As leading news outlets like the New York Times and Politico recently noted, the fossil fuel divestment campaign is “meeting some resistance” and “largely rebuffed.” In the face of this reality, divestment activists are being forced to change their tactics and lower their demands. Their approach, dubbed the “Syracuse model,” by an administrator at the …
New study quantifies for the first time significant transactional and compliance costs divested schools will be forced to bear – ones that have nothing to do with portfolio performance WASHINGTON, D.C. – Previous studies have definitively shown that divesting one’s portfolio of oil-and-gas related assets weakens investment returns over time, forcing investors to take on more risk as …
[Updated 6/30/16] Groups like 350.org have been quick to push out inflated numbers around the size of endowments that have decided to divest from fossil fuels. A breakdown of the numbers, however, highlights just how few schools have actually divested and, more importantly, how many have rejected the symbolic movement. According to a scoreboard put …
When the University of Massachusetts announced yesterday its plans to divest its endowment from “direct holdings” in fossil fuels, divestment activist cheered and claimed it as a major victory. Yet, as is often the case, the fine print tells a very different story. Once again, this divestment “victory” is simply another “empty gesture.” Here are …
The United Methodist Church voted against divestment last week, choosing to not add a fossil fuels investment screen to the Church’s Board of Pension and Health Benefits. At the 2016 General Conference, a quadrennial gathering of the top policy-making body of the United Methodist Church, delegates of the Church’s Board of Pension and Health Benefits, …
It may be finals season on college campuses, but no one should be more stressed out than fossil fuel divestment activists as rejections abound and the campaigns fail harder than ever. In the same week that Stanford announced it would not drop fossil fuels, new comments from Columbia’s Advisory Committee on Socially Responsible Investing (ACSRI) …
NYU Divest’s recent letter to the Washington Square News, “Let’s be Fair about Divestment” is unfortunately anything but. Many of the claims made in the piece have already been disproven by other students, administrators, financial experts, and most importantly, NYU’s own Boards of Trustees. First and foremost the authors downplay the cost of fossil fuel …
Activist organizations and their allies seem to have their sights set on politicizing public pension funds by changing the long held definition of fiduciary responsibility. But the Department of Labor (DOL) makes it crystal clear that the fiduciary responsibility of a pension plan rests entirely on economic factors, as stated on their official page: “The primary …
After 18 months of careful analysis, commissioned reports, and thorough consultation with divestment advocates, students and faculty, the University of Ottawa’s Board of Governors has officially rejected divestment. In Monday’s press release, the University of Ottawa Board of Governors Chair Robert Giroux states, “We are reducing the carbon footprint of our entire investment portfolio by …
In a string of recent defeats to activists’ fossil fuel campaign in California, Stanford has become the latest institution in the state to officially reject divestment. In a University statement issued on Monday, Stanford’s Board of Trustees announced that “Stanford’s endowment will not divest”, following an investigation by the Advisory Panel on Investment Responsibility and …
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