After nearly four years of campaigning, the Mount Holyoke Climate Justice Coalition is excited to announce that 92 percent of the faculty support divestment.
In the fall of 2015, an ad-hoc committee was commissioned by Professor James Harold, head of the Planning and Budget Committee. The ad-hoc committee came out in favor of divestment. This heralded a significant step in engaging faculty with the divestment campaign. The next semester, spring 2016, the Planning and Budget Committee fully supported divestment.
MHCJC's next steps are to leverage faculty influence to further push the Board of Trustees to formally vote on divestment.
Below, I've included some key points from the article. You can read the whole press release here.
1. 66 percent of the faculty support the committee’s statement.
2. 23 percent of the faculty support the committee’s statement, but would prefer a stronger statement, along the lines of the CJC statement.
3. 3 percent of the faculty support the stronger CJC statement and therefore do not support the committee’s statement.
4. 8 percent of the faculty did not support the committee’s statement for a different reason.
Having worked on MHCJC's fossil fuel divestment campaign for over two years, I am ecstatic to harness this momentum to further change the narrative surrounding climate change. Climate change isn't only about pristine oceans and preserving biodiversity. It is as much about science as it is about people.
If anything, divestment is just one avenue to pressure Congress and governments around the world to acknowledge the deleterious effects on minority groups. Divestment is a nexus for various social justice advocates to fight for systemic change. I choose divestment.