Students file complaint against university over fossil fuel investments
In a bid to compel their universities to divest from fossil fuels amid the climate crisis, a coalition of students across the country, including Stanford, filed complaints Wednesday with their state attorney general arguing that the schools' contributions to global warming are illegal.
Frustrated by what they consider to be their universities' insufficient action in the face of global warming, student-led campaigns at Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Vanderbilt and MIT filed complaints with the help of the Climate Defense Project attorneys, urging state officials to investigate continued investment in the fossil fuel sector by school trustees.
The coalition has collected nearly 10,000 signatures from prominent professors like Noam Chomsky, elected officials, alumni, environmental organizations and community members who support the cause through petitions and resolutions on their campuses as part of an effort to keep schools from contributing to global warming.
Stanford did not return a request for comment.
The campaign alleges that universities' continued investment in the fossil fuel industry violates the Uniform Prudent Management of Institutional Funds Act, which states that universities must invest in consideration of their “charitable purposes,” distinguishing universities from other investors.
The filing is part of a growing legal trend used by student groups to hold schools accountable for their contribution to climate change. Recently, students at Harvard, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Boston College, Marquette University and the University of New Mexico also filed similar legal complaints.
Shortly after Cornell and Harvard student groups filed their complaints, both school administrations announced they would divest from fossil fuels. Others like Boston University followed Harvard's lead. The movement to divest from fossil fuels is similar to other student groups urging their schools to divest from Israeli companies, and in the past groups coalesced to keep their schools from investing in South Africa during apartheid.
“The law can be a powerful ally in fighting climate change, but only if people are held accountable for actually following it,” Climate Defense Project staff attorney Alex Marquardt said. “Universities have a duty to promote the public interest in exchange for their tax-exempt charitable status, and that duty is incompatible with fossil fuel investments.”
In a complaint filed to California Attorney General Rob Bonta against Stanford University, students say it is “problematic” that the board of trustees has invested a portion of the university's $37.8 billion endowment in the fossil fuel industry — damaging the world's natural systems and disproportionately impacting low-income people and communities of color in the process.
Students argue that the degradation of the climate caused by the fossil fuel industry, and the consequent damage to ecological and human health, blatantly conflicts with their educational purposes and individual missions. And students argue the university's investments present financial risks given the underperformance and volatility of oil and gas compared to other industries, which could also be against the law.
“In the midst of the climate crisis, powerful institutions must take responsibility for their contributions to global warming,” the Stanford complaint says. “As concerned students, faculty, alumni, political leaders, civic groups, and community members, we ask that you investigate this conduct and use your enforcement powers to bring the board's investment practices into compliance with its fiduciary obligations.”
Stanford students maintain that California law provides rules that trustees must follow in managing the university's funds. As the body in charge of the university's endowment, Stanford trustees are “required to act in good faith and with loyalty, taking care that its investments further the purposes of the university” and they cannot seek to profit from their investments as a non-profit institution.
“By investing an estimated $838 million in fossil fuel stocks, the board of trustees is in violation of these duties to Stanford and the public,” the complaint says. “Despite the demonstrable financial and social benefits of institutional fossil fuel divestment, the board of trustees continues to provide financial support for an industry whose business model inexorably leads to environmental destruction and social injustice.”
In an interview Wednesday, Stanford student Miriam Wallstrom — who has been instrumental in coordinating with other universities to take legal action — said her personal story drives her commitment to do something about climate change, and not have her school stand in the way of it by investing in fossil fuels.
The New Mexico native says she has seen over the years as her state becomes more unliveable due to the effects of climate change, becoming a “hot and fireprone environment.”
She said Stanford students' fight for divestment escalated after university trustees voted against divestment during a June 2020 meeting just days after the faculty senate passed a resolution calling on the board to divest.
“Ever since then we've tried to encourage the board to divest, and we've really been met with a lot of resistance,” Wallstrom said. “We had a realization that the other tactics weren't working. We'd spent hundreds of hours researching the climate crisis and compiling these extensive documents for the board and faculty to review and nothing. The frustration built up so much we decided to take this legal route.”