Students with Brandeis Climate Justice (BCJ) rallied in support of divesting university funds from fossil fuels on Thursday, BCJ member Claudia Davis ’19 told The Brandeis Hoot. She believes a vote from the Board of Trustees in favor of divesting from fossil fuels is “imminent.”
President Ron Liebowitz expressed hope that there would be a vote on divestment soon but could not say whether the vote would take place in 2018, he told The Hoot in an email. “The conversation and further information gathering continues,” he said in the email. “[The Board of Trustees] are looking at all the ways we can address the issue of climate change, including looking at our own carbon footprint and what we are doing actively (not just passively) to reduce our impact.”
In a September meeting, the board did not vote on divestment or a document titled “Brandeis as a Responsible Investor,” which trustees say needs to be updated before a vote on divestment can take place, according to a campus-wide email from Liebowitz last week.
The BCJ demonstrators, who rallied outside Rabb Graduate Center and the Gerstenzang Science Library, passed out fliers and hung large banners as part of “Global Climate Change week,” according to Davis.
A statement from the group posted on Facebook noted that “for over six years, Brandeis Climate Justice has encouraged the Board of Trustees to divest from fossil fuels and substantiate its claims on being an institution institution that values social justice.”
“We are done encouraging; we are demanding,” read the statement.
“We want to be visible on campus about the real ramification of climate change which is more severe natural disasters, more severe weather events, and so many deaths,” Davis told The Hoot.
“In the last hurricane season we just saw so much destruction in communities in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands,” Davis said, “and now with this season Florence and Michael have already taken really significant hits and there are other hurricanes—just hurricanes, we’re not even talking about cyclones or floods or droughts or heat waves.”
Earlier in the week BCJ students tabled in Upper Usdan to raise money for victims of Hurricane Michael which struck the Florida panhandle earlier this month.
A banner hung by BCJ above the Rabb Steps read “Climate Change Kills #DivestDeis.” Fliers handed out by the group stated, “We can’t wait any longer. Do better, Brandeis. DIVEST NOW.”
Last April, Board of Trustees member George D. Krupp told students and faculty who had gathered for a climate justice rally that a vote on divestment would come within 60 days. In June, Liebowitz pushed the vote to November after announcing that the board must first vote to update “Brandeis as a Responsible Investor,” which was last updated in 1974.
“The board devoted a significant amount of time to discussing whether and how the university can address the legitimate concerns about climate change through fossil fuels divestment,” Liebowitz announced to the Brandeis community in an email summarizing his September meeting with the Board of Trustees.
According to Davis, BCJ was told by Board of Trustees Chair Meyer Koplow that Krupp did not have the authority or permission of the board to promise a vote within 60 days when he met demonstrators in April.
Davis told The Hoot that she believes that the Board of Trustees intends to “restructure [Brandeis as a Responsible Investor] so that the language is a little more direct and gives them reasons to divest from fuels but will help them push back against any future divestment campaigns.”
“After we divest from fossil fuels, we can divest from private prisons, we can divest from arms deals, we can divest from Israel, and they don’t want that,” she said, “I think they’re realizing now that divestment from fossil fuels is really close to happening and they’re scared that people are going to ask for more, ask for too much. That’s their slippery slope argument.”
Davis told The Hoot that she is hoping to see a vote on divestment from fossil fuels when the Board of Trustees meets in November. “I think the process of divestment takes time, but it takes less time than the Board is trying to lead us to believe it does,” she told The Hoot.
“Hundreds of millions of lives are at risk in the very near future, and a lot of lives have already been lost to climate change,” Davis warned, “The world as we know it is going to change entirely in our lifetime because of climate change.”
Earlier this month the United Nations’ International Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that if global emission rates remain the same the atmosphere could warm as much as 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels by 2040, according to The New York Times. Under these circumstances, the report warned, the world would see worsening food shortages, increased wildfires, and increasingly severe weather events.
The report also concluded with “global warming has already caused multiple observed changes in the climate system” and that to avoid the more severe changes, the global economy would have to react with changes that have “no documented historic precedent.”
Sabine von Mering (ENVS/GRALL/WMGS), a member of Faculty Against the Climate Threat, told The Hoot via email that “Anyone who read the most recent report by the International Panel on Climate Change knows how urgent it is. Brandeis should be a leader not a late-arriving follower on issues of social justice.”
“We trust that our trustees understand their responsibility to our students’ future and the future of life on planet earth,” von Mering said. “They are called trustees for a reason.” She noted that Liebowitz signed a statement in support of the Paris Agreement, an international agreement aiming to keep global temperature rise below two degrees Celsius this century.
She also said she hoped that “President Liebowitz will speak to his commitments to climate action in his Oct. 29 address.”
Rachel Wang contributed to reporting
