals on the
grounds that they could hurt endowment income and are unlikely to have
any impact on energy companies.
“It’s
surprising that Swarthmore, which prides itself on social justice,
would be so hesitant when you try to involve the institution itself,”
Ms. Aronoff said. “It’s astounding to us to see the ways they continue
to resist and won’t put their money where their mouth is.”
College
officials seem sensitive to the point. “The students are terrific,”
Giles Kemp, the chairman of Swarthmore’s board of managers, told me this
week. “There’s no lack of admiration for their idealism. They want to
make a positive difference in the world, which is Swarthmore’s mission.
The frustrating thing, the ironic aspect is, the board is as much a
believer in the threat to us and our children from climate change as the
students are. Where we disagree are the tactics. After much
deliberation, the board came to a different point of view.”
Swarthmore’s
endowment is $1.635 billion, and has generated a one-year return of
11.9%, a three-year average annual return of 12.5%, and a 5-year average annual return of 6.4%. All three are better
than the average rates of return for all colleges and universities. Much
of the income is earmarked for scholarships.
While
the activist students vow to keep the pressure on Swarthmore, they held
a retreat this week to strategize and savor the Stanford decision,
“We’re elated,” said Sara Blazevic, a Swarthmore junior who worked
closely with students at Stanford. “I’m amazed at how this has taken
off. It’s unprecedented how quickly it’s grown. When we started our
campaign, it was kind of lonely. By the fall of 2012, there were 20 to
30 campaigns and then last year it really blew up.”
Students
say the Swarthmore movement, which goes by the name Mountain Justice,
was in part inspired by George Lakey, a visiting professor in peace and
conflict studies, who led the trip to West Virginia and whose class
examined various case studies in nonviolent activism, including the
impact of divestiture on ending apartheid in South Africa. Ms. Blazevic
also went to West Virginia.
“I
was shocked to see the degree of devastation,” she said. “And I was
troubled and disturbed that my tuition money and alumni donations were
being invested in that kind of destruction. It was politicizing.”
Professor
Lakey agreed. “The more these Swarthmore students learned,” he said by
email from Iceland, “the more the students connected the dots and
understood that the choice of extreme extraction over switching to
sustainable energy is a choice that is simply wrong,” He added, “They
felt gravely disappointed to find that their school, a Swarthmore that
insists on its devotion to the future of the students, was in fact
committed to a policy that makes the students’ future problematic.”
Ms.
Aronoff, who was in Professor Lakey’s class, said she and other
students were intrigued by the possibility of divestment, “but we
weren’t even sure what an endowment is or how it works. We had to take a
crash course on investing.” That led them to the Responsible Endowments
Coalition and its executive director, Dan Apfel, who worked closely
with the group. “He really helped us get the campaign off the ground
after we had the idea,” she said.
The
group got a lift when 350.org, led by the writer and environmental
activist Bill McKibben, took up the cause, and started a cross-country
bus tour to promote divestment. As interest spread to other campuses,
the Swarthmore students were the hosts of a conference on the campus in
spring 2013. “We thought we’d get maybe six other schools to attend,”
Ms. Aronoff said. “We ended up with over 200 students from 75 schools.” A
national student divestment network was forged soon after. But
Swarthmore itself didn’t budge, although officials always seemed open to
discussion of the issue, and the board agreed to an open meeting with
students to discuss it.
“By
last spring we’d met with them more than 25 times,” Ms. Aronoff said.
“There was some value to going through institutional channels and having
face time with administrators, but there was remarkably little
progress.” At the open meeting, hundreds of students filed in, but many
raised other contentious issues, like sexual harassment. The meeting
became chaotic. Opponents of divestment were drowned out, and one vented
her frustration in an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal (“My Top Notch Illiberal Arts Education”).
At the next board meeting, divestment activists gathered in the hallway
and used an open microphone to try to get the board’s attention, but
board members ignored them.
“As
a college that honors its Quaker roots, we encourage students to engage
one another and us in matters related to the college and to the world
beyond, and we listen to their points of view as we consider important
decisions,” Rebecca Chopp, Swarthmore’s president, said. “Sometimes this
is difficult, sometimes people do not agree, and sometimes it does not
work the first time. But we will always be proud that Swarthmore is a
college that supports debate and disagreement.”
Last
fall, the board issued a formal letter rejecting the group’s demands.
“The managers’ decision not to divest is broad and deep,” Mr. Kemp
wrote. “It is our collective judgment that the cost of divestment would
far outweigh any potential benefit.” He wrote that divestment would be
costly to the endowment, with a decline in income of an estimated $10
million to $15 million a year, and that it would be a “symbolic” act
with little if any impact on energy companies or public officials.
Mr.
Kemp pointed out that Stanford’s endowment charter explicitly permitted
the university to consider social causes in making investment
decisions, while Swarthmore’s takes the opposite position. “There are a
lot of worthy causes,” Mr. Kemp said, “but the question is, Should an
endowment be used to advance them? Last year, there was a lot of
agitation for companies to support Palestine and stop investing in
companies having to do with Israel. Those students were as fervent in
their cause as these students are in theirs.” He added: “The board
concluded the way our endowment is set up, we weren’t meant to use for
social purposes no matter how noble.”
The student activists wrote a rebuttal
that ran in the campus newspaper, contending that Swarthmore’s “chief
concern can no longer be the rapid and uninhibited growth of the
institutional endowment. Endless growth is a false methodology that
inherently prioritizes money over human, moral and environmental
concern. It is the same logic on which the fossil fuel industry has
operated since its inception, and what has driven us to our current
economic and environmental crises.”
And
some faculty members have taken issue with elements of the board’s
position. “I don’t really support divestment,” said Mark Kuperberg, an
economics professor. “I don’t think it will affect company behavior. But
I don’t think it will hurt the endowment much, either.”
Stanford’s
decision doesn’t appear to have affected the Swarthmore board’s
thinking. “Ultimately, after considering many diverse viewpoints, the
board made its decision,” Ms. Chopp said. “The board is simply not
willing to accept the significant cuts in scholarships, faculty and
curriculum offerings that a significantly lower endowment return would
necessitate. We believe that to do so would have no measurable effect on
halting climate change and, at the same time, would pose an
unacceptable risk to the college’s finances.”
Despite
their differences, Mr. Kemp acknowledged some pride in the students and
what they’ve accomplished. “I may not agree with these students, but I
think we can learn from them and admire their dedication and if we
disagree, it’s not for lack of respect for their commitment and drive.”
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