New Report Details Proposed Criteria For Fossil-Fuel Dissociation

As the school year begins, the excitement of the first fully in-person, business-as-usual year since pre-pandemic times can be invigorating. Even from afar, alumni hear of the beautiful new residential colleges opening this fall and Princeton’s pledge to fully cover financial aid for all students with families making up to $100,000. Amidst all of the noise of Princeton’s sustainability on campus, it’s easy to forget that Princeton’s movement on sustainability — and specifically, its charge to divest its nearly $38 billion endowment from fossil fuels — has been minimal. Despite support for divestment from over 3,000 students, alumni, faculty, and staff, the University has failed to act. All of Princeton’s advertising of net-zero goals and progress simply distract from the $1.7 billion Princeton still has invested in fossil fuels.

I was warned when I started organizing with Divest Princeton during my sophomore year of college that I would likely never see divestment while still a Princeton student. That warning was correct. This May, I graduated, as the University spent another year stalling on actual divestment with the invention of a faculty panel on dissociation. As emeritus co-coordinator and one of the most active student organizers of the campaign on campus, I knew that administrators were likely hoping that I would graduate and the campaign would crumble. They were wrong.

As the school year begins, the student organizers who have taken up the torch have already begun to organize protests, tabling sessions, and strategy meetings. We have a growing coalition of over 160 faculty and staff in favor of divestment. Alumni like myself are continuing to organize virtually. If anything, the movement only continues to grow.

I urge you not to forget that even amidst all of the good, Princeton continues to fail its students and alumni. Divestment still has yet to happen. We are no closer than we were a year ago, but this is no reason for dismay.

Let Princeton’s failure to move serve as a call to action. If you have not yet signed the pledge not to donate until Princeton divests, sign it. If you have signed it, share it with your peers or join us for our strategy meetings. But whatever happens, we must never stop organizing. We will not rest until Princeton divests.

At President Eisgruber ’83’s annual address to alumni in Alexander Hall during Reunions, I asked if I might “have hope that the administration and trustees will begin to exhibit a greater sense of urgency” in addressing climate change. Over the summer as temperatures have risen, wildfires raged, water supplies dried up, and glaciers melted, I wondered repeatedly why my direct question did not elicit a direct answer, reflective of the catastrophe building around us. President Eisgruber pivoted to rehearsed talking points in the manner so common with politicians and corporate leaders today.

What I realized three months later is that when the president lauded Princeton’s unnecessarily time-consuming process he had addressed my question tangentially: Urgency? Forget it. The urgency remains even if he and Princeton refuse to act decisively.

I urge all alumni who are concerned about the climate crisis to read Divest Princeton’s full response and analysis of the faculty report on fossil-fuel dissociation (On the Campus, July/August issue) on the website https:.

Over two years ago, Divest Princeton began urging the University to divest its $1.7 billion holdings in fossil fuels. We know that when Princeton wants to, it can act quickly and decisively. In 2017, when President Donald Trump rescinded DACA, Princeton filed a federal lawsuit only 58 days later. However, when it comes to combatting the climate crisis, Princeton is perfecting the art of delay and disinformation.

In May of 2021, with much self-congratulation, Princeton’s trustees announced that Princeton would consider dissociating from coal and tar sands. But this past year, as part of the faculty panel’s proceedings, it was quietly made public that the endowment has no exposure to companies that derive more than 15 percent of revenues from tar sands and only $19 million in run-off mode in thermal coal. When the dissociation statement was made in 2021, did the trustees, several of whom are also PRINCO directors, know that 98.9 percent of the $1.7 billion they had in oil and gas would go untouched? Did Princeton intentionally greenwash its own divestment announcement?

Alumni of this university must stop being enablers of the Board of Trustees’ complicity and lift their voices as this existential crisis unfolds in front of our eyes.