During my sophomore year at Smith College, President Kathleen McCartney addressed me and my peers as members of the Student Government Association.
She specifically encouraged us to “use Smith as a platform to be agents of change.” At that point, I was already organizing with the student group Divest Smith College for fossil fuel divestment, and had been for nearly a year. Since those early divestment conversations at Smith, students have been pushing for significant changes and commitments from the college.
Smith has used divestment as a means of cutting fiscal and moral ties with causes and institutions that were misaligned with the school’s stated mission and values in the past. In 1979, Smith’s board of trustees stated that “it is possible to identify some corporations or industries whose actions or policies do not deserve endorsement by the intellectual community represented by Smith College. We believe that the avoidance of investment in companies in this latter category should be a specific and deliberate part of the investment policy of the College.”
Such explicit terms might seem to lend themselves to an easy decision on fossil fuel divestment, but the road to divestment has been a winding one. After six years of negotiation and progress by student organizers and other college stakeholders, last week the board of trustees officially refused to commit to full fossil fuel divestment.
Smith has an enduring legacy as a pioneer in social justice movements, and we have always known that the status quo is not politically neutral. Smith has made commitment after commitment to sustainability and social justice initiatives.
While Smith centers climate change as one of the major crises of our time, the fossil fuel industry perpetuates climate change while destroying communities across the globe. While Smith remains a prestigious educational institution committed to truth and academic integrity, the fossil fuel industry continues to push a decades-old misinformation campaign to mislead the public about climate science.
Yet Smith continues to invest in fossil fuels to the tune of $100 million. Not only is divestment the right thing to do, but there is also mounting evidence that fossil fuels aren’t a sound long-term investment.
Fossil-free portfolios have been shown to perform as well as, or better than, portfolios containing fossil fuel investments. We are investing in an industry that undermines our institutional mission at every level, and the reason we remain invested is shocking, disappointing, and very unlike Smith.
Since 2004, Smith’s endowment has been managed by a firm called Investure LLC. Investure pools Smith’s endowment with those of 11 other clients, and this pool of endowments is then distributed to a network of fund managers who decide where it’s invested. Because of this complex structure, Investure refuses to allow any of their clients to divest from anything.
Investure’s business model turns Smith into an institution of hypocrisy. Smith previously committed to divest from big tobacco, as well as companies tied to South African apartheid, and genocide in Sudan. Today, Smith has absolutely no way to enforce or adhere to these commitments now that we are married to Investure’s choice-inhibiting business model.
That the college has gone back on our word is deeply troubling, yet the board of trustees doesn’t seem to care. In the past five years, Investure has lost several clients who left the firm in order to divest, including our peer institution Barnard College.
As Investure’s largest client, we hold power in pushing for change. It’s time to change Investure from the inside, or leave. Hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy are simply too high a price to pay in order to stay married to a firm whose investment returns are, frankly, nothing special.
We are a community that takes action when the status quo is intolerable. And the status quo is intolerable.
With environmental protections and climate policy regressing nationwide, we must increasingly look to our local elected officials and institutions for guidance and action.
With this latest announcement, the board of trustees has neglected Smith community voices. Our peer institutions have spoken, the students have spoken, and just last week hundreds of alumnae signed a letter to the board, all expressing the same message: Smith must divest to be on the right side of history in the fight for social and climate justice, and in the fight for its own integrity.
Smith is an agent of change, and it’s time to align our money with our morals. It’s time to divest Smith College from the fossil fuel industry.
Gabriella J. Zutrau graduated from Smith College in 2016 with a double major in linguistics and psychology, and a concentration in Mandarin translation studies. She was a founding member of Divest Smith College, and she currently resides in Brooklyn, New York, where she is a youth worker and a racial and economic justice organizer.