Students Demand Divestment - Who Won the Game?

Harvard and Yale are hardly football powers so a climate crisis protest demonstration in the middle of their annual football game is hardly big news.  But, it does highlight the close relationship between elite universities and fossil fuel companies. 

The Yale-Harvard football game on Saturday was disrupted by climate protesters storming the field during halftime to demand that the two Ivy League universities divest from fossil fuels. Photos shared on social media show a large crowd sitting on the field at Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, while others stand behind them with a large sign that read: "Nobody Wins: Yale & Harvard are complicit in climate injustice."

The protesting students were demanding that their schools which have massive financial endowments ensure that those billions dollar funds stop investing in and divest themselves from all fossil fuel companies.  School administrators claim that their investments in these companies can be used as leverage to move those companies to change.  This young lady see her school’s position as something quite different:

“They believe that they can engage with these companies and get them to change their fundamentally extractive business models, which we think comes from a place of naivety amounting to gross negligence,” Nora Heaphy, an undergraduate at Yale, said.

“It’s absurd to make those kinds of claims. So since then our campaign has moved away from administrative engagement, recognizing that it is often a stalling tactic.”

An on-field protest like this at an Alabama-Auburn football game would give me hope that Americans  actually understand the nature of the climate emergency the planet is facing.  Still, I guess Harvard-Yale is a start.