The headline from The Crimson, Harvard University’s newspaper, was worrisome: “Divest Harvard Plans Week-Long Sit-ins.”
Another university full of students attacking Israel, when the world is so full of unequivocally bad actors?
But what a relief! The Harvard student and faculty body, with serious prodding by a dozen prominent alumni – including Nobel prize winners and the unlikely combination of Cornel West and Natalie Portman – are planning a weeklong series of sit-in protests outside the university’s Massachusetts Hall in April “to demand that the Harvard Corporation – the University’s highest governing body – divest Harvard’s endowment from fossil fuels.” It will be called Harvard Heat Week.
Last week more than two dozen Harvard students occupied Massachusetts Hall, the site of the president and other university officials offices, for 24 hours. The Divest Harvard group wants the university to divest its $35.9 billion endowment from fossil fuels.
There’s even a loose coalition of Harvard faculty which goes by the name of “Harvard Faculty for Divestment,” which is about supporting the fossil fuel divestment movement.
Harvard President Drew Faust has rebuffed the call, arguing instead that there other other ways to achieve the desired goals in other ways, ones that would not imperil the financial stability of the university. According to the Crimson, last week Faust’s Climate Change Solutions Fund awarded $800,000 in grants to Harvard affiliates for projects focusing on climate change.
This spring there will be a week-long divestment event at Harvard, the students are being trained in civil disobedience, and none of it has anything to do with Israel. Stay cool, Harvard.