Divest Harvard summed it up:

Our investments ARE political.

And that’s just as true at VSU.

Not even Tim DeChristopher put it more pithily than that. Samantha Caravello wrote in the Harvard Law Record 7 October 2013, Pres. Faust, There’s Nothing Neutral About Investing in Climate Wreckage, noting that Pres. Faust’s excuses were actually in response to “an invitation from undergraduates to participate in an open forum on divesting Harvard’s $32 billion endowment from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.”

President Faust warned against using the endowment in ways that would position the university as a political actor, claiming that there is risk in “[c]onceiving of the endowment not as an economic resource, but as . . . a lever to exert economic pressure for social purposes.” What this statement implies is that the University’s current investment strategy is politically neutral, that the status quo is free of policy judgments.

just because it’s the norm
doesn’t mean it’s not a choice.

But as comforting as it may be to believe that Harvard’s endowment is accruing interest in a sociopolitical vacuum, it’s not the case. Investing in fossil fuel companies might not be an instance of overt and controversial activism, but it’s a political statement nonetheless.

What is there to take away from the decision to continually and knowingly invest our resources in the fossil fuel industry other than a belief in that industry’s viability and a hope that it will continue to bring us profitable returns?

Her summary:

Divesting Harvard’s endowment from fossil fuel companies would be a political statement, and investing Harvard’s endowment in fossil fuel companies is a political statement.

The question is whether it’s one we want to make.

Fossil fuel investments are just as political and that same question is just as valid at Valdosta State University.

-jsq

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